October 24, 2019
Loan Application Fraud Rises

CoreLogic produces a quarterly National Mortgage Fraud Risk Index, in which it assesses the amount of aggregated, collective fraud risk the mortgage industry faces in a given time period.
The sad news is that a number of markets in our service area of Florida rank highly in mortgage application fraud. According to CoreLogic’s first quarter 2019 Mortgage Fraud Brief, among the top 15 markets for fraud, Florida contains eight of them. the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach market ranked number one nationally, with a fraud index rating of 442. Daytona-Daytona Beach-Ormond Beach came in at second place. Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater fell in at fifth place. Lakeland-Winter Haven was in seventh place. Cape Coral-Fort Meyers was in eighth place. North Post-Sarasota-Bradenton was in ninth. Jacksonville was in 10th. Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford was in 11th.
The second quarter 2019 Mortgage Fraud Brief, which saw overall declines in mortgage fraud both year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter (thank goodness) also saw a couple of spots occupied by Florida markets fall off the top-15 scale. Again Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach was in first place, but quarter-over-quarter this market saw a stunning 24 percent drop in fraudulent mortgage applications. Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater came in at sixth place this time around, with a 16 percent drop quarter-over-quarter. Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford was in ninth place this time around (a rise in its rank of two places), despite seeing a drop in fraudulent applications of 17 percent. Cape Coral-Fort Meyers was in 12th place this time around, despite its fraudulent applications falling 22 percent. And Jacksonville, whose number of fraudulent applications fell 24 percent as well, came in 15th place.
At Topouzis & Associates, P.C., our goal is to put our considerable experience and expertise to use in ensuring that any title we service is issued to buyers clear of defect. Contact us if you want our professional judgment backed up with a solid insurance plan, whether the states we service that have income tax—Rhode Island and Massachusetts—or the one we service which does not, Florida.
CoreLogic estimates the number of fraudulent applications “by applying the rate of applications in the CoreLogic Mortgage Fraud Consortium data with high risk of fraud to the estimated loan application volume in each quarter and geography. Expected fraudulent mortgage applications are defined as having a high risk of fraud based on the CoreLogic LoanSafe Fraud Manager score.” CoreLogic’s data experts combine the average loan amount for applications that are at high risk for fraud with the number of applications they expect to be fraudulent in order to come up with an expected total number of fraudulent loans according to quarter and by geography.