Report: R.I. mortgage fraud, misrepresentation risk increases in Dec.

PROVIDENCE – The Ocean State had the fourth-highest month-over-month increase in defect frequency in December, according to First American Financial Corp., which estimates the frequency of defects, fraudulence and misrepresentation submitted in mortgage loan applications.
Rhode Island had a 1.4 percent increase, behind South Carolina’s 4.8 percent, Maine’s 4.2 percent and Vermont’s 2.8 percent. Alaska had the highest month-over-month decrease in defect frequency at 10.8 percent, followed by Mississippi, 5.6 percent; New Mexico, 5.3 percent; and Montana, 4.3 percent.
First American Financial Corp., which provides title insurance and settlement services for real estate transactions, released its First American Loan Application Defect Index for December this week.
The First American Loan Application Defect Index fell 2.6 percent in December compared with November and decreased 8.4 percent compared with December 2014. The index’s value was 76 in December.
Rhode Island’s value on the index was 70, an increase of 1.4 percent month over month and unchanged over the year; the Providence-Warwick metropolitan area had a value of 66 on the index; it was unchanged month over month, and year over year.
The index, nationally and in all markets, is benchmarked to a value of 100 in January 2011. All index values can be interpreted as the percentage change in defect frequency relative to the defect frequency identified nationally in January 2011, First American said.
It said December represented the fifth consecutive month-over-month decline of defect and misrepresentation risk.
“As with many housing market statistics today, the misrepresentation and defect risk trend is consistently for the better. Risk at the high end continues to improve, causing our dispersion index to decline by another point on a month-over-month basis,” Mark Fleming, chief economist at First American, said in a statement. “This year, we expect to see fraud and misrepresentation risk continue to decline.”

No posts to display