Quicken Loans Sues DOJ - Claims Victim of "Political Agenda"

[BankruptcyGuy]

I think the issue here is that there were a number of small loan/mortgage resellers who were playing fast and loose with the initial loan paperwork, trying to put together as many deals as possible to make a quick buck off of points. People assume the large loan companies were doing the same thing, though there isn't much evidence that they were doing so in a systematic fashion.

There were small brokers who played fast and loose with paperwork. If the mortgagor defaults, and there were problems with paperwork on a loan Quicken bought, Quicken would have to buy the loan back. This is more than that. This is trying to get a "scalp" to demonstrate a failed theory that it was big, bad lenders that caused the housing crisis. It always takes two to tango.

[mwilbert]

There were small brokers who played fast and loose with paperwork. If the mortgagor defaults, and there were problems with paperwork on a loan Quicken bought, Quicken would have to buy the loan back. This is more than that. This is trying to get a "scalp" to demonstrate a failed theory that it was big, bad lenders that caused the housing crisis. It always takes two to tango.

This doesn't really seem like the right way of looking at it. Of course borrowers who made material misrepresentations of their finances have some fault in the matter, but the systemic problem was lenders willing to accept those misrepresentations. Why don't we have this problem now? I doubt people are much more honest than they were 10 years ago, and housing prices have been rising rapidly. The obvious answer is that the lenders have changed their behavior and won't make those loans, and, even more importantly, the market for undocumented paper no longer exists, so if they did make them, they couldn't get rid of them. Neither of those has anything to do with the dishonest borrowers.

Certainly the borrowers are part of the picture, and if everyone had been completely honest things would have been different, but the people who screwed up were the lenders and the securitizers and those cockeyed optimists [[morons) who bought the securitized loans.

[BankruptcyGuy]

This doesn't really seem like the right way of looking at it. Of course borrowers who made material misrepresentations of their finances have some fault in the matter, but the systemic problem was lenders willing to accept those misrepresentations. Why don't we have this problem now? I doubt people are much more honest than they were 10 years ago, and housing prices have been rising rapidly. The obvious answer is that the lenders have changed their behavior and won't make those loans, and, even more importantly, the market for undocumented paper no longer exists, so if they did make them, they couldn't get rid of them. Neither of those has anything to do with the dishonest borrowers.

Certainly the borrowers are part of the picture, and if everyone had been completely honest things would have been different, but the people who screwed up were the lenders and the securitizers and those cockeyed optimists [[morons) who bought the securitized loans.

Let me put it this way: if the DoJ is poking around Quicken, where are the indictments for:

a) mortgage fraud by the borrowers;
b) mortgage fraud by the warehousers [[who sell to QL);
c) fraud by real estate brokers, appraisers, title companies, etc.?