Mortgage Broker

Residents living near the sinking homes in Wissinoming say the rowhouses showed visible signs of settling long before the rapid deterioration of the past three years. Yet, families who bought the homes in that period were able to obtain mortgages. Something that should not have happened if an alert appraiser had noted the settlement and recommended further investigation before the loans were approved. According to Harry Marder, president of the American Society of Appraisers, such vigilance is not always rewarded.

American Business Financial Services Inc. lost $33.2 million, or $10.53 a share, in the first quarter, returning the struggling Center City lender to default status on its own loans. The company secured a temporary waiver from the lender, said Albert W. Mandia, its executive vice president and chief financial officer. While the company now expects losses through Sept. 30, "we can now see a path to profitability by the quarter ended Dec. 31," Mandia said. In late 2002, Center City promoters counted American Business Financial as a major coup, luring the lender from Bala Cynwyd with an aid and loan package from the state and city worth $19.6 million.

A Camden County criminal investigator's romance with a mortgage broker has cost her her job and could send her to prison for obtaining a fraudulent loan, officials said. Asha Ritchards, 31, of Sicklerville, appeared yesterday in U.S. District Court in Camden, where she tearfully pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and admitted she lied on loan applications for a house her then-boyfriend used as a rental property. "She fell in love with this guy. He's a smooth-talking, handsome guy," defense attorney Leonard S. Baker said.

A Delaware County couple had to put their wedding on hold after losing two properties at the hands of a disbarred lawyer turned mortgage broker, authorities said. Joseph James Scafidi, 53, of Warminster, a former Bucks County prosecutor and convicted felon, turned himself in yesterday at Collingdale District Court to face theft and forgery charges. He is accused of fabricating documents, including a phony court order from Delaware County's president judge, to hide his theft of mortgage payments.

  The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau on Thursday unveiled its long-anticipated "qualified mortgage" regulation, designed to guarantee that home loans be given only to borrowers able to repay them. Under the new regulation, a lender must obtain and verify an applicant's financial information, including employment status, income, assets, debts, and credit history; the prospective borrower must have enough income or assets to repay the loans, and teaser rates may no longer hide the true cost of a mortgage.

Mortgage fraud alleged John C. Lucidi Jr., 30, of Las Vegas, who once worked in West Chester, was charged by the U.S. Attorney's Office yesterday in a $7-million mortgage scheme to defraud seven financial institutions. Authorities said Lucidi, who formerly worked as a mortgage broker for companies in West Chester and Newtown Square, found buyers, some of them family members, to buy homes - primarily in North Wildwood - for inflated prices in exchange for kickbacks of between $30,000 and $50,000 at closing.

Although median home prices in the eight-county Philadelphia region have fallen much less than in the nation as a whole, sales have fallen almost a third since the area real estate market peaked in the summer of 2007. To get the market moving, something has to give. For many prospective buyers, that something is interest rates. The current national average rate on a fixed 30-year mortgage is 5.01 percent, the lowest in the 38 years that Freddie Mac has been keeping track. If you are what Ambler mortgage broker Jerome Scarpello calls a "responsible borrower" with good credit (700 score)

We are getting what I call the "royal refinance runaround" as we try to get a new loan on our home. The interest rate on our old mortgage is 12.25 percent, so we want to reduce our interest rate and take out some tax-free cash. Our present S&L lender says their new loans don't allow any "cash out," which means we can't borrow more than we owe. Since our home is worth about $140,000 and our current mortgage is only around $77,500, we want to borrow 75 percent of value, which is $105,000.

All Joanne Keeley wanted to do was help her grandson buy a used car, but she ended up with an expensive mortgage she couldn't afford. Walter Sellers, who arranged financing for the car, was moonlighting as a mortgage salesman and dangled a $1,220 monthly payment in front of her until the night before closing last May, she said, when he told her it would really be $1,790. "He floored me," she said. It got even worse the next day at closing, when she learned that the $1,790 payment did not include taxes and insurance, which amount to $310 a month.

Given the inventory of unsold properties - and the rise in the number of days it takes to sell each one, even as median prices continue to increase - you'd think residential construction in Center City would be slowing. Yet from Front Street to the Schuylkill, and well north and south of the traditional boundaries of the business district, high-rises are rising and low-rises are spreading across what had been abandoned lots. The housing market may be sluggish, but 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rates remain low and available to buyers with good credit.