Mortgage fraud increases in second quarter, this can't be good for the market

this is interesting, but how do they measure mortgage fraud? discovered cases during the quarter?

Mortgage fraud activity jumped by nearly 600 percent in New York state in the second quarter, the highest activity in any state, according to the FraudBlogger.com Index released today. New York had $234 million worth of mortgage fraud in the second quarter, a 130 percent increase from the previous quarter. Florida had $285 million of mortgage fraud in the second quarter, up 6 percent from the first quarter Nationwide, there was $1.6 billion worth of mortgage fraud during the second quarter, up from $1.5 billion in the first quarter.

you say tomato I say tomatoe... you say american dream I say home equity leveraged fraud.... you say 6% transaction cost I say why not 12%.....

LOL w67th

And AR that's a good point, how do they measure it?

The index is published by MortgageDaily.com based on mortgage fraud cases
tracked at FraudBlogger.com.

"Reported" cases. They probably track SEC and other filings....

I know it might sound like a big number, but isn't $234 million for all of NYS really rather small?

i think the uptick is what is interesting. numbers seem so random these days. part of me thinks that mortgage fraud nationally running at about a $6 billion pace is significant. another part cynically shrugs.

The most direct observation is that reported cases are going up. Considering how lax regulators have been the last several years in going after such cases, it might very well turn out be incorrect to assume fraud is on the increase. A better conclusion might be that there is a new vigor in going after suspected mortgage fraud. I cannot believe we have more fraud now than versus the go-go years of 2003-2007.