By Ashley Portero, South Florida Business Journal | Nov 6 2019
The number of fraudulent mortgage applications dropped in the third quarter, but South Florida still is leading in the U.S. in mortgage fraud.
That’s according to CoreLogic’s third quarter mortgage fraud brief.
Across Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, there was a 22% decrease in fraudulent applications from Q2, according to the report. There were a total of 241 applications that raised red flags in South Florida. The region was followed by the New York-Newark-Jersey City metro, which reported 208 fraudulent applications.
CoreLogic notes a decline in mortgage fraud is linked to lower federal interest rates over the past six months. The lower rates encouraged more people to refinance their existing mortgages, which is likely responsible for the decline, said Josh Migdal, partner with Mark Migdal and Hayden, a Miami-based litigation firm.
“To me, this looks like a false positive,” Migdal said. “Right now the bulk of mortgages are refinances rather than purchases because there isn’t a large supply of homes. You don’t see mortgage fraud from people who have owned their home for 10 years.”
