Fighting unethical mortgage brokers

Corporate Report Wisconsin, May 2008

SCARED OF THE FINE PRINT attached to your mortgage docs? You should be, says the founder of Mortgage Loan Inspection LLC, a program designed to assist homebuyers and homeowners who are financing or refinancing their houses.

"For several years we've witnessed unscrupulous behavior of numerous mortgage brokers/lenders, bankers, loan officers and mortgage consultants," says Ross Lewin, president of the Mequon company. "They've been getting rich by misrepresenting products, withholding information, outright lying and scamming the consumers they were entrusted to assist.

"We've developed the only comprehensive service of its kind in the nation. Our goal is to protect the consumer from mortgage brokers and lenders who implement unethical lending practices."

Lewin has 28 years of mortgage banking experience, and owned and operated Moneyline Mortgage in Mequon for 10 years before selling it in late 2004. His partners in Mortgage Loan Inspection, Jim Schriner and Andrew Hamm, have a total of 51 years of experience.

The fee for their documentation service is $275, and Lewin said his company has already helped 30 clients save thousands of dollars in lender fees and finance charges. By reviewing documents and correcting potential concerns. Mortgage Loan Inspections main objective, says Lewin, is to educate the homebuyer.

Lewin said his company has no private competitors, and that his service goes above and beyond the new Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) Good Faith Estimate (GFE) and HUD 1 Closing Statement, which he said only gives the illusion of full disclosure.

"By lumping multiple lender and third party fees together in single line item, spreading the information over four pages, it has become more confusing and overwhelming," he said. "The original GFE, with its 60 separate line entries, puts all the numbers on one page, in columns just like a ledger."