NPR featured a story on Tracy Warren, an auditor at Watterson-Prime, a quality control contractor who reviewed subprime loans for investment banks before they were sold on Wall Street. (The biggest client of Watterson-Prime? Bear Stearns.) She has over 25 years of experience in mortgage lending and her job was to find bad loans and say no.

Warren says that when she’d reject (kick out) a loan, her supervisors would overrule her and the loan would be approved. She says that they’d justify overruling the kicks, yet the applicants clearly weren’t qualified, often with very poor credit scores or income that wasn’t verified and didn’t pass the smell test.

“I’d see people who were hotel workers saying that they made, in California, making $15,000 a month so that they could qualify for a $500,000 home,” Warren says. “If a hotel worker is making $15,000 a month changing sheets at the Days Inn, everybody would want to do it. It just really made no sense.”

She estimates that over 75% of the loans she rejected were overruled and were put in a pool and eventually sold.

Of course, the company is denying the allegations:

The loan-auditing firm Watterson-Prime’s parent company, Fidelity National Information Services, provided a statement. It says the company has no incentive to give loans a passing review if they fail to meet underwriting criteria and that it uses additional quality-control measures to further check up on loan reviews.

Obviously something went wrong in the loan review process. Mortgage lenders are supposed to have controls in place to make sure borrowers can make their payments: proper proof of income, realistic appraisals of properties, decent credit history.

And clearly, the investment banks (and the auditing companies they hired) had a financial interest in not doing their homework or in overruling auditors like Warren. And now who’s paying for that likely fraudulent behavior? Investors, taxpayers, borrowers, consumers in general.

And this isn’t an isolated case of shenanigans with loan reviews:

A bankruptcy examiner in the case of the collapsed subprime lender New Century recently released a 500-page report, and buried inside it is a pretty interesting detail. According to the report, some investment banks agreed to reject only 2.5 percent of the loans that New Century sent them to package up and sell to investors.

If that’s true, it would be like saying no matter how many bad apples are in the barrel, only a tiny fraction of them will be rejected.

Obviously, an agreement on the percentage of loans rejected means that it’s highly likely bad loans will go through. It’s kind of like saying that 97.5% of a class will get A’s no matter what. Who’s going to do their homework when even those who fail or don’t do the work will still get A’s?

5 Comments

  1. Barbara 06/01/2008 at 12:00 pm - Reply

    It is sad to see this happening in America. Unfortunately I believe this to all be true no matter who tries to deny it. I think many of the peple who are now being forclosed on should have never been approved for the loan they received. Especially people who were purchasing more than one home at a time to try and flip them for a profit. No bank out there should have approved any loan for someone owning more property than they could afford.

    Now I do know that a few people are having trouble with homeowners insurance causing their big problem. I was lucky enough to get my previous home sold. We went from a mortgage payment of about 1,200.00 a month to over 2,000.00 in less than 3 years. That was insane. There was no cost of living increase that could help that out.

    All in all I hope the banks have learned their lesson and will think twice before approving any questionanle loans. I’m sure it will get worse befor it gets better.

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  3. Colleen Kulikowski 07/29/2008 at 7:03 am - Reply

    Great article… I saw people being approved for amounts that were beyond reasonable, now they are claiming that they cannot afford it and need to be bailed out.

  4. resident 07/29/2008 at 7:22 am - Reply

    When my husband and I built our current home (and mortgaged any home) we always based our decisions upon his income and only his income. That way we knew we would be able to afford our mortgage. We also didn’t include any of his over-time (because over-time can’t be counted on) – the way we figured it was that even if he lost his job I could work almost any where and we could make the mortgage. I think that is why you are hearing about so many embezzlement cases today … people are worried about providing for their families. Then again my husband and I have had the attitude “whatever it takes – we will provide for our families in a legal and honorable way (even if it means flipping hamburgers or working at a chain store).

  5. resident 07/29/2008 at 7:36 am - Reply

    I don’t think the government should bail them out – they obviously were spending beyond their means.

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