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Struggling Homeowners Receive Relief From Getting Scammed
Posted by Matthew Boreen
on Thursday, 15 December 2011 in Real Estate One Stop Shop Blog
Matthew Boreen
Founder of RealEstateSwap.com. I kiteboard, snowboard, work with robots, study AI, and play jazz clarinet.
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Over the past few years, home prices have softened causing homeowners strain and hardship when dealing with their own houses. Some have lost their equity due to falling prices and now owe more than what their home is worth. Others face income or job losses that have caused them to fall behind on their mortgage. In order to cope, many homeowners are looking for anyone to help and the first place they turn to are the search engines. Because of low cost and efficient marketing, this is precisely where scammers have targeted. With these desperate times upon us, scammers have come up with many different alternatives to try and capitalize on struggling homeowners.
These scammers advertise to help homeowners modify their mortgages through affiliations with government programs like the Home Affordable Modification Program. Last month alone, the federal government and TARP(Troubled Asset Relief Program) finally shut down 85 scams that were advertising on Google and 125 that were on Yahoo and Bing. Many of these scams have used these online advertisements as an easy way to exploit desperate homeowners.
When a homeowner clicks on an advertising link, they may be victimized in a number of ways. To protect yourself, make sure you never pay for any services up front. Never send your mortgage payments to any place other than your mortgage company and never sign over your deed to anyone in return for them taking over your mortgage.
In conclusion, homeowners that find themselves in desperate situations should be careful who they turn to for a helping hand. As long as there are desperate times, there will be people trying to capitalize on these situations. If you or someone you know comes across unfortunate circumstances, use common sense and awareness to help protect against getting scammed.
Tags: behind on mortgage, desperate homeowners, homeowner scams, selling scams, selling your home, struggling homeowners, tarp
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