Economists Fear Wave Of Evictions On Way In US

Source: Financial Times

The fate of the US housing market is increasingly in the hands of an opaque part of the financial system normally associated with moves to evict families from their homes.

Mortgage service companies, which are responsible for calling on Americans to keep up with their loan payments, have assumed a pivotal role in President George W. Bush's market-oriented strategy for dealing with the pending wave of foreclosures in the subprime mortgage sector.

An estimated 6m high-risk subprime loans, worth a total of more than $1,000bn, are outstanding, which will in many cases reset to higher interest rates in the next 18 months, putting more than 2.5m Americans at risk of foreclosure.

"It is sort of like being in New Orleans a month before Hurricane Katrina hit when you know there is a storm coming," said Guy Cecala, of Inside Mortgage Finance.

Economists fear that a wave of evictions of borrowers unable to afford the higher payments will blight neighbourhoods, hit home prices, deepen the worst housing downturn in 16 years, and harm the wider economy.



Read more: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5f67d75a-5cdb-11dc-9cc9-0000779fd2ac.html

...save the large central banks, the hedge fund managers and stock speculators and screw homeowners.

:sarcasm:

It will soon be time for the central banks and far flung cronies to buy up all the real estate for pennies on the dollar as they have done in each republican cycle from the great depression and long before till now. Pump as much worthless paper into the market as will absorb, get everybody industriously building and remodeling, from homes to sky scrapers then pull the rug...and wallah you have turned worthless paper into very hard assets for virtually nothing. A lenders trick as old as ruthless greed.
I found this article while researching this very subject from the middle of last month http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/aug2007/mark-a13.shtml about how dire the situation really is and now almost a month later the situation has worsened.

http://www.kitco.com/ind/Lee/sep102007.html

Institutional and federal banks around the world are mainly an extension of their respective governments. Through fractional reserve banking, those banks have unlimited supply of paper money to buy things*, including the purchase of IOUs issued by the government or anyone else.

Banks can issue dollars at no cost, and lend it to the US government through various public and private vehicles. The end effect of issuing treasury notes is no different from direct money printing.

--snip--

With millions of Americans now unable to meet house payments, and mortgage-backed securities liquidity completely dried up, the government and the Fed are taking unprecedented fiscal and monetary steps to maintain the fragile fiat money system.

1. They are looking into “forgiving” certain amount of mortgage loans by distressed borrowers on a nation-wide scale.

2. They have injected about half a trillion dollars to the banking system, allowing any outfit qualified as an “institution” to borrow as much as needed, with the option to extend repayments until the they have the ability to pay.

In plain English, this is akin to the government saying that: because everyone is so indebted but we still need to keep the system going, to the consumers we will just forgive some of your loans so your debt can come down to a reasonable level and you can begin borrowing again; and to the institutions we will lend you as much as you need for as long as you needed until whatever problems you have go away. All the checks and balances in maintaining even the illusion of a sound banking system have been blown away, and we are seeing direct money printing in its naked form.

I believe there is an overall plan to lower the US standard of living to that of "competitive" countries. This is to lower the cost of US labor to that of India, China, Philippines, etc.

Eliminate the middle class, turn the working class into paupers who will accept any employment, no matter how onerous, eliminate civil liberties and basic democratic rights so that "the masses" have no way out.

This certainly fits in well with that vision

they are not incompetent. they know *exactly* what they want to do and they have been quite successful at it.

doing it in/to a psuedo-democracy poses some problems, but they are dealing with those.

Wait maybe I should say "We are all Somalian now." Since the Chinese may soon exceed our "lets all help the Rich get richer America" standard of living..

While all the useful idiots get swindled... AGAIN.

Sounds more like Jim Cramer's crocodile tears:

My people have been in the game for 25 years! And they're losing their jobs! And these firms are going to go out of business!

Those poor people are about to take down the whole system. When you have a manageable number of foreclosures / families falling apart / just general devastation, the system can manage it. Even though it is sad.

But when you have a massive number, like something approaching 9% of the total population; you have a crisis on your hands. A crisis big enough to create a run on the banks, worldwide depression, and a real estate crash.

Who knew? It seems we're all in this together.

Those in on the game are moving their money into safer places.

as soon as we all get our knives out. They only rule at our sufference, and their money only has the value we believe it has.

Pieces of paper, everyone.

Back then, they didn't have the weapons they do now.

but even if they have pulse rifles, and I'm sure they do, they aren't invincible.

"If anything in this life is certain, if history has taught us anything, it's that you can kill anyone."

Michael Corleone
The Godfather II

Put you out of commission from a long way off.

*sigh*

Any weapon they can make, I can make a counter for. And I'm not the only insane genius in the world.
:evilgrin:

No I hadn't!

:loveya:

And... erm... maybe you should edit that? :) Be safe!

I'm already blacklisted, I'm sure. Thanks for the concern, though. :hi:

Those "non-lethal" microwave weapons shoot our a wave at a specific frequency. If you disrupt that wave pattern, you have a weapon that's about as useful as a paperweight.

That's even before bringing up EMP weapons, or hacking military satellites. These people depend on their tech, and it's only scary if you don't understand it.

Don't roll over! Use your heads!

My head's not much use for technical stuff, though. :P

We all have skills that will bring these people down. Some of us are techies, others are doctors, others are stalkers and hunters, others are farmers and craftsmen...

We can all do our part- their hope is that we'll fall apart without them telling us what to do.

Down with the privileged!

DU supports the democratic process, not bringing people down by violence

Because we demand constitutional rights, you can bet the time for "political alternatives" will be over.

If you can't see that as a possibility in the near future, I wish you well during your stay in the internment camps.

on edit- oh, yeah, and I was speaking of neutralizing their capabilities. You assumed otherwise. Violent minded, aren't we?

At some point something more than just peaceful protest will be necessary. Not necessarily killing, but at least burning something. Revolution is cyclic in human history.

and one of the most progressive financial news sources. This is not false concern, nor is it unusual or unexpected.

A friend of mine, was foreclosed in January. They told him his house would be sold in March. He moved out last week, and here it is September and they still don't have a sale date set.

The courts are crammed and backlogged like you wouldn't believe. This is the Tampa Bay area.

It seems like it would be hard finding anything decent to rent with a trashed credit report.

I haven't seen it yet, but he borrowed my truck to move. I guess it's in a rural area of Citrus County, on a dirt road.

You're tainted, and you play hell finding anyone to rent to you - so unless you're lucky enough to find a landlord who doesn't check credit, you may well find yourself homeless...

People who stay in their houses until the bank pushes them out the front door kind of screw themselves in this regard. Once you know that a foreclosure is imminent, the smartest thing you can do is move out of the house and grab a rental before all of the proceedings start...and the whole thing ends up on your credit report. A landlord can't kick you out because your credit got trashed AFTER you moved in.

Another option, for people with any cash reserves left, is to buy a new home before the current one is foreclosed on. One of the advantages of the current market is that prices are WAAY down. My sister was telling me that one of her neighbors recently did this. He originally paid $400,000+ for his house with an ARM mortgage that exploded. He knew he couldn't afford the payment on the house any longer, so rather than handing the last of his money to the bank, he went house shopping. With the price drop in our local market, he was able to find a similar home for over $150,000 LESS than he owed on the original, and purchase it before the first went completely into default. His credit completely sucks at this point, but he's still under a roof he owns, and he now has a mortgage he can afford.

If you're facing foreclosure, the sooner you leave the home, the better off you'll be.

First, if you are facing the situation where you are having difficulty paying your mortgage, the best reaction is NOT to just walk away from it. There are alternatives. 1) in some situations, such as your house not being what the payoff is due to declining values, you can go for a "short sale". 2) you can sell the house.

I know someone who got into a house a year ago and the payment was higher than he could afford. He got 60 days behind in his mortgage, got behind in other bills, and his credit score went down. As a result, right now he could not qualify to buy a house. But if he sold his house, rented for about a year, paid off his bills with the proceeds of his sale and paid his bills on time, in about a year or so he would probably qualify for a loan. Unfortunately, he is contemplating just walking from his house. This would be terrible advise for him! If his house is foreclosed, he is not going to be able to buy a house for a long time. Plus which, if the bank does not get enough for his house, they may slap a judgement on him for the difference which will follow him around and would likely be more than he owes now.

What people should realize is that selling your house, even if you don't make a profit, is far preferable to just walking away from it. I know houses aren't selling as quickly, but it should at least be attempted before just walking away!
If you are ever going to want to buy again....or rent, for that matter....this is a major blemish on the credit report. A 30 day late or even a 60 day is bad enough, but a foreclosure? Be real. In today's lending market, you would be toast for quite some time.

And...guess what....banks are getting more strict in their lending criteria!

He will be sued for what the home sold at foreclosure doesn't cover. They will get a judgement and garnish his wages. Good thing they revised the bankruptcy rules, huh? I knew they were up to something when they pushed that through so quick. The bankers knew this housing implosion was going to happen.

walk away. The deficit amount of the old mortgage will come back to bite as a judgement against you. And
with the new bankruptcy laws, the only means of discharge is to pay it.

I'm not aware if there's a list someplace or not.

I'm worried for these people not just because they're losing their homes, but for what the future holds. I know that my daughter didn't have enough credit on her own to get into her first apartment with out my cosign. What is it going to be like for all these people who now have bad credit?

It typically takes about a year from foreclosure to eviction.

But, why can't we (the government of the people) fix the mess by making the lenders rewrite the loans so that they are fair? I mean, the bouncing interest rate is just written on paper, so change the damn terms, why don't you?

and the politicians, both D & R, are bought and paid for by these same lenders. Look at the contribution list for the frontrunners. Yes, I know Obama is now supposedly not taking PAC monies NOW but PAC monies did, indeed, get him where he is today. Besides, there's all that bundling which the campaign isn't talking about.

Now, if Democrats would actually vote for a REAL Democrat (Kucinich) in the primaries and he won the presidency, all this would go away. But it's so much better to let the DLC party machine and corporate media tell us who is and is not electable, don't 'cha know.

Um, I'm a Kucinich supporter, and that's sky-high rhetoric. No, this would not simply vanish. I can't believe I even just read that.

Besides banking (specifically credit cards) what other business has lobbied Congress and won the right to change the purchase price of services to ridiculously high rates AFTER the contract is made? Still, I don't think that we can trace back the failure in the mortgage industry to PACs and campaign bundling. I like Kucinich, BTW, and plan to vote for him in the primary unless Al tosses his hat in the ring.

However, even if he were nominated and elected, he would have no one to work with in the congress; well, maybe not
"no one", but he certainly would not have enough support to get anything done. Democracy is messy and, unwieldly sometimes, or most times, but it is better than the best of other forms of government. Checks and balances have been trashed, and that's why we are so out of sync now. A centrist is in a better place to govern than our true, blue Dennis. I'm sorry this is so, but I believe we now need someone more likely to garner middle of the road voters and independents. We all loved and revered Paul Wellstone, but, unfortunately, he was a voice in the wilderness.

they would have to revalue the collateral, which is probably worth less and maybe much less. If the bank is undercollateralized they would have to come up with cash to reserve against the loan incase it goes bad or write down their capital to adjust to the new value of those loans. If they write off to much capital the shareholders will have to recapitalize the bank out of their own pockets, sell the bank to someone who can, or the regulators will close the bank pay off the insured depositors and let the uninsured depoistors eat the rest.

The bank can foreclose on the homes and repossess them and then try to sell them into a falling market. Repossessed homes lose about 25% of their value as soon as the bank owns them.

There are no good options. If the fed starts cutting rates to give the homeowners a break in their interest there will be a serious lag between now and when the new rate will take effect. It will also give everyone the green light to sell the dollar and any securities denominated in them. If it doesn't the housing crash will pick up speed as it falls.

Of course, the bankers must have known of the consequences of making loans on over valued properties. I'm sick. :scared:

I think there was an assumption that the U.S. economy could not fail simply because it was the U.S. economy. There are still those who did not see this coming and who think it's all magically going to fix itself. In a way, we should actually be thankful for those people because their "irrational exuberance" probably held this off for a couple of years. Unfortunately, in doing so they're going to make the crash even worse.

This is going to be bad. Really bad.

I get it now. And, you're right about it being really, really bad.

My first home purchase was a repossessed home after the oil market crash in the eighties. And just like me, other people will also be able to enter the market and buy a house when prices start dropping.

When you're just barely able to get into a house, I can understand the appeal of taking out a risky loan, but I truly believe that a lot of these loans are people who were trying to buy "more." I'm not really crazy about bailing out people so they can stay in their McMansions, and you can bet there are plenty of people like that.

Another thing to consider is if the government props up these loans, the government is propping up artificially high real estate prices. As hard as it will be for some people now, a lot of people will benefit if the market readjusts a bit. Housing is just too darn expensive!

That both sides were well-informed when they signed. There is no legal way to force lenders to cut borrowers any slack.

There is (as always) a subset of loans for which the required legal disclosures were not properly made, and lawyers who specialize in helping out borrowers who are victims.

They'll be competing with the latin migrants for the lower tier, rundown rentals, I suspect. The younger ones might be able to move back in with their parents.

From the ashes will rise the phoenix of the new Hoovervilles.

eom

To this day, Herbert Hoover's legacy hasn't lived down Hoovervilles.

They are collapsing as fast as the economy.


(on edit) There used to be protections in place for those who filed bankruptcy. Thanks to the Republican bankruptcy "reform" of 2005, that no longer delays or stops eviction actions.

There were a number of Democrats who voted for the bankruptcy bill as well. And they were not protecting the public interest when they did so. Many Americans will be forced to repay remaining loan amounts after their homes are "fire-saled" by the lenders if they file for bankruptcy which many will not realize until it is too late. The ones who don't file for bankruptcy will still watch their homes be "fire-saled" and then get hit with a 1099 for the "forgiven debt" on the remaining loan amount. And then they will have to file bankruptcy anyway to stall the IRS so the IRS doesn't seize whatever assets they still have. If they even have any.

Happy days are here again. For the very sleazeballs who didn't explain what "balloon" and "ARM" meant when they convinced borrowers to just sign on the dotted line and not worry about it. They were now homeowners. For awhile anyway.

Instead of just counting numbers in Congress, some should be counting numbers for hit lists. Including Democrats. We need to maintain a Democratic Congress. But without some of the current Democrats. Who really aren't Democrats.

Debbie Stabenow-Michigan
Ken Salazar-Colorado
Harry Reid-Nevada
Mark Pryor-Arkansas
Ben Nelson-Nebraska
Bill Nelson-Florida
Blanche Lincoln-Arkansas
Mary Landrieu-Louisiana
Herb Kohl-Wisconsin
Tim Johnson-South Dakota
Daniel Inouye-Hawaii
Kent Conrad-North Dakota
Tom Carper-North Dakota
Robert Byrd-West Virginia
Jeff Bingaman-New Mexico
Joe Biden-Delaware
Evan Bayh-Indiana
Max Baucus-Montana

Obama voted against it, and Hillary did not vote.

You obviously know nothing about politics. Sometimes you have to vote for a bill you don't think is "perfect" in order to make gains elsewhere.

And what are you implying by saying H didn't vote?

Ultimately, the buck stops with the Commander-in-Thief. If he hadn't stolen the election we'd be riding a different horse today!

I defy you to point out precisely where I smeared Democrats.

I called the 2005 Bankruptcy Bill Republican legislation.

Baby Snooks said, don't forget the Dems who voted for it.

I listed those who did.

If you consider your Senator's voting record a smear, you've got a bigger problem than my postings.

Where exactly are the "gains elsewhere" that came from voting for a bill that only serves the private and very corrupt interest to the detriment of the public interest?

Obama didn't feel the need to "trade off" the public interest. Add that to a growing list of reasons to support him for president.

Now that we have a list of senators who voted for it how about a list of representatives who voted for it.

Did Madame Speaker trade it off? For what? Something down the road? Maybe her allowing someone to attempt to exclude Starkist Tuna from the minimum wage law? She certainly didn't trade it off for troop reduction now did she?

:puke:

I guess you liked the Senate the way it was a few years back.

Like our parents generation did. They formed unions, fought for good pay with benefits, and then used that good pay with benefits to buy a home at a fixed rate mortgage?

All of these exotic mortgage packages are designed to dupe the public into believing they're middle class even though the job and wage base is crumbling beneath their feet.

to southeast Asia, to India, to central America, and even to Canada, where employers don't have to pay through the nose for for-profit health insurance.

then either see a wage freeze linked, get hammered with inflation, lose your job or have a medical emergency. Or you didn't really understand the way mortgages really work, and you think the $1200 a month you're paying on the fixed 30 the first 3 to 5 years will actually go down as you pay off your principle, instead of going up because of the way most mortgages stagger the ratio of interest/principal in payments, pretending that every homeowner will see an increase of wages as time goes on.


Haele

>>see a wage freeze<<

If everyone joined a union, then you can strike to get your wages in line with inflation.

>>lose your job<<

A strong social safety net will provide for people laid off from their jobs.

>>or have a medical emergency<<

Two words: Universal Healthcare. Vote for politicians that will pass this into law.

Relatively simple steps that our parents' generation learned years before. You don't wait for the DLC to act. You take action instead and take control of your economic destiny.

In our area, even the unions have been seeing wage freezes over the past six years. And the inflation on the important items, like food and gas, is outrageous.
I always vote progressive. Unfortunately, there's a large amount of people in the county who are in a state of denial, and would rather vote for the candidate who makes them feel special than the one that's honest.

Haele

You buy because the property value is your retirement, healthcare, kid's college, and unemployment insurance all in one. There are no government programs that effectively do these anymore.

A choice between a huge risk in real estate or in certain destitution will cause a lot of people to take a risk.

People aren't stupid - even many who knew they was iffy had good reason to do so.

Wanting to keep one step ahead of poverty isn't a moral flaw.

I got into one of those nasty things when I was selling one home and buying another. The sale fell through at the last minute. My real estate agent had failed to write up the offer on the purchase as a contingent offer, and I stood to lose my earnest money. My realtor and lender advised me not to back out, but instead to take an unconventional loan and then refinance after the sale of the first property. Before the first property sold, I lost my job. I have spent the last year working intermittent contract jobs, living on a very tight budget, and making my payments in full and on time. I finally ran out of money less than a week before getting the first paycheck for a new permanent job, making 2/3 what my job made when I decided to move out of a studio and buy a one bedroom with a washer/dryer, dishwasher, and garbage disposal. I can make it, but I will still need to refinance before the balloon payment is due. With the market being the way it is, though, I probably won't be able to refinance this year as I had planned based on the advice of my real estate agent and my loan officer.

I guess I'm a dupe, then.

We've been p3wned.

I ain't got no home, I'm just a-roamin' 'round,
Just a wandrin' worker, I go from town to town.
And the police make it hard wherever I may go
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore.

My brothers and my sisters are stranded on this road,
A hot and dusty road that a million feet have trod;
Rich man took my home and drove me from my door
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore.

Was a-farmin' on the shares, and always I was poor;
My crops I lay into the banker's store.
My wife took down and died upon the cabin floor,
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore.

Now as I look around, it's mighty plain to see
This world is such a great and a funny place to be;
Oh, the gamblin' man is rich an' the workin' man is poor,
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore.

realize they're not going to get money out of stones, and if they must foreclose, they'll do better to rent that house to the occupants than they will to let it sit empty and trashed.

Unfortunately, greed being what it is, this process usually takes years.

Too bad they didn't give a fuck when they were buying the loans.

Otherwise it would be all too east to walk away and start anew.

and Bush and the f-----g democrats importing South Americans and Mexicans to take the remaining good working class jobs so wages can't rise. The Mexican truckers coming here to taka union jobs. Hey who can make a house payment?
They want a 2 class society and the pigs in both parties are creating a marxist reality for America and the world. The whole aristocracy of the world wants a 2 class society. Wake up World.

Maybe this will now be an eyeopener to those who thought they were "safe" and could look down on homeless people.

Bring it on.

and make money off of them. Best measure for most of these people is to renegotiate their mortgage with the lender. Many of them will be open to doing so. The ones who will lose out big are the ones who have bad credit or mortgaged themselves to the hilt. I especially worry about the retired people, and since this is the boomer generation arriving at retirement, I have to wonder if it is a way for the banks to take over their assets.

This post on SeeingTheForest.com is eye opening and hugely informative imo :

..........................................
August 28, 2007
Today's Housing Bubble Post - The Tip - JUST the Tip of the Iceberg

An "ARM Reset" occurs when an adjustable loan (ARM) changes (resets) from its initial "qualifying" rate, and goes up to its real interest rate. This reset can cause the monthly payments on the mortgage to as much as double.

Much of the trouble we are seeing now in the mortgage markets now is coming from people not being able to meet their payments. But the problem of this rise in payments has only just barely started! Many, many more mortgages reset through the rest of this year -- and then the number really takes off next year.

How many more mortgages reset next year than this year? Go look at the chart of upcoming ARM resets: Calculated Risk: ARM Reset Charts. This is huge. We have only seen the smallest beginning of the problem. This is going to be really, really big next year. A really bad problem.
http://www.seeingtheforest.com/archives/2007/08/todays_housing_114.htm

..........condt

But the real scary part is the graph which the post links to that shows the real pending RESET nightmare we are looking at in Q1 o8 omg the foreclosure increase form the Jan-Mar time frame will mean Q3 and Q4 of 08 will be a massive disaster without government intervention:
http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/2007/08/arm-reset-charts.html

who learned well from the S&L bail out crisis: They play while we pay, pay, pay

Every person has a breaking point, and sooner or later, there will be a situation where a guy has a mortgage that blew up in his face, then when the lender says "Get out!" he finally snaps and says "Make me." When the sheriff comes and says "Get out!" he grabs a shotgun and says "Make me!"

It'll get ugly...

Here in Maryland, where housing prices have skyrocketed, we also have the "McMansion" phenomenon; huge, ecologically indefensible (but for some developments with limited energy-efficient features) single-family homes.

Families who purchased these homes, even if they're holding down the mortgage, are undoubtedly choking on home utility costs. Local energy supplier BGE holds a virtual monopoly, and after a two or three year go-round with the state legislature and state public service commission, are charging electricity to their residential customers at a typical increase of 75%.

We own a small, older home, and our summer bills, typically $150/month in prior years, have been as high as $270. And they don't mess around anymore with niceties when you're late, I found out with a shock. The shut off warning goes out IMMEDIATELY.

It makes me wonder how many in far more desperate financial straits than I will be having their electricity or gas turned off, to compound their problems as they're under threat of eviction.

Wonder what our Fearless Leader has planned, being THE DECIDER, to supplement faith-based initiatives, for the homelessness epidemic that's coming?

No one forced people to sign these mortgages or buy these houses.

Even if there were high pressure sales tactics involved and even if such tactics are highly reprehensible and questionable -- which they are.

No one forced the people to sign the mortgage and I bet it's all written down very clearly in not so fine print what was going to happen.

The same type of principle applies to balance transfers on credit cards. When I get a balance transfer on a credit card at a low percent that is going to go up in a year to a higher percents, I take that into account before I start going hog-wild on charging things on the credit card. I get those balance transfer check offers in the mail all the time. But no one forces me to sign up.

Now that this mess has occurred, I do think that the government needs to get involved and mitigate the problem, so please don't start the posts accusing me of being a right-winger and not caring. I do care about this stuff and do think that there needs to be some governmental assistance put in place.

But I do think it needs to be remembered and acknowledged that the people who signed up for these mortgages in the first place hold some responsibility for their actions.

We lost our house 2 months ago after living in it for 23 years. We lost it because my husband was injured on the job, the disability sucked and he got hosed, then it took over 4 YEARS and over a third of the back benefits to a lawyer in order for him to receive the Social Security disability benefits that both he and I have been paying for almost 30 years. The system is broken and we got screwed. There are plenty of us with personal responsilibity--what about the responsibility of the government to help when it's needed? The whole thing just sucks. We were lucky enough to get out of there with a decent apartment to rent that would take our cats.

I'm sick, tired and fed up.

I wrote that in my post and it sounds like your situation is one where the government definitely needs to help.
I was not referring to situations like yours.
I was and am thinking more of the situations in which people were gambling and speculating in the past few years hoping to game the system with these subprime mortgages and where they were hoping that prices would keep going up and up so that they could sell with a profit.
It does not sound to me like your situation is anything like that.
Best of luck, although from the sounds of it you will need more than luck at this point unfortunately.

We lost ours (18 years in place) after serial IT mergers, downsizings, failed contract renewals, election results,reorganizations, corporate headquarter moves out of state that RIFFED current staff, and outsourcing to India and China. We moved from our first home for a job after a year's unemployment before that one. The longest spell of unemployment has been two years, the shortest, three days. Add to that, assisting two kids in college, one with an out-of-work spouse, and caretaking an elderly parent with BIG health problems that required outside care. I guess that might qualify us as OVERLY PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE (for close family) only. Too be fair, Gramps situation actually helped us hang in there a little longer but for a predatory ReThug relative buttin' into our business. I also had another healthcare scare that thankfully came out okay but will require monitoring. We were at the end of our ropes mentally, and it almost ended our marriage of 37 years this November. Oh yeah, also add in my former employer (a very visible via TV surgeon) who cut my hours in half and decided I needed to pay my 50% of the healthcare premium (previously fully paid). We've been VERY PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE working with what this government has forced on us through its delusional policies for as long as we could possibly manage. You are correct--things are very broken and our future and that of our children is in acute distress. When I saw what happened in NOLA, I know that this government had sold America's soul. I don't think we'll live to see it fixed, and I cry.

But it is truly quite different from most cases we are talking about.

These are people who gambled that their house would increase in value greatly, so that they wouldn't get stuck like this.

You're right - you got screwed, but it doesn't seem like it's partly your fault. Being disabled is never one's own fault!

Many people put the cart before the horse. Fight to get good wages and benefits first, then buy the house. Just because you live in a house and paid for it with a sub prime doesn't mean that you're middle class.

This whole mess was concocted to dupe the working class into believing that they did not need unions nor politicians nor policies sympathetic to the plight of the working class.

They found out that the lenders are worse than predatory. Like the insurance industry, the lenders had it completely calculated out to where there was no way the average person was going to end up owning the asset.

None of this is a mistake. Look what they do to people with credit cards - interest rates that change simply because the company did a credit check and noticed the person was late on a different bill, are wrong and should be illegal. The housing loan industry is the same people as the credit industry which ends up being the banks.

These "unresponsible" home owners did the best they could and were setup to fail.

The people who own the mcmansions likely aren't feeling the heat. They are usually in a different income class than middle-class (who make up to about 100k per year.) These arm home owners probably took the only thing they could afford to get in a house at all. Why else would anyone take an ARM.

ARM was adequately named by the way, they only cost you an arm. I expect LEG loans to come out next.

I should've seen it coming that my job would be de-funded immediately after closing, and that despite the assurances of my employer that they would keep me in work making the same amount, that I'd spend half of the next year not working and the rest of it working for 2/3 of what I made before. I certainly shouldn't have trusted the professionals I had advising me on the decision I made to use a non conventional loan as a bridge while waiting for another property to sell. *sigh* OK, I do admit I should've known better, and gone with my instincts when my instincts were saying "Let the earnest money go, it's only six thousand dollars, let the deal fail. Don't get in over your head." I should've gone with my instincts not to trust the real estate agent after she had not followed my instructions and written up my offer as a contingent offer. I thought I was stuck at the time. I was, but not nearly as stuck as I am now.

I'm not angry at you, or at what you posted. I'm frustrated at being stuck in this tar pit. A lot of people are frustrated and angry that they trusted people who were supposed to be honest and who were supposed to know what they were talking aout. I don't think you're a right-winger, or that you don't care. I do think that if you take issue with the speculators and house-flippers, that you might want to put that up front so that people like me and the other poster you're conversing with about this can see right away that you're not talking about us.

Actually, the evictions started a few years earlier. Only the economy of the Predator Class started collapsing in 1929.

Things are proceeding in different order here in Imperial Amerika.

Bushler did not rise because of economic disaster, but eventaully his policies will cause one to happen.

When that happens, Amerikans being the opposite of what we were in the 1930s and 40s. Then we were people who loved freedom and fought Hitler.

today, the Imperial Subjects of Amerika are Good Germans, lock stock and barrel, and if/when economic or environmental catastophe closes in, the Bushies will know what to do.

Blame the Jews. No, no no, that's not it. Don't confuse LAST time and the Nazis with THIS time and the Bushies. No, the LIBERALS (many of whom, coincidentaly I'm sure, are Jews and gays and all the others that both Nazis and Bushies hate) is who will be blamed this time.

THEN you will see how Ameriakns are now the oppsoite of Americans, especially the ones who fopught Hitler. Let's hope it doesn't come to that, hough history says the likelihood is now HIGH that Amerika is and will continue to be a BushPutinist Totalitarian State.

Invest in companies that make tents.

I don't know about getting a good deal out of someone else's misery.

remember the s&l crisis?

what's the alternative, the price of houses in "normal" times is too high for honest people in real jobs to pay, you have a choice of buying during a crash or from a foreclosure or being forever homeless yourself

damn few people have six figure incomes, yet houses cost $300 or even up to a million dollars -- several million dollars in some areas

you gotta have a place to live and if you rent forever, what will you do when you are retired, you will have to choose between food and rent! so you kind of do have to have a home to stand any kind of chance at all

A lady was driving on the freeway with her fiance and two kids when a trucker went out of control and hit the car causing injuries, severity unknown but no deaths. The couple married and probably got some big, big bucks from the deep pockets of the trucking outfit, at least enough for a nice downpayment. It sold in July oddly for the full price of the mortgage...Judging by their former address in a not-so-nice part of town, I wonder if their financing went through or if they even needed financing. It's really interesting what one can find out about people's circumstances just surfin' the net.

a lot of those "buy forclosed property" things are scams where the desperate homeowner is taken advantage of. Too
bad that some of the tactics are even legal in most states. . .

Imagine the constant fear and anxiety you would feel, being unable to afford your mortgage payments.

Foreclosure may mean closure for a bad situation. Once it's over, you can land in a more financially realistic situation.

We'd have municipalities taking over these abandoned properties and putting them to public use

If we had a communist party as we did in the 1930's, the party would organize demonstrations to block the foreclosure process.

By the fall of 1930, Communist-led Unemployed Councils had begun to experiment with two tactics that had a direct impact on the housing market -- eviction resistance and rent strikes. The first of these, eviction resistance, proved to be one of the most effective weapons in the Party's arsenal. Coming upon instances where tenants had been forcibly evicted, Communist organizers would move the furniture back from the street to the apartment, while appealing to neighbors and passersby to resist marshals and police if the eviction were repeated. Since many marshals and police were reluctant to evict (and since landlords had to pay marshals for evictions), such actions often bought time for beleaguered tenants and gave Communists a new-found respect. Through the fall of 1930 and the spring and summer of 1931, Communists employed this tactic in almost every city neighborhood where they were active, although the bulk seem to have occurred in poor communities where the depression hit early and hard -- Harlem, the Lower East Side, Hell's Kitchen, the South Bronx, Brownsville, and Coney Island. In some of these neighborhoods the Party was relatively weak (the Lower East Side and Brownsville were the only ones where the Party had a mass membership), but eviction resistance did not require active support from the population or even the political sympathy of the victim Given the overextended schedules of marshals and police, a handful of Party cadre could move the furniture back, provided the rest of the neighborhood was sympathetic or indifferent. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of such incidents occurred during the early depression years; some of them led to confrontations with police in which hundreds of people participated, but most of them led to some peaceful resolution, be it retention of the apartment by the tenants or a delay in their departure. "The practice of moving evicted families back into their homes has become frequent of late on the Lower East Side," declared the New York Times in describing the arrest of a group of eviction protesters, "but this was the first time that the police had arrived in time to seize any of the participants in such demonstrations."<13>

http://tenant.net/Community/history/hist03c.html

set up nooses at the residences of judges doing foreclosure cases as a warning.

Apparently, the masses have never been taught how unions came about or about the rent fights on the east coast. Nothing like dumbing down the citizenry to obtain control.

Thanks for that very interesting information.

I do know that even a few years after World War II, an eviction meant that the tenant's possessions were placed on the sidewalk.

I saw a photograph of an eviction on 54th St. between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, c. 1947, where there was a canary in a cage placed on top of the furniture that had been placed on the sidewalk, and nearby was a sidewalk cafe.

Even army veterans were being evicted, and I think that's why the above described photograph had been in the newspaper.

Once bush attacked Iraq he turned his attention to the american people , the have little or have nothings .

Bush and his criminal band have ruined everything they touch . Once they allowed the corporation more and more control and then the bankruptcy laws changed many got screwed big time . Many will go down with this sinking ship without a hope to ever get back again .

while those looking to see what will stick move in.