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Tim Blake has written articles about finance and predatory lending since 1999. He graduated from high school in Los Angeles in 1967, and years later received his Bachelor’s degree in business management with a specialty in management of technology. While working on his master’s degree in educational technology leadership Blake started writing for various publications.
As a former teacher and PTA President his work product teaches others, while documenting and preserving a living history lesson. Blake wrote “The History of Predatory Lending”, a 33 page lesson plan for teachers and other interested parties.
I’m right at home almost anywhere, having traveled to so many different places around the world thanks to my dad, the oil business, and the Marine Corps.
It was the military that brought financial abuse to my attention, but after investigating many complaints it was perfectly clear that everyone – people from all walks of life – had the potential to be abused by what was then called predatory lending.
My first website was Household Watch. In the early days the site focused on predatory lender Household International. The company was purchased by HSBC Bank in 2003, and the website grew from there.
By 2005 I realized mortgage lending was headed in a dangerous direction, and my mortgage crisis website documented every major event as the mortgage crisis became reality. As one person from Royal Bank of Scotland said, we knew there was a huge problem when HSBC announced the first of many huge losses. The world changed, and the rest is history.
In a desperate attempt to collect on losses, and as people attempted to pay their debts, new debt settlement scams and foreclosure scams were seen. From that, our Settlement Scams website was born. The site attempts to help people before it is too late, helping them before they are scammed by those who lack morals and integrity.
Also growing out of suprime lending was our Saxon Mortgage Watch website. Said to be one of the worst, as reported by real estate attorneys, title companies, and closing attorneys, Saxon Mortgage was sold to Ocwen Financial Corporation. Ocwen was once a contractor for the Veterans Administration. Relating back to our military experience we continue to monitor Ocwen Financial even though our Saxon Mortgage has been paid off.
Lender Watch is an extension of our Mortgage Blues website, combining over twelve years of data collection and trend analysis relative to six of our websites. While some pertained to specific studies or companies, Lender Watch gathers all of our material in one central clearinghouse. One exception to our financial sites are our database websites.
From that the Lender Watch Network consolidates all of our efforts under one network banner. As a former teacher this effort teaches others. You can see more on my Google profile page