California Mortgage Lenders.

Want to buy a home in California? If so, chances are you'll need a California Mortgage Lender to help finance your new house. Fortunately, the Internet has made the mortgage process easy. You can even find a lender online with very little hassle! Here's how to find a reputable California Mortgage Lender online:

Ask friends, family and neighbors

If you already live in California, some of the people you know in the state may have used a California Mortgage Lender online when they financed their home. Ask around among close friends and acquaintances to see if anyone can make a personal recommendation. Check with co-workers, family members and neighbors, too. A referral like this is often a good way to hear about the good--and bad--experiences people have had with various online mortgage lenders.

Watch out for predators

"Predatory lending" is a term generally used to describe any lender that is trying to take advantage of the borrower. Examples include charging high, unnecessary fees, pushing borrowers into a loan they can't afford, or using lies and deception to obtain clients. Carefully review all fees and charges--your lender is required to give you a "good faith estimate"--plus the fine print, like loan terms and prepayment penalties. Be on the lookout for any false or misleading information, or any terms that are vague and unspecific. If the fees seem too high or too numerous, look for a different lender.

Check with officials

All California Mortgage Lenders and Brokers should be licensed with either The California Department of Real Estate or The California Department of Corporations. To help ensure your California Mortgage Lender is legitimate and reputable, check with these agencies to see if your lender is licensed. Avoid any lending company that is not licensed or has allowed its license to expire.

Be sure to check with your city's Better Business Bureau office, as well. They'll have a record of any complaints that may have been filed against your California Mortgage Lender.

California Mortgage Brokers.

For years, consumer watchdog groups have pointed to studies showing that mortgage lenders are more likely to give high-interest-rate home loans to minority borrowers than to white borrowers. Legislators and industry trade groups have grappled with fixing the inequities, but a Southern California mortgage broker says his software solves the problem.

When a prospective borrower submits an online mortgage application to Mortgage Grader (www.mortgagegrader.com), the company strips away much of the personal information that a lender might use to "redline" or discriminate against a borrower before it forwards the application to its participating lenders.

Lenders who work with Mortgage Grader - there are about 15, including some big brands like Chase and Washington Mutual - offer loan rates and terms to borrowers based only on the credit score and financial information on the application. The borrower's name, Social Security number and exact property address are not given to the lender until the borrower has chosen the loan he or she wants.

"We force the loan to be priced before the curtain is raised," and the lender and the buyer get introduced, said Jeff Lazerson, Mortgage Grader's president and a longtime Orange County loan broker. The software matches borrowers to the least expensive loan that suits their circumstances, he said, without the possibility of predatory practices, redlining, or discrimination based on ethnicity or gender.

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filed a patent application for his software back in 2001 (the patent is still pending), but he launched his Web site at the end of last year. Mortgage Grader, which is privately owned, serves borrowers in California, Florida and Idaho. Lazerson said he hopes to be licensed to do business in New York soon.

"There's no legal requirement for lenders to offer a fair loan or their best loan for the consumer," Lazerson said. Instead, many mortgage brokers "take the borrower's temperature ... to see how much they can get away with," he said.

But lenders who work with Mortgage Grader are competing for its customers, creating an incentive for them to deliver fair rates based only on the customer's financial profile. Participating lenders offer loans for both prime and subprime borrowers. The nature of the software means that a borrower who can qualify for a prime loan won't be "down-streamed" into a subprime loan just so the lender can charge a higher interest rate.

"All the lender should care about is if the borrowers have similar credit history, they should get a similar deal," Lazerson said.

Mortgage Grader, based in Laguna Niguel, charges fees based on the customer's loan amount, and informs customers upfront about what the total amount will be.

On a $500,000 loan, the company would charge $5,500 - that's 1 percent of the loan amount, plus a $500 processing charge. That's a smaller percentage than most loan brokers get from each loan they do.

The Mortgage Grader premise is "responding to a definite problem," said Kevin Stein, associate director of the California Reinvestment Coalition, which has reported on the inequities experienced by borrowers of different ethnicities.

"To the extent that this is trying to strip away opportunities for discrimination to occur, then it's positive," he said. Lenders should offer the most suitable loans for their customers, he said, but they don't always do so. "It's kind of an unfortunate situation we're in where someone has to develop a product to make happen what's supposed to happen."

California Mortgage.

The number of mortgage default notices sent to California homeowners last quarter rose to its highest in nearly 10 years as home prices stagnated and rates on adjustable loans pushed higher, a report released on Monday said.

Mortgage lenders filed 46,760 notices of default from January through March, marking an increase of 23.1 percent from the previous quarter and 148 percent from the year-earlier period, according to a report by DataQuick Information Systems, a real estate information service.

The first quarter's default level was the highest for the most populous U.S. state since the second quarter of 1997. It came amid a sharp rise in defaults on mortgages held by subprime borrowers, or borrowers with blemished credit, across the United States.

The low introductory interest rates on the their mortgages have been expiring, replaced by much higher rates that have made monthly mortgage payments too expensive for many households to maintain. Additionally, their options for refinancing their mortgages have been limited because home prices in many markets have been largely flat or slipping.

Many analysts say a surge of foreclosures is in the making and that it will weigh an already sluggish housing market and may slow the broader economy.

"Defaults tend to happen after a certain length of time and today's activity reflects a peak in the number of home loans made back in the summer of 2005. Additionally, the loans being made back then were riskier because of the subprime activity, as well as higher appreciation rates. It's easier to make a loan when the security for that loan is going up in value, than when values are flat," said Marshall Prentice, president of DataQuick.