Iamsemisweet
Posts: 3651
Joined: 4/9/2011
From: The Great Northwest, USA
Status: offline
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I would agree that homeowners in their 70s and 80s did not generally buy homes out of their price range. What about those in their 30s and 40s? In your original statement, you mentioned people who bought 10-15 years ago. Those are two different things. Right? And yes, in general, as prices went up, people did buy more home than they needed and could actually afford. The proof of that is that they NOW CAN'T AFFORD IT. Haven't you been paying attention? And the reason I know this is because I talk to people every day in this situation, and I can read a newspaper. Can you?
By the same token, yes, countrywide and others were far too lax in their lending standards. On the other hand, I must have more respect for the intelligence of other people than you, because I would assume people could do the math. They took on teaser rate loans, thinking they could refinance later at a better rate, and their home values would continue to go up.; They were wrong. They have no responsibility for that? No accountability at all? They just get to continue to live in homes that they aren't paying for? I talk to people every day who are living in their home and haven't made a payment in a year, sometimes two. So, do they get to live there for free forever? And by the way, I never at any time said the banks had no responsibility. I think there is plenty of blame to go around. Some of the blame, for example, belongs to the fucking developers who overbuilt by about 10 percent, and the municipalities and counties who kept issuing them permits.
I felt the first bail out would have been better spent in a program compensating individuals for the loss of their home equity, but obviously that didn't happen, and there is no way this country could afford it now. At best, we get programs like HARP, that deal with interest rates, but not lost equity. Because the equity is not coming back.
http://www.jdsupra.com/post/documentViewer.aspx?fid=75298f1f-150d-47b6-b254-19d3050b6165&utm_source=realestatelaw&utm_medium=facebook
Your example of the pool flooding is bullshit. People took out home loans based on certain assumptions. Those assumptions were faulty. Their equity is not coming back. Hard truths, but truths none the less. Take some responsibility for your bad financial decisions. I think the banks should be much more heavily regulated, and I think the trend towards mandatory mediations for workouts is a great one, but I also don't like opportunists who are using this as an opportunity to excuse their own bad decisions. I think people in their "70s and 80s" would agree with me. Self indulgent baby boomers probably would not.
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ORIGINAL: Edwynn
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ORIGINAL: Iamsemisweet
Well, most of them refinanced a time or two, bought way more expensive homes than they really needed and could afford, ad a lot of them pulled equity out of their houses like it was an ATM. Do you honestly believe that the borrowers have no accountability?
"most of them ... bought way more expensive homes than they really needed and could afford," ... and you 'know' this, how?
I know the opposite to be true; that the vast majority of people now in their 70's and 80's in fact bought well within their means when buying their last house in the 1990's.
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Do you honestly believe that the borrowers have no accountability?
I don't "believe," I know for a fact that these home owners did not write their congressperson demanding that we repeal the Glass-Stegall Act, did not conjure up CDOs fraudulently rated by the rating agencies, did not instigate no-doc 'liar loans' that were a direct result of that, did not insist that Greenspan keep lowering interest rates well into a bubble in contradiction to every indicator and historical precedent against that, or any other of the myriad bank shenanigans that lowered the value of their home.
But according to you it's the home owners, not the banks, that are accountable for all the above.
In any other scenario, those responsible for causing a loss are the ones to be held accountable for that loss.
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I have believed for some time that the only way the market is ever going to stabilize is if the underwater homes are foreclosed on, or otherwise returned to the bank, who can then write them down and resell them at their actual market value.
Well isn't that choice? The people directly responsible for the precipitously lowered market value of the home (the banks) now get to foreclose on it, after years of profiting from the interest on the loan. "Is this a great country, or what?", as they say. So then, after loaning you somebody else's money (depositors' money, including yours) to buy your house, and I then commence to keep running the water into my backyard above-ground pool to overflowing, even as I remove a few vertical reinforcements here and there, and the whole thing collapses and floods your house next door, by your estimation of things not only do I not have to pay for the damage to your house, I get to tack the government with my water bill and kick you out of your home so that I can sell it for whatever I can get. And you think it's a good thing that the government is giving me the money to do this with.
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ORIGINAL: Termyn8or
Business as usual.
T^T
'Willful ignorance as usual' goes hand in hand with that, as demonstrated above.
< Message edited by Iamsemisweet -- 11/1/2011 7:48:23 AM >
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The Cat: Oh, you can't help that. We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.
Alice: How do you know I'm mad?
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