Cuomo Sues Appraiser For Inflating House Values
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
WASHINGTON — New York’s attorney general sued one of the country’s largest mortgage appraisers yesterday for inflating house values, saying it would be the first in a series of cases to attack pervasive conflicts of interest that contributed to the housing crisis.
Andrew Cuomo filed civil charges against a subsidiary of First American Corp. for buckling under pressure from mortgage lender Washington Mutual, its top client, at the expense of as many as 262,000 consumers who may have purchased houses at artificially high prices since last year. WaMu, as it is known, was not included in the lawsuit because of questions about state authority over federally chartered lending institutions.
Mr. Cuomo’s investigation is likely to have national impact because of the prominence of his targets and his pulpit in the country’s financial capital.
