A mortgage website that may have misled people searching for the Internet home of the state's housing finance agency was taken down yesterday afternoon after the agency threatened legal action.
The Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency is a quasi-public agency that has pledged to help people refinance predatory mortgages into more affordable loans. Its website is MassHousing.com.
A company calling itself Mass Housing purchased the Internet address MassHousingMortgage.com in mid-September, and created a website that featured a lender referral service. The company also purchased banner ads on the Google search engine that appeared above search results for the phrase "MassHousing."
While the website has no connection to the MassHousing program, the ad on Google read, "MA residents see if you qualify for state refinance assistance." The site itself advertises "Refinance assistance and Foreclosure Prevention Program." The site does not claim directly to be affiliated with the state agency.
Lawyers for the housing agency sent a letter last week to a person they identified as the owner of the site - a Red Hook, N.Y., resident named Paul Knag - demanding the transfer of the domain name.
"This is very, very troubling to us because we've got some people out there that are really in desperate need of some mortgage relief," said Thomas Farmer, a spokesman for the agency. "We provide safe, quality loans and we're afraid that someone who is trying to get in touch with MassHousing might end up getting a loan that isn't in their best interest."
The domain name was registered Sept. 14 in the name of "Mass Housing," according to the Network Solutions domain registry. The listed phone number does not work, and a call to a listed number for Knag was not answered. An e-mail sent to the company's listed address yesterday did not draw a response.
By late afternoon yesterday, the original website for MassHousingMortgage.com had been replaced by a placeholder page from a website management company. The ads had been removed from Google.
The site appeared to have been relocated to a new address, SonyMaMortgage.com, with all references to Massachusetts deleted.
Farmer had said the agency was preparing legal action if it did not receive a response by today.
MassHousing said in July that it would commit $250 million to refinance borrowers who signed up unwittingly for unaffordable loans. The agency finances its lending by selling tax-exempt bonds. MassHousing also provides other services, including financing for developers of affordable housing and rental properties.
Binyamin Appelbaum can be reached at bappelbaum@globe.com.
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.
