Eight months after paying off an adjustable-rate loan on a Deltona, Fla., vacation home, Katherine Lee could not rid herself of a nagging feeling that something was not quite right.

The Baltimore resident decided to act on her suspicions by hiring the Gaithersburg, Md., loan auditing firm Loantech to check over paperwork on the $78,900 adjustable-rate mortgage she and her husband obtained in 1983.

Typically consumers hire loan auditors to examine existing loans. Recently, though, a growing number of ex-ARM borrowers, including the surging numbers who are refinancing out of ARMs and into fixed-rate loans, are exhuming their old mortgages, with the help of a loan auditor, for a second look.