Solano Real Estate Scene: Jim Porter
Article By: Jim Porter – April 17, 2026
In April 2006, a 25-year-old first-time homebuyer with 680 FICO scores and a decent job purchased four Vacaville homes on the same day. He used an independent mortgage broker for all four transactions.
The mortgage broker submitted four loan applications to four different lenders and used four different title companies. These four older, 1,200-square-foot Vacaville homes had been on the market for a while at just under $400,000, and all needed work.
This young man offered $400,000 for each house and asked the sellers to credit him $10,000 for closing costs and $40,000 for kitchen remodeling. After an incredible sellers’ market in 2003, 2004 and 2005, by April Fool’s Day 2006, the market had shifted to a buyers’ market after home prices had doubled since 2002.
The sellers could not sell these four houses for $390,000 because they needed to be remodeled. Why would a first-time homebuyer buy one of these houses when they could buy a brand-new home with nothing down from one of the big builders that were offering big concessions all over Solano and Yolo County?
All four sellers accepted the offers, and keep in mind all four of the homes were vacant because the sellers had already moved on and bought something nicer, newer and bigger elsewhere using an easy lender like Washington Mutual, World Savings or maybe Countrywide. These four sellers were happy to sell the houses and net $330,000 after commissions and $50,000 in buyer incentives.
The buyer was able to finance all four homes without one dollar out of his pocket. The appraisals were no problem because appraisals are based on the past three to six sales going back six months. Comps were plentiful from late 2005.
When he closed escrow, he owed $400,000 on each home with interest only payments of $2,000 per month. He obtained 80-20 loans where he had a first mortgage loan for $320,000 and a second mortgage of $80,000 on a couple of the homes, and because of what was considered high FICOS at the time was able to finance two of the houses with single first mortgage loans of $400,000 apiece.
At closing of the escrow on the very same day, the sellers covered the buyers’ closing costs and out of their side of the escrow paid $40,000 to the buyer’s contractor for the kitchen remodeling jobs that would be done after the escrow closing.
You may have heard about some politicians getting in mortgage-fraud-hot-water for lying on their loan applications. There was no way this young brainiac scammer could owner occupy all four homes, nor would any of the loans been approved if the lenders knew about the other transactions, and there is no way they would allow the $40,000 check to be cut without the kitchen being remodeled prior to the appraisal and the close of escrow. The buyers and the sellers agreed to the $40,000 on a separate addendum and was not part of the main purchase agreement.
I did not hear about this one transaction till four or five years after it occurred, but it is a true story and only one fraud case of the million that took place between 2002 and 2007 across the country. Ninety-nine percent of the fraud was just exaggerating the income on a stated-income loan (liar loan) but 1% were crooks like this guy or dumb 700 FICO score folks that bought eight to 10 rental properties in 2006 with 5% or less down thinking they could become rich.
This kid rented out three of the homes and lived in one. He and his buddy pocketed the $160,000 for the remodeling. I assume he made payments for a few months till he stopped in 2007 because by then liar loans had dried up, and the four homes were now all worth less than $320,000. He stopped making payments on all four homes for the next three years and lived for free in one house and rented the other three out till the foreclosures.
The four homes dropped in value to $150,000 by 2010 and all were finally sold between 2010 and 2012. After 2008, Washington Mutual became Chase, Countrywide sold to BofA, and World Savings-Wachovia became Wells Fargo, and apparently none of the CEOs knew what was going on between 2003 to 2007.
This kid and his contractor partner made a couple hundred thousand tax-free and the Lehman Brother investors that bought these mortgages lost $1.6 million on this one scam in Vacaville and this is no April Fool’s joke.
Jim Porter, NMLS No. 276412, is the branch manager of Solano Mortgage, NMLS No. 1515497, a division of American Pacific Mortgage Corporation, NMLS No. 1850, licensed in California by the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation under the CRMLA / Equal Housing Opportunity. Jim can be reached at 707-449-4777.
