All Encompassing Mortgage and Real Estate Thread

[Horns99 155]

Regional bank that holds onto them.

Was told the same thing. PM me if you want the contact info


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Horns99 155]

Regional bank that holds onto them.

Was told the same thing. PM me if you want the contact info


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Wulaw Horn 18917]

2 hours ago, LebongJames said:

That’s a great deal we were just quoted  3.175 on a 30 year for $510k and then 4.4 on the second lien with 20% down on total loan. We were told that no was buying  jumbos right now

That’s what I would have told you. I could do 3.0 flat on the first, no idea on the second, but I wouldn’t even know where to begin looking to make it a jumbo all in one. 

[Wulaw Horn 18917]

1 hour ago, Horns99 said:

Regional bank that holds onto them.

Was told the same thing. PM me if you want the contact info


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks. I asked because I’m trying to give my peeps I can’t help a solid idea of where to go. Regional bank would have been my go to if you put a gun to my head. 

Did that come with a 1% origination fee (I know some of those guys do that) or was that no points and no origination? 

[UTPhil2006 3753]

Figured it was a regional bank.

As far as cash outs I know Caliber is doing that, I'll have to ask our others.  Have heard similar requirements though on credit/DTI.  Need to get a spreadsheet together for each companies hits/requirements/what they're not doing/etc at this point.

[shadetree 66]

Next week I am closing a jumbo refi 3.3@30ys. No points. I locked it in back in mid March when rates started to go crazy up and down. In Dallas area.

[bonnieblue 542]

2 houses to sell, 1 to buy in Austin. Do we do this now or kick the can down the road for another year?

[UTPhil2006 3753]

18 hours ago, bonnieblue said:

2 houses to sell, 1 to buy in Austin. Do we do this now or kick the can down the road for another year?

Just kind of depends on your preference/timing.  Still a healthy market in Austin from our experiences.  PM sent.

[Pyramid 1]

Closed on my house on March 20.  Got 3.125% on a 30-year jumbo loan.  No points.  Used BBVA Compass.  They had originally locked me in at 3.65% in early February, but when the shit hit the fan in early March, I was able to get a readjustment of the rate.  When they came back at 3.125%, I was stunned.      

[Storm the Field 5239]

A rare positive thing to come out of COVID is that we just got an extra 3-month extension on our construction loan without paying any fees or even really having to ask. Seems they're just presuming that any delays occurring these days are due to emergency. We actually haven't seen any virus-related slowdown on our build. Crews there pretty much everyday. 

Edited May 1, 2020 by Storm the Field

[UTPhil2006 3753]

5 minutes ago, Storm the Field said:

A rare positive thing to come out of COVID is that we just got an extra 3-month extension on our construction loan without paying any fees or even really having to ask. Seems they're just presuming that any delays occurring these days are due to emergency. We actually haven't seen any virus-related slowdown on our build. Crews there pretty much everyday. 

Nice.  Good to have that contingency while they're also still working

[Upgrayedd 5743]

31 minutes ago, Storm the Field said:

A rare positive thing to come out of COVID is that we just got an extra 3-month extension on our construction loan without paying any fees or even really having to ask. Seems they're just presuming that any delays occurring these days are due to emergency. We actually haven't seen any virus-related slowdown on our build. Crews there pretty much everyday. 

They really don't have an option do they?

[Wulaw Horn 18917]

8 hours ago, Upgrayedd said:

They really don't have an option do they?

Nope. They are more screwed than you are if the job stops half finished. 

[UTPhil2006 3753]

On 4/29/2020 at 8:15 PM, Wulaw Horn said:

So Phil might say differently on the cash out (and he might have a different money source than I do), but I just got told by my sharpest rep that they will be putting a 500 basis point hit on all cash outs in Texas starting Friday morning. That translates, typically to about a 1 percentage point hit to the borrower in interest rate. 

If you are on the fence about a cash out and can lock right now for anything in the 3’s I would highly recommend you do so. Tomorrow. Again, Phil might say different but this dovetails with another of my lenders saying cash outs will now require 3 months reserves, 720 credit scores and 36% DTI. 

Some have adopted this, some haven't.  One of the ones we have that's still holding tight on the good rates is only locking on 60 day locks however.  So still good rates out there, but just like most everything else it seems lately it's all about finding the right lender on the right day

[HRSchenker 2215]

For property value protests are you seeing counties use trueautomation.com? If so, is there really any need to get comps? Should I protest anyway and see if the computer returns a lower value?

[HookEm 2432]

Interesting twist in my home sale. It was supposed to close on Monday. Turns out the buyer wired their money to a scammer posing as the title company. Pretty sophisticated scam. Their $120,000 is long gone and the deal is obviously dead. Devastating for everyone involved.

PSA: You guys might want to hand deliver cashier's checks for your own deals. These scammers are good. It is easy to get fooled if you don't personally know the title agent.

House goes back on the market Monday. Yay!

[Your Mom 4748]

Holy shit.  That’s awful. Closed on the sale of my home last week.  Most everything was done via email and docusign, except closing.  We were in-person in the office for that.  

[Captainant 26861]

53 minutes ago, HookEm said:

Interesting twist in my home sale. It was supposed to close on Monday. Turns out the buyer wired their money to a scammer posing as the title company. Pretty sophisticated scam. Their $120,000 is long gone and the deal is obviously dead. Devastating for everyone involved.

PSA: You guys might want to hand deliver cashier's checks for your own deals. These scammers are good. It is easy to get fooled if you don't personally know the title agent.

House goes back on the market Monday. Yay!

Yikes. That was my nightmare scenario when I closed as a buyer. Let me guess: title company said they sent the instructions via email, and the email your buyer received contained the wrong wire transfer info?

That sucks man, sorry to hear it

[closetohumping 17258]

2 hours ago, HookEm said:

Interesting twist in my home sale. It was supposed to close on Monday. Turns out the buyer wired their money to a scammer posing as the title company. Pretty sophisticated scam. Their $120,000 is long gone and the deal is obviously dead. Devastating for everyone involved.

PSA: You guys might want to hand deliver cashier's checks for your own deals. These scammers are good. It is easy to get fooled if you don't personally know the title agent.

House goes back on the market Monday. Yay!

Wow.  Awful.  
 

 

 

 

Those of you that are on the verge of buying, were you able to negotiate the price ?

[Gil Bang 25507]

Interesting twist in my home sale. It was supposed to close on Monday. Turns out the buyer wired their money to a scammer posing as the title company. Pretty sophisticated scam. Their $120,000 is long gone and the deal is obviously dead. Devastating for everyone involved.

PSA: You guys might want to hand deliver cashier's checks for your own deals. These scammers are good. It is easy to get fooled if you don't personally know the title agent.

House goes back on the market Monday. Yay!

Holy shit. That is awful. But, I can’t say I haven’t heard this story before. Out here, a wire fraud disclosure is part of our purchase contract. The buyers are told in about 15 different places that they need to verify the wiring instructions with escrow and title before sending out a nickel.

I always verbally beat my buyers over the head with that as well.

Because of this kind of horse shit, most of the folks in the industry are using secure email now and it’s a big pain in the ass. My lender sends me an update, and I have to log into his system to read it.

My old broker had this happen once and the authorities were able to recover some of the money. I don’t know the specifics.

[T’Boo Ted Marshall 2718]

How do scammers get that level of information and know where things are in the process to pull that off?

[blacklab 11807]

yeah, they have to have hacked someone somewhere in the chain.

I also don't understand how wires are not traceable.  You send money to a routing number and account number. The routing number tells you which bank. The bank knows who has that account, you should be able to get a good start tracking that person down from whoever opened the account. 

[UTPhil2006 3753]

23 minutes ago, T’Boo Ted Marshall said:

How do scammers get that level of information and know where things are in the process to pull that off?

They are very very good at replicating emails.  It 100% looks like its coming from the title company.  Once we get close to closing I tell our buyers to not send anything without basically triple confirming with title that they sent it, the instructions, etc over the phone and nothing else. 

[Your Mom 4748]

2 hours ago, closetohumping said:

Those of you that are on the verge of buying, were you able to negotiate the price ?

I’m sure it depends on the neighborhood but with the house I’m buying it was a case of only having to outbid 2 other buyers instead of 10.  

$500 over list got me the house, followed by a negotiation for the seller to put on a $13,000 new roof prior to purchase.  A couple months ago I probably would’ve had to have offered a few thousand over list to get it.  On the house I just sold, it was on the market twice because the first buyer backed out.  Each time we had multiple offers above listing price within 3 days.  This was in early April.  Both houses are in South Austin.  So, this part of town isn’t quite to the point of lowball offers getting the house yet, but it’s not as hot as it used to be.  

[T’Boo Ted Marshall 2718]

They are very very good at replicating emails.  It 100% looks like its coming from the title company.  Once we get close to closing I tell our buyers to not send anything without basically triple confirming with title that they sent it, the instructions, etc over the phone and nothing else. 

I get that but how do scammers even know who is in the process, which title company is being used, get email addresses, etc..

[cabowabo 4379]

4 hours ago, Captainant said:

Yikes. That was my nightmare scenario when I closed as a buyer. Let me guess: title company said they sent the instructions via email, and the email your buyer received contained the wrong wire transfer info?

That sucks man, sorry to hear it

I’d love to know more details. You have to put the name of the recipient’s account on an outgoing wire. Was the account in the name of the title company or some third party?  If in the name of the title company but with the third party fraudster’s account number, it should have been rejected by the receiving bank.  Did the fraudster open an account in the exact name of the title company?  That would not be easy to do. I’ll be if we knew more details it would be pretty apparent where the screw up was by the buyers. 

[UTPhil2006 3753]

2 minutes ago, T’Boo Ted Marshall said:

I get that but how do scammers even know who is in the process, which title company is being used, get email addresses, etc..

I’m guessing they hack the real emails then replicate the information on their fraudulent emails. 

[Chewbacca 7612]

Never send a wire without confirming wiring instructions over the phone with the recipient, folks. Scammers are getting more and more sophisticated these days.

[BevoSwag 272]

When we closed on our home in Houston in September 2018 Old Republic Title on Post Oak warned us of fraudulent wire instructions and ask us to being cashiers check to closing. Since our previous home flooded with 4 feet of water in Harvey I didn’t need anymore drama. I brought the check


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[closetohumping 17258]

1 hour ago, Your Mom said:

I’m sure it depends on the neighborhood but with the house I’m buying it was a case of only having to outbid 2 other buyers instead of 10.  

$500 over list got me the house, followed by a negotiation for the seller to put on a $13,000 new roof prior to purchase.  A couple months ago I probably would’ve had to have offered a few thousand over list to get it.  On the house I just sold, it was on the market twice because the first buyer backed out.  Each time we had multiple offers above listing price within 3 days.  This was in early April.  Both houses are in South Austin.  So, this part of town isn’t quite to the point of lowball offers getting the house yet, but it’s not as hot as it used to be.  

Yeah I hear ya.  
Saw housing prices are down 4.7% this month, 1month into Covid.  I may wait it out.

[LCHorn 2527]

58 minutes ago, T’Boo Ted Marshall said:

I get that but how do scammers even know who is in the process, which title company is being used, get email addresses, etc..

I think they are finding it relatively easy to penetrate the title companies.

[HookEm 2432]

23 minutes ago, LCHorn said:

I think they are finding it relatively easy to penetrate the title companies.

I would assume the same.  Maybe they are sniffing the wifi and intercepting traffic. Who knows.

In this case, the scammer sent email instructions for the wire - and of course included phone numbers in the email.  The buyer called the FAKE title company phone number to confirm the wire, instead of the ACTUAL title company phone number that they already had.

I feel bad for the buyer.  Sad deal all the way around.  Hopefully they get their money back.  Sucks for us too though.  We had multiple offers above asking price within a day of listing back six weeks ago.  Who knows what the situation will be now.  Not looking forward to having a stream of people in my home.

PM me if anyone is looking for a nice place on 1.5 acres in Leander.

 

[Gil Bang 25507]

yeah, they have to have hacked someone somewhere in the chain.
I also don't understand how wires are not traceable.  You send money to a routing number and account number. The routing number tells you which bank. The bank knows who has that account, you should be able to get a good start tracking that person down from whoever opened the account. 

Same. I assume that they (the wires) just go to a country that doesn’t cooperate with our law-enforcement.

[Gil Bang 25507]

Also, at the wire fraud seminar I attended they told us the most scammers are hacking into realtors email.

From there they determine the identities of the buyers, sellers,title, escrow etc. If you were looking in my emails, it would be pretty easy to figure out who’s who in the transaction, and when funds are due into escrow or title.

I’m sure between escrow companies, title companies, and realtors that our group has the worst security of the bunch.

[Gil Bang 25507]

Also, at the wire fraud seminar I attended they told us the most scammers are hacking into realtors email.

From there they determine the identities of the buyers, sellers,title, escrow etc. If you were looking in my emails, it would be pretty easy to figure out who’s who in the transaction, and when funds are due into escrow or title.

I’m sure between escrow companies, title companies, and realtors that our group has the worst security of the bunch.

[Bevo 13417]

33 minutes ago, HookEm said:

I would assume the same.  Maybe they are sniffing the wifi and intercepting traffic. Who knows.

In this case, the scammer sent email instructions for the wire - and of course included phone numbers in the email.  The buyer called the FAKE title company phone number to confirm the wire, instead of the ACTUAL title company phone number that they already had.

I feel bad for the buyer.  Sad deal all the way around.  Hopefully they get their money back.  Sucks for us too though.  We had multiple offers above asking price within a day of listing back six weeks ago.  Who knows what the situation will be now.  Not looking forward to having a stream of people in my home.

PM me if anyone is looking for a nice place on 1.5 acres in Leander.

 

I would sue the title company.

[Your Mom 4748]

14 minutes ago, Bevo said:

I would sue the title company.

It could've just as easily been the buyer's themselves who got hacked.  It could've been anyone involved in the transaction.  

[Bevo 13417]

1 hour ago, Your Mom said:

It could've just as easily been the buyer's themselves who got hacked.  It could've been anyone involved in the transaction.  

Not likely the buyers, but it could have been the escrow company, the realtors, or the title company. And you would hope, the FBI would be all over it. If someone released my medical records, I would barely care. If someone released my financial records, I would be furious. HIPAA protects medical data. Something similar is needed for financial data.

[Gil Bang 25507]

6 hours ago, cabowabo said:

I’d love to know more details. You have to put the name of the recipient’s account on an outgoing wire. Was the account in the name of the title company or some third party?  If in the name of the title company but with the third party fraudster’s account number, it should have been rejected by the receiving bank.  Did the fraudster open an account in the exact name of the title company?  That would not be easy to do. I’ll be if we knew more details it would be pretty apparent where the screw up was by the buyers. 

It's pretty easy to workaround that.  Say the title company is "First American Title".   The scammers have an account in the name "First American" (no title) or something similar. 

[Gil Bang 25507]

4 hours ago, Bevo said:

I would sue the title company.

You would get laughed out of court.  

Rest assured, the buyers signed something from the title company warning them to verify any wire instructions, not to call the number on the instructions, etc.  

Just because some decent person got fucked, doesn't necessarily mean that somebody other than the fuck-er needs to pay. 

[Bevo 13417]

35 minutes ago, Gil Bang said:

You would get laughed out of court.  

Rest assured, the buyers signed something from the title company warning them to verify any wire instructions, not to call the number on the instructions, etc.  

Just because some decent person got fucked, doesn't necessarily mean that somebody other than the fuck-er needs to pay. 

Nah, there will be some evidence that the company knew their emails were not secure. They may win, but it wouldn't get laughed out of court. Plus, the title company may worry about the bad press and want to settle. Seriously, if I knew a certain title company was hacked, as a buyer or a real estate agent, I would not want to work with that title company.

[Nice Guy Eddie 13267]

Received a 2.625% 15-yr refi with ally.com. $1200 to buy the rate down some but ally lowered that to 700 since I had a savings account with them.

[BevoSwag 272]

3 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Received a 2.625% 15-yr refi with ally.com. $1200 to buy the rate down some but ally lowered that to 700 since I had a savings account with them.

If inflation occurs within the next four years as I expect this would be a steal.  Congrats.

[Gil Bang 25507]

25 minutes ago, Bevo said:

Nah, there will be some evidence that the company knew their emails were not secure. They may win, but it wouldn't get laughed out of court. Plus, the title company may worry about the bad press and want to settle. Seriously, if I knew a certain title company was hacked, as a buyer or a real estate agent, I would not want to work with that title company.

You're making an invalid assumption.  There is NO evidence that the title company was hacked.  It's much, much more likely that one of the agents was hacked (see above, that's usually how it works).  I do this shit for a living, and I can't tell you how many agents are tech retards. I see agents with @hotmail, @aol, @earthlink, @msn etc email address on a very frequent basis.  I'm willing to bet that their passwords are "password", "123456" or something similar. 

In the case that we are discussing, the buyer (poor bastard) was a real dumbshit, and ignored instruction after instruction to verify before wiring.   That's on him.  I hate to say it, but if he didn't want to be raped, he shouldn't have dressed like a slut.   

[Bevo 13417]

1 minute ago, Gil Bang said:

You're making an invalid assumption.  There is NO evidence that the title company was hacked.  It's much, much more likely that one of the agents was hacked (see above, that's usually how it works).  I do this shit for a living, and I can't tell you how many agents are tech retards. I see agents with @hotmail, @aol, @earthlink, @msn etc email address on a very frequent basis.  I'm willing to bet that their passwords are "password", "123456" or something similar. 

In the case that we are discussing, the buyer (poor bastard) was a real dumbshit, and ignored instruction after instruction to verify before wiring.   That's on him.  I hate to say it, but if he didn't want to be raped, he shouldn't have dressed like a slut.   

Chill Clayton.

[Captainant 26861]

1 hour ago, Bevo said:

Nah, there will be some evidence that the company knew their emails were not secure. They may win, but it wouldn't get laughed out of court. Plus, the title company may worry about the bad press and want to settle. Seriously, if I knew a certain title company was hacked, as a buyer or a real estate agent, I would not want to work with that title company.

Even with all the built-in encryption and verification that's out there, it's not an unusual attack vector to man-in-the-middle an email exchange with critical information to snoop or alter the information contained. Or shit, they could just buy a domain that's similar to the legit company and send a bogus email from an email that's just a character or two off, but looks the same - that's a common spearphishing technique. And no hacking/cracking of a company or agent needed, just info that someone is going to close soon on a house.

Basic infosec and security best practices go a long, long way to prevent this sort of thing. When I closed I got physical hardcopy instructions of the wire transfer and called my bank to talk to an agent to verify and process all of it in real time

[Wulaw Horn 18917]

We literally tell all of our buyers multiple times in writing and over the phone not to ever send a wire. We have them sign a disclosure. So does title. I had one get

ripped for $5,000 and I’ve had about a dozen almost fall for it. Very frustrating. 

[Upgrayedd 5743]

BTW- some of you are behind on your payments.  You know who you are.  DM me and I’ll send you my Venmo 

[Modessit 5582]

It's pretty easy to workaround that.  Say the title company is "First American Title".   The scammers have an account in the name "First American" (no title) or something similar. 

Flrst American Title
First American Title
First Amerioan Title

Etc

Sometimes people see what they expect to see.

[Eastwood 4394]

I have first hand knowledge on real estate wire fraud. Title companies are getting absolutely hammered on this. Someone spoofs the email of a party in the transaction and it's off to the races. The title company, the realtors, and the parties to the contract are all typically very tech illiterate, first off. Hats off to the IT people at a title company because they have to put up with so much bullshit. Secondly, the breaches are most likely coming from the realtor side. The IT people in title companies are very quick in detecting breaches and everything now is moving to remote systems where the network environment is closed off to everything except email and email has so many filters that sometimes confirmation of receipt of emails has to be phoned in because there was no space after a period and the filter read it as an unauthorized website.

A realtor goes to a Starbucks, a bar, or a restaurant with free wifi. They go there so often that they automatically connect to the free wifi every time. The data sent over that free wifi can be intercepted by anyone. It makes too much sense that someone could sit in the parking lot and start sniffing packets and monitoring traffic specifically for realtors. Why not spend a couple days a week monitoring free wifi locations known to be frequented by realtors when you're going to steal 6 figure amounts each time? A realtor grabs a coffee and while there gets an email about closing next week and that same email is read by the person in the parking lot and it's off to the races.

That's how a lot of the celebrity photo hacking happened, btw. Celebrities would hook up to hotel wifi and hackers would catch their email details for their icloud, then phish them with fake icloud emails. Same thing could be done to realtors hooking up to free wifi all over the damn place.

The most sophisticated wire fraud I've seen executed against a title company was the entire amount of a seller's proceeds was swiped. The hacker got ahold of the realtors email, waited for the copy of the voided check to be scanned in, immediately photoshopped account information onto the voided check, and spoofed the realtor's email saying "sorry, wrong check. Use this one." The first check had already been verified by phone by the title company, didn't verify the fake one that came a mere 30 minutes after, and $320k was out the door. Title company was on the hook for that one.

Moral of the story is to never hook up to free wifi. Also, these hackers are specifically targeting real estate transactions AND are intimately aware of the policies in place that are supposed to keep it from happening. That leads me to believe they have people in the industry feeding them the policy changes, because the fraud changes almost instantly with the policy changes. So, the only way to really avoid it is cashier's checks. If that isn't an option, verify the wiring instructions by calling the numbers provided in the contract hard copy ONLY. No numbers from email, websites, or anything else that can be electronically altered or spoofed. It may seem like a huge inconvenience in this day and age to have to deal with actual, honest to goodness, wood pulp paper, but suck it up. There's literally hundreds of thousands of dollars at stake.