I had been feeling terribly neglected because I'd never received one of those "Nigerian Letter" emails that we've been hearing about for years. Wassa matter? I'm not honest or compassionate enough to attract the attention of a scammer?
Well, some website that I went to maybe four weeks ago must have got me on the list. I've been getting various forms of the letter at the rate of three or so a week lately. It's always the widow of some government official killed by rebels in some revolting country who needs help getting hundreds of millions of dollars out of some secure account, anonymously.
Even if I were stupid enough (or greedy enough) to respond, I wouldn't, because I'd wonder how a hated government official in an unstable African country amassed that much money anyway, and why did it have to be hidden? It's likely dirty money, taken from the mouths of starving babies, and I don't want it, and "I'm not going to help you get it, either, lady."
Oooo, I'm such a prig!
Speaking of lists, when I sold the Highland house, the new buyers couldn't get a conventional mortgage because the house wasn't finished yet, and they couldn't get an occupancy permit. They'd have had to get a construction loan, which would have been much more expensive. So I offered to carry a private mortgage for them, for 1% more than the going bank rate but less than half the construction rate, until they finished the interior and could get a bank mortgage. (That extra 1% was to encourage them to switch to a bank loan as soon as possible.)
That was August 2002, and they paid me off in full in April of 2003 (which was sad, because I was getting used to that nice check every month). However, every month since September 2002, I get from three to five (snail mail) offers from various mortgage companies offering to buy the private mortgage. I thought it would taper off after a few months, but it hasn't. I'm still getting getting three to five offers a month, more than two years after it was paid off.
The loan companies offer to buy the mortgage from the holder for, say, 90% of its face value. The letters they send sound like you are in great danger of the borrower defaulting, and then you will get nothing, whereas if they buy it from you, they assume the "risk", and you "get the money (90% of it, anyway) immediately".
What they don't tell you is that if you hold a 30-year note for say $100,000 at say 6%, over the course of that 30 years you will receive, well, I'm not going to figure it out, but let's just say it's a heck of a lot, like several times the value of the initial loan. And if the borrower craps out, you won't lose any money because you could foreclose, and you don't have to sell the house for more than the balance of the loan. Auctioning a $260,000 house for an opening bid of $100,000 shouldn't be hard. So there's really not much risk. For the mortgage companies, buying a private mortgage at 90% is a great deal.
So I thought I was on a list somewhere, maybe a list that the county puts out. I thought I would eventually "age out" of the list. Last week I called one of the letter-senders, and begged them to tell me how to get off the list. I mean, I have to PAY for garbage collection! They said there's no list.
Then I saw the infomercial. The one that tells you how you can make a gazillion dollars a year putting mortgage companies in touch with private mortgage holders. This is how it works - you troll the county records looking for private mortgages. Then you alert banks and loan companies to the existence of that loan. If the bank buys a $100,000 paper for $90,000, then you (the troller) get a few thousand, too.
The fact that my loan has a higher interest rate than most, and the house is appraised for so much more than the balance, apparently makes this one so attractive to the trollers that they get too excited to notice that it's been paid off. I'm on not one list, but a hundred lists. Or a thousand lists. However many trollers there are. Since it was a 30-year mortgage, and the trollers aren't very smart, They'll likely keep me on their lists, and keep trying. I may be getting these letters for umpteen more years, and there's apparently nothing I can do to stop it.
Can I sue somebody for harassment? The woman at the mortgage company I called said that if I tell a company not to send me any more letters, then they are supposed to respect that. But I'd have to tell each company individually. I wonder how many mortgage companies there are? So far, I count at least 150. I'm sure the trollers know of more.
Maybe I could sue the infomercial people....
~~Silk
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