The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s “Operation Stolen Dreams” has arrived in New York City, and mortgage brokers, real estate agents and lawyers are believed to be among those taken into custody as part of a nationwide crackdown on mortgage fraud. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara is expected to announce dozens of arrests, which were particularly concentrated in the Queens neighborhoods hit hardest by the foreclosure crisis, at a news conference today. The suspects are slated to appear in federal court in Manhattan this afternoon. A recent report by the LexisNexis Mortgage Asset Research Institute found that New York City was first in the nation for mortgage fraud, and according to First American CoreLogic, South Jamaica, Queens was the worst of the worst. [NBC] 

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The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s “Operation Stolen Dreams” has arrived in New York City, and mortgage brokers, real estate agents and lawyers are believed to be among those taken into custody as part of a nationwide crackdown on mortgage fraud. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara is expected to announce dozens of arrests, which were particularly concentrated in the Queens neighborhoods hit hardest by the foreclosure crisis, at a news conference today. The suspects are slated to appear in federal court in Manhattan this afternoon. A recent report by the LexisNexis Mortgage Asset Research Institute found that New York City was first in the nation for mortgage fraud, and according to First American CoreLogic, South Jamaica, Queens was the worst of the worst. [NBC] 

[more]

New York City was first in the nation for mortgage fraud last year, according to a report by LexisNexis Mortgage Asset Research Institute, released today (see the full report after the jump). The metro area accounted for 12 percent of all suspicious activity reports filed with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network in 2009, squarely defeating second-ranked Los Angeles, whose suspicious activity reports accounted for 8 percent of the nation’s total. On the whole, New York state has seen a sharp increase in mortgage fraud over the past few years. This year, the state — ranked 18th in 2007 — took second place, behind Florida. [more]

Underwater homeowners in the New York City region might not see positive equity till 2017, according to real estate research group First American CoreLogic, due in part to the area’s higher average disparity between underwater mortgage debt and home values. Although a smaller percentage of mortgage holders in the New York City area — which CoreLogic counts as the five boroughs and parts of Westchester and New Jersey — are underwater compared to the rest of the nation, the situation is more dire. Just 10 percent of the metro region’s mortgage holders are underwater, compared to 24 percent nationwide, but the average underwater mortgage in the New York City region is 39 percent above what the home is worth — a full five percentage points more the national average figure.

Brooklyn and Queens have seen sharp spikes in residential sales activity since last year, along with a growing momentum in the high-end market, according to a quarterly market report released today by Prudential Douglas Elliman. But Brooklyn appears to be recovering faster than Queens, which has been devastated by high foreclosure rates. “They’ve both doing better than they were a year ago,” said appraiser Jonathan Miller, the president and CEO of Miller Samuel and the preparer of the report. But “Queens is trailing Brooklyn,” he said. The number of sales in Brooklyn jumped 56.9 percent to 1,861 sales in the first quarter of 2010, from 1,186 in the same period of 2009, the report shows. In Queens, there were 3,113 sales, 72.8 percent more than the prior-year quarter. Eric Benaim, CEO of Long Island City-based brokerage Modern Spaces, said he’s noticed a significant uptick in activity in the borough since last year. [more]

Nearly 5,000 New York City homes were hit with foreclosure filings in the first quarter of 2010, up 1.51 percent from the quarter before and 16.21 percent over the first quarter of 2009, according to national real estate foreclosure tracking company RealtyTrac, which released its monthly market report today (click here for the full report). Worst in the city in terms of its foreclosure rate was Staten Island, where 631 households, or one in 284, received notice of some stage of the foreclosure process — default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions — during the quarter. That rate won the borough a fourth-place ranking among counties in the state for the three-month period. By sheer numbers, foreclosure filings on Staten Island dropped 1.71 percent from the fourth quarter of 2009 and were up 26.2 percent over the same period last year. Queens, whose South Jamaica neighborhood was recently pegged as the worst in the nation for mortgage fraud by First American CoreLogic for the period between 2004 and 2009, was hit with 1,694 foreclosure filings during the first quarter, up 1.93 percent from the quarter before and down 3.09 percent from the same period last year. That works out to one in every 496 homes for a ninth-place ranking in the state. [more]

South Jamaica, Queens — zip code 11436 — ranks first in the nation for mortgage fraud, according to a new report from First American CoreLogic, which used data from 80 million loans nationwide between 2004 and 2009. Jamaica, which is also the New York City neighborhood hit hardest by the foreclosure crisis, has a mortgage fraud rate four times the national average, the report says. Mortgage fraud there included faking income statements, inflating home values through straw-buying schemes, bribing appraisers and stealing identities. [NYDN]

The New York metro area’s home price index fell 6.27 percent, 4.94 percent of which excluded distressed properties, according to First American CoreLogic’s home price index report and forecast. First American projects for 2010 a nearly flat .01 percent price increase for the New York area. National home prices dropped by just 0.7 percent in January, a dramatic improvement over the 3.4 percent decline in prices year over year in December 2009. Housing prices will keep falling into the spring, the report says, but will recover “modestly” through the end of the year. TRD