As mortgage rates continue to descend, loan application defects and fraud risk are following suit. According to First American’s June 2016 Loan Application Defect Index, misrepresentations in loan applications dipped 1.4 percent in June compared with the previous month. Annually, these fraudulent trends decreased 12.2 percent. The Defect Index, an estimation of mortgage loan fraud risk trends by geography and type of loan, has fallen 5.3 percent over the past three months to a rating of 72 in June and is down 29.4 percent from the highest point of risk in October 2013, according to First American. The financial corporation says overall decline in the Defect Index is a product of modernization and improvements of systems and standards mitigating risk. The Defect Index increase…