What follows is a Story in the New York Times about the Housing Crises and the effect that it is having in a small neighborhood in the suburbs of Los Angeles, California.
I could quite a great deal of this, but I will just outline it for you. It is basically a sob story of how people bought houses and went over their heads, getting equity out and then the Market crashed and they were left without their homes. Boo Hoo. š How could I be so mean, nasty and have such a cold heart, you ask?
Because of this part of the story:
Via NYT:
Equity soon became irresistible.
Ms. Sanchez and Mr. Winkler, the couple with two daughters, wanted a new car. So they pulled $15,000 out of the house. Mr. Godfrey and Ms. Saldamando, the schoolteachers, dipped into their equity to landscape their back yard. Mr. Blanco, the electrician, used it to invest in a lot in the desert, and Mr. Soto, the landscaper, picked up a rental home in the Central Valley, an agricultural area northwest of here.
The blockās first residents, Ms Hernandez and her husband, bought a shiny commercial truck, with dreams of expanding his trucking business. He pulled money out of the house nearly annually. And the couple from South Los Angeles used their house ā bought for $152,500 in 1997 ā as a veritable cash machine, refinancing three times before selling it in 2006 for $440,000.
But one by one, the strings began to come apart.
The new buyer of the Los Angeles coupleās home was quickly in over his head; he lost the house in less than a year, with $375,273 still owed.
Title records show that Ms. Hernandez and her husband bought their home in 1997 for $123,000, using nearly 100 percent borrowed money. They refinanced first in 2003, at 11.1 percent interest on $129,000. The equity loans kept coming: the balance rose to $230,000 in 2004; $323,00 in 2005; $374,000 in 2006; then, finally, $415,000, at 8.12 percent, in 2007.
āFor a while things were going really, really good,ā Ms. Hernandez said. āThen the truck broke down, and things went down from there. One day I came home and there was a note on the door that said call this number.ā
It was only then, Ms. Hernandez said, that her husband told her about the equity loans and that āwe were in foreclosure and needed to get out.ā Last fall, the bank offered them $1,000 to leave the house quietly.
āI was a nervous wreck,ā she said, her shoulders tensing with the memory. She tried to shield her children, ages 18, 16 and 14, from the news. āI would pray every night and drive around every day looking for something new.ā
Moving day came in October, and friends on the block stood by as Ms. Hernandez carefully pulled the last bags out of the house and cleaned up ā her home was known for being spotless ā before moving to a rental house a few miles away.
āI mopped, I swept, I wiped down the counters,ā Ms. Hernandez said. āIt was my home. I was still proud of it.ā
Ms. Hernandezās struggles quickly reverberated around Beth Court. If the blockās longest-term residents could lose their home, who might be next?
āI thought, āOh my God, her husband is always working,āĀ ā said Mr. Blanco, now unemployed. āI felt scared. I figured heās working and Iām not working, so maybe weāre going to lose our house, too.ā
Now am I supposed to pity these people? I do not think so. These people bought houses with money that they did not have, then on top of that, they kept taking equity out of their houses to buy stuff with; again with money that they did not even have. So, as far as I am concerned, they got what was coming to them. You do not buy products with money that you do not even have, and expect me to pity you. Of course, the best thing that the stupid liberals can say, is that this is all Bush’s fault. Which is complete bullcrap, because it was Bill Clinton’s idea of floating high risk loans to those who would not be able to normally afford them, is what caused this damned mess in the first place. Basically this caused an artificial inflation of the housing market.Ā All of this was built around a faulty assumption that the economy was going to be okay and never crash. Well, it did, due to the toxic mortgages that Bill Clinton just had to have; and these people, who bought houses with money that they did not have, ended up losing them. Two words for them; Tough Shit. That what they get for buying a house with money that they did not have, and then on top of that getting equity out; which of course, meant a higher house note. Too bad, so sad, you do the stupid, you pay for it.
Not only this, but now, they are bitter. Hey, I thought only we Conservatives were the bitter ones??
Check out this hilarious quote:
āWelcome, and congrats on your house,ā she said in Spanish as she made her way home.
āI feel happy for him,ā Ms. Sanchez said later.
One person who is not happy is Ms. Hernandez, who still visits her best friend and her former neighborhood.
āShe told me she just hated to see the new people at her house,ā Ms. Sanchez wrote in a recent e-mail message.
Lessons Learned
As the foreclosure crisis continues to touch Beth Court, there are those who feel blessed for what is left and for what has been learned, others who feel victimized and bitter, and those who feel that they failed the system and vice versa, but who also believe that misfortune is transitory.
The newcomers ā the Schneiders, the Cortezes and the Giulianis ā have sympathy for those who lost their homes, but feel they have been rewarded for saving, waiting and buying in a conventional manner. The falling home prices were āthe answer to our prayers,ā Ms. Giuliani said. āWe would not have been able to get a house this size elsewhere.ā
Hey Lady, here is your solution to your problem:
Here is the solution to the Houses Crisis!
Stupid liberal morons, act foolishly and then want me to pity them. Not on your best day!
Others: The Big Picture
for Prosperity, which sounds harmless enough, until you check and see the group’s leader once organized for Enron and worked with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
