Top Fingerprint Services in Baltimore, MD
Recent Reviews View all
C. and A. Courier Inspection Services™
By MGH Enterprises / halzgood-homegoods.com March 19, 2011
This company will definately take care of all your needs. Would not hesitate to use them. ...read more
C. and A. Courier Inspection Services™
By Lynn Bacci March 19, 2011
This company has been around for a long time. You can count on them to deliver the best service possible. Don't hesitate to use them for all your needs. Your satisfaction will be their primary concern. ...read more
C. and A. Courier Inspection Services™
By Anonymous May 05, 2010
I take great pride in providing reliable, dependable, & consistant services to all my customers. We believe in a good old fashioned, proactive work ethic. Our motto is professional work done by professional people! We take great pride in providing quality service each time, every time! ...read more
New Photos 15 photos
Blogs View more
How To Find and Take Advantage of Student Discounts
Student Discounts...college student discounts How To Find and Take Advantage of Student DiscountsCollege can certainly put a strain on your finances. Between tuition, room and board, and books, it can be hard to find money for less essential, but still important, things like entertainment. Why not make the most of your limited funds by taking full advantage of the discounts available to you as a student? http://www.howtodothings.com/education/a4122-how-to-find-and-take-advantage-of-student-discounts.html Get Student Discounts with Student Advantage...SAVE up to 50% with the Student Advantage Card!Students save money near campus and online with Student Advantage every day on food, travel, school supplies and more. Sign up today and start saving on everything you need from textbooks to pizza, laptops to posters and everything in between.http://www.studentadvantage.com/discountcard/ Parents Save 10% at Target.comShop Target.com for a huge selection of furniture, home decor, bedding, and storage supplies whether it's for your student or just for you!http://www.target.com/192-7117012-7446223 GM College Student Discount...https://www.exclusivegmoffer.com/ip-gmpop/initPop.do?program=cgp&seo=goo_|_2008_College_Media_|_GM_College_Grad_|_GM_College_Student_HV_|_student_discounts Student buying guide:http://www.studentbuyingguide.com/ New HP $300 Off Laptop Coupon Code, Stackable for up to $500 Offhttp://www.studentbuyingguide.com/2010/01/new-hp-300-off-laptop-coupon-code-stackable-for-up-to-500-off/https://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/register_app.do Cheap Tickets for College Students and Faculty: Airfare, Rail ...Student travel discounts and student airfare deals.http://www.studentuniverse.com/ College Discounts College Faculty&Student Save On Dell PCs W/ McAfee SecurityCenter.http://www.Dell.com/DellUniversity Students get Windows 7 for $29.99 - Sweet Deal! Hurry - Get it ...Eligible college students can get the sweetest deal on Windows 7 - for only $29.99 USD. That's less than most of your textbooks! Hurry - offer ends Jan.http://www.win741.com/ Microsoft Office Student discount deals...http://www.microsoft.com/student/discounts/theultimatesteal-us/default.aspx Top Web Tools for College Studentshttp://www.nextstudent.com/nextpath/nextpath-online/blogs/students/archive/2007/02/15/top-web-tools-for-college-students.aspx Tags: student discount software, students software, student discount airfare, academic software, discounts for college students, student advantage card student discount airfare, student air travel, windows 7 from digital river, digital river microsoft, windows 7 for students, digital river activities adlib advice for students arts back-to-school biochemistry books campus housing campus life career center college college acceptance letter college admissions college admissions tips college discounts college loans college rejection letter college student discounts college tips comic comic strip comic strips computer discounts concerts credit card fraud credit cards debt discount cards dorm life dorms engineering environmental science federal student loans festivals financial aid food free money Free Money Fridays fun getting into college going green grants green green living holidays identity fraud identity theft information for students internships job hunting journalism Kanye West Kazimour library living expenses living with your parents Lupe Fiasco movie discounts music music scholarships networking NextPath NextStudent non-traditional scholarships pay for college planning a road trip PLUS loans private student loans résumé real-world experience recycle rejection letter residence halls road trips roommates saving money saving money in college scholarships shopping for a student loan shopping green software discounts spring break student discounts student life student loan consolidation student loans study abroad summer break summer jobs summer vacation summer vacation ideas supplies tevong tevong you time management travel unique scholarships vacation tips women's scholarships work-study ...read more
By C. and A. Courier Inspection Services™ May 05, 2010
What The Dealer Has To Tell You
What The Dealer Has To Tell You7Questions A Seller Is Legally Bound To Answer When I was 21, I went to look at a used car advertised in a local paper. The seller had an honest face, he was friendly, and even though the car was a few years old it looked brand new. When it turned out the seller and I shared the same last name, the deal seemed pre-ordained. So after I had my mechanic okay the engine and test-drive the car with me, I bought it, paying with cash at the seller's insistence. Three months later, my new car was hit from behind while I was stopped at a red light. I was unhurt and my car was drivable, so I went straight to the body shop for a repair estimate. The repair shop called me three days later saying the damage was repairable, but added, "This car was in a pretty serious accident. Did you know that? The frame was bent and it's been straightened." So that's why the seller had asked for cash, and why the paint job looked so new. He had crashed the car, fixed it, sprayed it and put it up for sale. Why didn't I ask the seller if the car had been in an accident? Well, I had zero experience in purchasing something costing a lot of money. More importantly, I just figured the guy would lie to me anyway, so there was no point in asking. Or so I thought. As it turns out, there are good reasons to ask probing questions of a dealer or private seller, and you should get the answers in writing. AOL Autos spoke with Sergei Lemberg, a New York-based lawyer specializing in Lemon Laws, and he provided the following essential questions one should always ask a seller. Some of these apply to dealer sales only, but they are still great examples of how thorough you should be in grilling someone selling a car. Search AOL Autos Used Car Listings1. Do You Have The Repair History For This Vehicle? "If the car is relatively new, or Certified Pre-Owned," Lemberg says, "A manufacturer's dealership should be able to look up the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) and provide you with a record of the work that's been done on the car at various dealerships. While it won't include repairs by shops that aren't affiliated with the manufacturer, you could glean important information about problems encountered by the previous owner." 2. Where Is The Buyers Guide? "Federal law says that every used vehicle must have a Buyers Guide conspicuously posted, typically on one of the rear windows," says Lemberg. "The Buyers Guide will let you know if the dealer is selling the car ‘as is' or if there is a warranty. If there's a warranty, the Buyers Guide will let you know what's covered and how much the dealer will contribute for repair costs. If No Buyer's Guide is posted, turn around and go to another dealer." 3. What Is Your Return Policy? Lemberg says it's a myth that the law mandates a cooling-off period, during which time you can return a vehicle if you change your mind. Nevertheless, some dealers have a return policy. "Find out what the return policy is," he says, "And get it in writing. Some states also have lemon laws for used cars, but it's an option of last resort." 4. Can I See The Vehicle's Title? "Nefarious used car dealers may try and misrepresent vehicles," says Lemberg. "In many states, a vehicle's title must reveal if the car was a lemon buyback, a salvage, or a rebuilt vehicle. Check with your state Attorney General to see how titles are marked in your state. Keep in mind, though, that seeing a vehicle's title isn't a substitute for researching the VIN on your own. Some state motor vehicle departments offer this service online, but you can also use a service like CARFAX. Used car dealers sometimes engage in ‘title washing,' whereby a lemon buyback or salvage vehicle from one state is transported to and sold in another state with less stringent titling requirements. Researching the VIN is the only way you'll know where the vehicle has been." And a word of warning, do not rely on a CARFAX or similar documentation provided by the dealer, as "it might be old or altered," Lemberg says. 5. Will You Put That In Writing? "Dealers anxious to unload vehicles will often promise you the moon, whether it relates to financing, warranties, or vehicle repairs," Lemberg says. "Unless you get it in writing, as part of the contract, you'll have a hard time proving that the dealer engaged in misrepresentation. By the same token, do not leave the dealership without the financing arranged, agreed to and signed for." 6. Can You Substantiate The Odometer Reading? "Odometer fraud is rampant," says Lemberg. "Most people think that electronic odometers make it more difficult to change the reading, but the opposite is the case. The dealer should be able to justify the odometer reading through the vehicle's repair history, present mechanical condition and title history." 7. Is There An Unexpired Manufacturer's Warranty On This Vehicle? If the car you're purchasing is fairly new, it may still be covered under the original warranty. "If so," says Lemberg, "Make sure to get the warranty documents from the dealer. Before you buy, give the manufacturer a call, tell them the vehicle's VIN, and verify that the original warranty still applies."http://autos.aol.com/article/dealer-legal-questions/ http://www.stoprepairbills.com/contracts.php Much the way NeighborGoods lets consumers save and earn money by sharing tools, ladders and other household equipment, so RelayRides enables them to do likewise with their underused cars.www.neighborgoods.netinfo@neighborgoods.netRelay Rides, a Bay Area startup rolling out its services beginning next month, first in Boston, is one of a growing number of "collaborative consumption" services, enabled by technology, potentially allowing both car owners and renters to be able to defray or completely avoid some of the costs of ownership. Springwise scans the globe for the most promising business ventures, ideas and concepts that are ready for regional or international adaptation, expansion, partnering, investments or cooperation. We ferociously track more than 400 global offline and online business resources, as well as taking to the streets, cameras at hand. To ensure true ‘glocal' coverage, the central office is in close contact with more than 8,000 Springspotters in over 70 countries worldwide. Springwise's weekly newsletter, to which you can subscribe for free, is sent to more than 100,000 business professionals in more than 120 countries.http://springwise.com/ ...read more
By C. and A. Courier Inspection Services™ May 05, 2010
Fraudulent appraisals actually soared in 2009
For anyone who assumed that the toughened real estate appraisal rules imposed on the mortgage market last year would mean less monkey business in home valuations, here's a shocker: Fraudulent appraisals actually soared in 2009, according to a lending industry study released April 26, and they now represent the fastest-growing form of home loan fraud. The Mortgage Asset Research Institute found that while overall loan frauds rose last year by 7 percent, the incidence of frauds involving property valuations increased by 50 percent. MARI, a service of data company LexisNexis, collects information from 600 plus wholesale mortgage lenders who account for the vast bulk of all loans originated in the country. Once a year, it reports its findings on fraud trends to the Mortgage Bankers Association. Though the biggest source of mortgage fraud in 2009 was intentional misinformation submitted by borrowers on their applications -- bogus Social Security numbers, data on income, employment and assets -- distorted valuations came in second. In previous annual reports, appraisal problems were far less prominent. As recently as 2006, just 16 percent of all mortgage fraud cases involved skewed property valuations. By 2008 it had jumped to 22 percent, and last year bad appraisals were involved in 33 percent of all mortgage frauds, according to MARI. The sudden spike in appraisal shenanigans came despite the nationwide imposition of restrictions last year that were designed to limit interference in real estate valuations and to improve their accuracy. As of May 1 last year, mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac prohibited loan officers and brokers from selecting appraisers, and effectively encouraged lenders to use "appraisal management companies" that assign appraisers from their own networks nationwide. The new rules, known as the Home Valuation Code of Conduct, stoked immediate controversy among mortgage brokers, appraisers, home builders and real estate brokers. Critics charged that because management companies pay rock-bottom compensation to appraisers -- often as little as $175 for an assignment that previously earned them $350 to $450 -- the new rules encouraged the use of inexperienced individuals, who frequently were not familiar with local market conditions. Critics also charged that management companies forced appraisers to turn in their work within unrealistically short deadlines, even if they had to cut corners on quality and thoroughness. Citing widespread evidence submitted by members about lowball and incompetent appraisals, the National Association of Realtors waged a lobbying campaign to persuade Congress to put the entire set of rules imposed by Fannie and Freddie on ice for 18 months. Congress has not acted on the matter to date. Bill Garber, government affairs director for the Appraisal Institute, the largest trade group representing the industry, said the upsurge in bad appraisals last year "demonstrates what happens when lenders hire appraisers solely based on low prices and quick turnaround times." "This should send a loud signal to lenders to hire ethical and competent appraisers" if they want to avoid fraud in their loans, Garber said. Freddie Mac spokesman Brad German offered a different view. Since the MARI study itself made no specific reference to the rule changes by Freddie and Fannie or to the use of appraisal management companies, "we see no connection between [the code] and appraisal fraud." Fannie Mae did not respond to a request for comment on the study. Jeff Schurman, executive director of the Title/Appraisal Vendor Management Association, which represents the appraisal management industry, had no immediate comment on the findings, pending a review of the data. The fraud report covered every major type of valuation method lenders use to underwrite mortgages, including traditional appraisals, broker price opinions supplied by real estate agents, and electronic valuations, among others. The biggest game fraudsters play: messing with or fabricating the information on "comparables" that form the basis of most appraisal reports. Rather than selecting nearby properties with broadly similar physical characteristics and recently recorded selling prices, bad appraisers typically came up with houses and characteristics that better fit their purposes. Sometimes they just left out the negatives. Say, for example, the property they were valuing was located near a busy and noisy highway or railroad tracks that would normally depress its value significantly. No problem. Poof -- the appraisal report could simply omit those issues. What did fabrications like these achieve? Primarily custom-tailored property valuations that were often 15 percent to 30 percent or more off base, and allowed the sales contract and loan application to be approved. This, in turn, left lenders holding the bag when the mortgage went sour -- raising losses and making the national foreclosure crisis even worse. April 29 (Bloomberg) -- Decisions by U.S. homeowners to walk away from mortgages they can afford account for an increasing share of defaults, according to Morgan Stanley. About 12 percent of all mortgage defaults in February were "strategic," up from 4 percent in mid-2007, New York-based Morgan Stanley analysts led by Vishwanath Tirupattur wrote in a report today. Borrowers are more likely to stop paying their mortgages the higher their credit scores and the larger their loans, the analysts said. Defaults by borrowers who owe more than their homes' values are among the biggest risks for the housing market, according to analysts including Zelman&Associates' Ivy Zelman and Amherst Securities Group LP's Laurie Goodman. Last month, the Obama administration said it would adjust its anti-foreclosure program to encourage reductions to borrowers' principal amounts, instead of just the payments they make, to address the issue. That change "gives us hope that policy makers are serious about curbing future strategic defaults," the Morgan Stanley mortgage-bond analysts wrote. Strategic defaults also increase based on how much more borrowers owe in housing debt than their homes are worth, they said in the report, which made use of consumer credit data from Transunion LLC and Standard & Poor's home-price indexes. That finding concurred with reports by Goodman, a New York- based mortgage-bond analyst, who has said there will be as many as 12 million foreclosures over the next few years unless lenders can effectively modify borrowers' debt. Falling Prices A fifth of U.S. homes carrying mortgages were worth less than their loans in the fourth quarter, according to Seattle- based Zillow.com, which runs a real estate data Web site. Home prices in 20 metropolitan areas tumbled 33 percent from July 2006 through April 2009, then rose for five months before falling for the next five, leaving them up 2.8 percent from lows, according to an S&P/Case-Shiller index. Morgan Stanley said many previous studies of strategic defaults have been limited by a lack of a "precise definition" of when they are occurring. The analysts classified a default as strategic only when homeowners who hadn't been previously delinquent were making on- time payments one month, then skipped them for the next three, even while staying current on other consumer debt of at least $10,000. Prime-Jumbo Problem For mortgage-bond investors, the data signals a problem with prime-jumbo debt and strengthens the case for investing in subprime, the analysts wrote. That's in part because strategic defaults are less prevalent among borrowers with subprime characteristics and they may benefit from government-aid programs that don't target large loans, the analysts wrote. Jumbo mortgages are larger than government-supported Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can finance, currently from $417,000 to $729,750 in high-cost areas. Details needed to implement the planned changes to the federal "Home Affordable" mortgage-modification program for delinquent borrowers are expected by "early fall," Phyllis Caldwell, the Treasury Department's chief homeownership preservation officer, told lawmakers April 14. The program will then push for cuts in the principal amounts of some borrowers that owe more than 115 percent of their home's value. "If the banks are not going to hold them accountable, then why not" stop paying, Gregory Martineau, 39, a teacher in Las Vegas, said in a telephone interview. "I have a few friends renting their places to roommates and not paying their mortgages. The hypocrisy is I'm supposed to teach our kids to be responsible and accountable, yet our government and banks don't do the same." Delinquency Rate A total of 9.47 percent of all home mortgages were delinquent at the start of this year, with an additional 4.58 percent in the foreclosure process, according to seasonally adjusted Mortgage Bankers Association data. Housing won't recover for three to five years as mounting foreclosures hold down prices, mortgage-bond pioneer Lewis Ranieri said yesterday in a panel discussion at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California. "There's another big leg down," he said. "You can't have much of a rally when you've got this big overhang." In an April 13 congressional hearing, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc., Bank of America Corp., and Wells Fargo & Co., the biggest U.S. home lenders, said their foreclosure- prevention efforts are working and rejected plans that could force them to reduce balances for distressed homeowners. Cutting Loan Principal "Broad-based principal reduction could result in decreased access to credit and higher costs to consumers because lenders will price for forgiveness risk," said David Lowman, head of New York-based JPMorgan's mortgage unit. Bank of America last month agreed to cut the principal on some loans that exceeded 120 percent of the value of underlying properties as part of a settlement with 44 state attorneys general over lending by Countrywide Financial Corp., which the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank bought in 2008. Strategic defaults are also increasing in the commercial real-estate market, where prices are down 42 percent from their peak in October 2007, according to Moody's Investors Service. Morgan Stanley last year defaulted on a $2 billion loan two years after it bought Crescent Real Estate Equities Co. and handed over 17 million square feet of office buildings to lender Barclays Capital. The bank also agreed to relinquish five San Francisco office buildings to its lender, two years after buying them from Blackstone Group LP. Biggest Property Deal In January, Tishman Speyer Properties LP and BlackRock Inc. defaulted on a $3 billion mortgage on Manhattan's Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village apartments, the largest residential enclave in New York City. Its sale in 2006 for $5.4 billion marked the biggest U.S. real estate transaction. California and Arizona are among states that generally don't allow lenders to pursue court judgments against consumers if seized-home sales fail to cover loans, Moody's Investors Service said in a report last month. Other states do, such as Florida, New Jersey and New York. Commercial loans are often non-recourse. ...read more
By C. and A. Courier Inspection Services™ May 05, 2010