To begin, my ethical dilemma deals with the notion of whether a loan officer should offer a family/individual a mortgage for a home or not even though they are on the borderline criteria and possibility of default based on known circumstances such as low income or even a credit score that is a few points lower than the required score to obtain a loan. This whole idea correlates to the mortgage crisis of 2007 when the growth of housing prices stalled and demand slowed. As a result, lenders accepted loans when they knew that a high degree of risk and insolvency was probable. Eventually, banks became bankrupt and the government established stimulus programs aimed at reducing the problem. Unfortunately, this did more harm than anything as …show more content…
For an employee to be aware in this situation, a good concept to note would be how other loans similar to the one they are offering have performed in the past. The officer could analyze each one and determine the right path they might have chosen based on the criteria. As a result, they have more knowledge of what may and what may not happen. The officers have to be morally aware of the consequences even though they want to help these people out and provide them with a possible good future. Another way the employees can be morally aware in this position is to know the client from top to bottom. This means that they should have extensive knowledge about the client primarily in terms of finances, but other attributes as well such as their character. For instance, if they have had a loan in the past, have they paid the loan back or not along with say what their income is. Correspondingly, the loan officer needs to be mindful of the financial stability of the bank along with current government regulations. For the bank to help the employees, they could give out monthly reports on the bank’s finances. However though, the officers in most banks are recommended to stay up to date on government regulations, but a word document/pdf of all the regulations would be a
The responsibilities of the mortgage brokers to the borrowers, lenders, and investors were to promote the subprime mortgages to these groups of people in order for them to take out a loan. Although they did fulfill their responsibilities of promoting and having people sign up for it, they mishandled on how people should be granted for a mortgage loan. These brokers were to desperate about earning huge amount of money due to the expanding market that they ignored the proper precaution that they should have taken when they
The Federal Government needs to make sure to enforce strict guidelines on who can and cannot be accepted for a home loan, and not allow big investors to borrow excessive money at low interest rates to inflate the investor’s financial advantage. If the government starts allowing lower standards on mortgages, we are going to end up in the same catastrophe once again. In an article written by U.S. News and World Reports entitled Should the Federal Government Provide Support to the Mortgage Market?, the Federal government and the President attempted to get involved with the housing market. The passage implicated that Obama wanted to do away with federally funded conglomerates Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and implement another type of government assisted program ("Should the Federal Government"). The program would prevent the mistakes made by Fannie and Freddie which created the original “housing bubble burst” ("Should the Federal Government"). One of the Senate bills suggests the government create “a new agency, the Federal Mortgage Insurance Corporation to replace Fannie and Freddie” ("Should the Federal
The real estate industry is thriving with approximately sixty-eight percent of all Americans being homeowners. With low interest rates, 1st time home buyer down payment assistance programs, and government funded educational opportunities (i.e. the Home Ownership Center of Greater Cincinnati), the real estate and mortgage lending industries will continue to flourish. However, there are some unethical lending practices that are threatening the housing industry as a whole.
Those involved in the mortgage lending process have some duty to the borrower. They are expected to perform their specific duties in an ethical manner and
In 2008 the real estate market crashed because of the Graham-Leach-Bliley Act and Commodities Futures Modernization Act, which led to shady mortgage lending or “liar loans” (Hartman). The loans primarily approved for lower income and middle class borrowers with little income or no job income verification, which lead to many buyers purchasing homes they could not afford because everyone wants a piece of the American dream; homeownership. Because of “reckless lending to lower- and middle-income borrowers who could not afford to repay their loans many of the home buyers lost everything when the market collapsed” (Tankersley 3). Homeowners often continued to live in their houses for months or years without paying any
It is no secret that tens of millions of homeowners got into trouble with predatory home mortgages. Tens of millions of them have MERS-originated Mortgages. If you asked the average mortgagor on the street if they knew what a “MERS-originated Mortgage” was, they couldn’t tell you. They don’t know because they weren’t told at closing that the “funds” they were receiving to buy their (generally over-appraised) home may NOT have come from the source named on their Mortgage or Deed of Trust. Instead, the MERS® System was used because the borrowers’ loans were securitized. This “system” was created specifically for that purpose (to track the sale and transfer of loans electronically, in a MERSCORP-owned database, with no regulatory oversight). You can’t believe everything you read either. Due diligence is required here.
The foreclosure crisis that took over the United States a few years ago left many people facing economic hardships. This crisis happened because there was a huge housing bubble that was unsupported by actual home values. The bubble began bursting in spring of 2008 and the crisis culminated in mid-2009. Many lenders went out of business and many home owners began losing their homes. When the government became aware of this problem and began to implement new programs, it was already too late for many homeowners. Those homeowners are not at a point where they might be considering buying a new home. The housing crisis has created new rules, regulations governing the mortgage industry, and has also created a new agency dedicated to consumer protection. This consumer protection agency is called the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. These dramatic changes have helped to create more responsible lending. The improving market conditions such as low housing costs and competitive interest rates are allowing those affected by a foreclosure to become homeowners again. Prospective buyers have a multitude of programs available to them, so even those with less than clean slate have several options.
Too many Americans have fallen victim to the crisis that has become the norm for our citizens these days. Lenders no longer want to work with individuals who have gone through the foreclosure process and for many it is not only their homes they lose. Some have lost their jobs and/or families, others fall into a deep depression and worst of all some have taken their own lives.
Lending and mortgage loans become predatory when the borrowers are led into a different transaction than what they were led to believe or come to expect. These predatory lending practices involve different people including mortgage brokers, lenders, real estate brokers, lawyers, and even (home improvement) contractors. Most of these transactions often victimize people who have small incomes but significantly large home equity
I think that it is wrong to walk away from your mortgage if you are able to pay it.Many people disagree with this. They feel as though it is completely ethical to walk way from a contract. They have three main reasons as to why they feel this way. The first reason is that it makes financial sense in the short term. They think it is financially wise in some cases to walk away from your mortgage. The second reason is that banks account for this in their financial plans. So if banks account for people walking away from their loans this somehow makes it ok to do that? The final reason is that the banks participate in unethical endeavors so it makes it alright for the borrower to unethically walk away from their loan. The first reason is partially
All the working staffs should be trained to be trustworthy employees so that this type of behavior is curbed in the future. Every person need to be feeling secure when having their money in the bank (Higgins, 2015). Though it shall be a difficult task especially maintaining the old customers apart from creating new account with the bank. The bank is supposed to create a video series which is only view internally in which the senior executives are require to have a discussion on all the grey areas of ethics. Through this they shall be able to manage their business in terms of making operational and managerial decisions. These videos shall play a major role in the management of the operations in the bank. The bank should explain to its employees that after they are found guilty in the bank they shall be fined before being
The increased pressure on mortgage lenders to be socially responsible and lend to all groups create an opportunity for banks to lend more and charge higher fees to select borrowers who they feel pose a greater risk of default (Palmer, 2015). The primary purpose of the CRA is to assist minorities and lower income individuals from neglect and discrimination. The CRA policy might have forced the banks to implement change to aid individuals who may not qualify for a home loan to be eligible. If the banks did not follow suit with the CRA policies, they might have missed opportunities, such as mergers, acquisitions, and profitability (Elbarouski, 2016). Allen (2011) concluded loose lending led to expanding homeownership in the United States, but lending to riskier borrowers led to an increase in the foreclosure
As a topic for this research paper, I decided to analyze the ethics behind the recent mortgage crisis in the United States. Banks were approving people for loans very easily, to people they knew would not be able to pay them back. Thus, many people were buying homes, missing payments, getting foreclosed on, and ruining what credit they had. Throughout this paper I intend to show how the practices that the banks were using were unethical. I will show who stakeholders were, and analyze them through Utilitarian and Kantian standpoints.
Solutions to alleviate the impacts of the foreclosure crisis are absolutely central to the health of our financial systems and the country’s economic stability. The foreclosure crisis is nowhere near an end as mortgages with “teaser rates” are expected to default in catastrophic numbers. The goal of foreclosure solutions must be to keep people in their homes with affordable monthly payments, while still leaving cash in their pockets to contribute to our heavily relied upon consumer based economy. Solutions do not lie in forgiving mortgage loans and billion dollar bank handouts, as this only sets a bad precedent for contract law and regulation standards by condoning financially reckless behavior. We must work with people directly and mortgage modifications must be dealt with on an individual basis.
“At President Clinton’s direction, no fewer than 10 federal agencies issued a chilling ultimatum to banks and mortgage lenders to ease credit for lower-income minorities or face investigations for lending discrimination and suffer the related adverse publicity. They also were threatened with denial of access to the all-important secondary mortgage market and stiff fines, along with other penalties.