Equity Now Program review: Scam 1

This company is targeting individual brokers to sell their bogus program to homeowners. They have some awesome marketing material that indicates they are going to buy your loan from your current lender at a fraction of what you owe, regardless of the loan status. They claim they are able to do this because the lenders want/need to sell these loans regardless of the loan's status and because they're buying large chunks of loans at a time.

They charge $995 for a forensic loan analysis and broker price opinion and claim the process may take up to 6 months. They promise to approach your bank and buy your loan. After they purchase it for a fraction of what you actually owe, they claim they're going to give you a new loan at around 80% LTV and at a market interest rate.

They also claim that you can sell right away and profit the cash or refi as soon as your able... but they also claim that there is a 3 year hard prepayment penalty. If you do the math on their claims, they would not have any need to charge a PPP because they would have made a killing on just purchasing and re-packaging your loan at the reduced principal amount.

Bottom line: Lenders just don't sell their loans this way, even if you want to buy millions of dollars worth of loans at a time. Additionally, lenders are not yet willing to take the loss by selling their 'performing' loans. These are loans where although the borrower may be upside down in the home, they are still making the monthly payments.

Finally this company claims that they want to sell the loans so they can get TARP money but the fact is, most banks don't want TARP money and are dying to give what they've already received back.

I'd love to believe that this program was for real but unfortunately it just doesn't work this way... if only! In the mean time, someone is going to make off with lots of money from people wishing to get some footing on their home loans and leave the loan officers and mortgage brokers holding the bag.