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Privacy?ÉHah!
Once in a while, every local mortgage lender gets a call like this:
"We bought our new home last month with a mortgage from your company, and are horrified to find that you have sold our names, address, phone number, and confidential personal financial data toÉ toÉ well, we don't know how many places, but lots. You will hear from our attorney today. And the Better Business Bureau, the U.S. Attorney, andÉ andÉ Janet Reno!"
Sigh. You work hard to create customer satisfaction, and look what you get.
The trouble starts with the deed that transferred title at the closing: a deed is a matter of public record. Your name, new address and the price you paid are in plain sight at the county courthouse. (Of course, if you bought an expensive home, sooner or later the local newspaper will print a map to your house, showing your name and location in nice, bright colors. But that's a different problem.)
Any entrepreneur with something to sell can find you, easily. And when they find you, they're going to find a lot more than just the deed.
Your mortgage, for example. In Colorado, the "deed of trust" is also in plain sight, with the date, the loan amount, the interest rate, and the loan terms.
All this data has been available to any sleuthing salesman since the very first Clerk and Recorder, and reception numbers were written in huge books by hand. However, the books were not exactly handy to use; and later, microfilm was more portable, but not much faster.
Enter the computer. Intel chips get credit for many wondrous things, including the sensation that somebody has rifled through your desk and safe deposit box.
Where do the calls and mail come from, two or three a day, "Refinance Now!", including a proposal customized to your particular situation?
Anybody can subscribe to CD-ROM services which provide the County data base, updated monthly. A moderately good wirehead can teach a moderately stupid, slow, 386 (let alone a one-giga goo-goo) to read the ROM for name, address, price, loan amount and terms; and then turn that data into a refinance offering.
The whole process, right down to envelope stuffing, is untouched by human hands -- which may be reassuring, and then again, maybe not.
Find you? Piece of cake. Subscribe to another updating ROM service: US West's reverse, address to phone directory.
How do they know you live in the house you own, and haven't rented it? Cross check the Assessor's records (Public? Of course.): if the tax bill goes to an address different from the one on the deed, whip out the investment property refinance solicitation.
Ever wonder about the checks you get in the mail?
Sign Here, and $70,000 is all yours!
37% APR, balance due whenever we want the money back.
Nothin' to it. Go to the Assessor ROM for current market value, trust deed for existing loan balance, compute maximum loan, quick credit check ("security" of credit records is a crude synonym for "sieve"), andÉ check's in the mail!
A serious wirehead in the employ of an eager telemarketing firm can format all this data on a long list, homeowner by homeowner, and the telemarketer can then go to work just before dinner, and dial for dollars, uninterrupted (he's not, that is), all evening long.
The new tax bill means new kinds of calls. As of May 7, we all have a $250,000 capital gain exemption when we sell our homes; available every two years, any excess taxable. Let's see: cross-reference name, phone, address, purchase price and date with the Assessor's market value (adjusted for the Assessor's record of improvements made -- wouldn't want to waste time selling a tax shelter to somebody who already has one, would we?). If your gain is close to $250,000, better sell RIGHT NOW!
Whether you want a new house or not.
My net-head friends tell me about all the terrific things I'm missing (Vann Hilty, are you listening?), but however easy -- wonderfully easy -- all this electronic peddling may be, it ain't progress.
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