When searching for the best loan auditing company, an attorney will find so many organizations that, through expensive marketing, or other smart internet saavy public relations pieces, including alliances with this company or that company, in highly respected journals, gives them, the appearance, that they are providing a healthly and trustworthy audit or loan audit service. Moreover, the advent of forensic loan auditing software, perhaps the biggest death trap of the industry, has attracted more newcomers and even authoritative legal professionals to believing that such programs has what it takes to capture all the violations in a loan. And, even more troubling, is that because of how these companies and software providers are marketing themselves, alongside a beautified website or campaign, seems to have tricked many to think these companies have a more “legitimate” feel over other companies, who, really, have what it takes to be reliable when relying upon a good source of information. And, to make matters even more confusing, many of these companies are including “attorney opinion letters”, or other services, such as providing qualified written requests, demands, notices of recission, and more, making newcomers, the majority of the legal field, more comfortable with using one loan audit service over another. And to boot, now several companies are calling themselves “certified”; just another marketing scheme to having legal providers think that the company is more legitimate than another. In fact, companies have popped up as associations, in which any organization can start, wherby they look that they are more accomplished or are the mandating organizations of the forensic loan audit industry.
In an effort to seek the real from the not so real, we will soon be posting for all to see these companies and their end products, their forensic loan audit reports, alongside the commentry made showing where these compnaies reports have failed, along with detailed analysis, one trusted company, U.S. Lender Audit, pioneers of the industry, provided using true expert auditors whose credentials alongside expert witness services and litigation support shed true light and value.
Another problem is that the majority of attorneys are stating they provide this service in house, or that the audit is done by attorneys. This, too, is something we find to be very concerning, since the majority of attorneys have no such background in such loan surgery, an area for experts. In fact, certain states require that in litigation, the attorney can not use such exhibit without the credentials of the expert, so the in-house approach is backfiring.
The advent of the forensic loan audit has provided attorneys interested in mortgage mitigation, mortgage litigation or loan settlement, a more scalable way to provide services to any borrower, regardless of payment history or financial strength, a way to use leverage to work towards a more offensic approach to a dispute resolution or loan settlement be it through Respa or jurisdiction. Simply, a couple of years ago, a foreclosure defense attorney in any state was difficult to find, that was indeed, a true veteran or specialist in such services, since the market was those homeowners in foreclosure typically, whose financial strength was not meritable or attractive enough for an attorney to consider their time. Most cases would result in tactics, specifically in jurisdication states that gave attorneys the ability to file motions that would, in most cases, result in delay. Finding a way to make it a viable business, was tough.
Lastly, the writing style of the audit reports alongside of templated style information, has caused much confusion as to what can be counted upon and what can’t. Some companies are stuffing case law, that may be completely irrelevent as to really helping the legal field, since much of it may not be relevent to the specific file at hand. Additionally, and more concerning, the “violations” marked could easily be dismantled upon certain documentation being found through qualified discovery. Lastly, the areas discussed or run through these software auditing companies in many cases have nothing to do with the actual closed loan file, and in many cases, the report produced by such, show meaningless, erroneous, and omit areas that only experts in hand forensic auditing for the banking industry would know, aside many of these so called “violations” are not the responsibility of the lender, or may be irrelevent or minor in its severity.
Lastly, once you receive any report, an attorney should always do more due diligence.