Like a lot of people in ridiculous housing markets a couple of years ago, Jeremy Fletcher of Northridge paid way too much for a house in the San Fernando Valley because that was the only way to buy a house just a couple of years ago. He’s a swimming pool contractor, so there’s a double disaster in the works: overpriced house in overheated market, borrower depends on housing-related construction business income. And then a wonderful bank does a wonderful thing:
Months later, in June 2009, right when he was thinking about selling the home and downsizing into a more affordable residence, Citi called him unprompted. “They said ‘we see you asked about HAMP, and we’re giving you a trial modification today.” The terms, a 2% interest rate for five years, would dramatically lower his monthly payment, from $4,200 to $2,170. They signed him up over the phone, he made his first payment by ATM card, and that was it. Within a few days, they sent over a modification package that put it in writing: if Fletcher made his trial payments for 90 days, and sent in his application with a full income statement that qualified, “we will give you a permanent modification.”
Fletcher sent in the application; he made his payments; he waited the 90 days. When he heard nothing the fourth month, he called and was told by Citi that they were backed up but everything was fine, and to continue to make the trial payments. This went on for a full year, always being told (by a different rep from Citi every time) he was fine and the permanent mod was a matter of time.
In June 2010, he made his payment, and got a call 10 minutes later from the collections department, telling him that he was 12 months due on his loan and owed $15,000.
He finally gets a lawyer friend to help out, and Citi suddenly says, “Oooooh, got a lawyer now, eh? Well let’s get everything settled,” and then Citi settles it by selling the mortgage to some shark, and now the foreclosure inspectors are poking around to see if anyone lives in this house, which cost $900,000 a few years ago. [FireDogLake]
{ 88 comments }
The important thing in this story is that Robert Rubin got super duper rich, drive Citi off a cliff and lost zero credibility. Can Jeremy say the same from his station wagon/apartment? Thought not.
Well, you gotta pay that big salary and bonus to attract talent like that.
First? I've never been first. And these very banks, gaming the system, are the trusted job-creators that the Republithugs won't allow to be regulated. As Alan Greenspan taught us, the market will eventually do the right thing. Just trust the market.
As sorry as I feel for the people losing their homes, it seems like it wouldn't have taken much to see that the thing was a bubble that was going to burst. I saw it coming, and all I do is read the economics column in the Monitor and read a couple of front page stories about the weird mortgage arrangements. Oh, I also saw a ten minute piece on 60 Minutes about it, as well, so I relied on AV material. Also.
'It's an ownership society." I'd like to take George Bush's face and slam it into a cream pie created from the pile of shit he put out about the ownership society. Yet the Democrats never seem to mention his role in this mess and the fact he campaigned on making Americans rich based on a national ponzi scheme.
Nitey. (James Madison? Any good books?)
Methinks somebody recommended a book in the other thread for you.
What you said, except I'd rather slam W's face into a pile of shit and eat a cream pie.
I think the best of it was actually how "ownership society" became "hurr durr Fannie and Freddie caused the Recession" the minute Bush left office.
Let us be honest and just admit the whole Fannie/Freddie whining is really just "it was all the coloreds fault and the blameless corporations are simply appalled".
Exactly.
To be fair, Bush's "ownership society" also provided the philosophical basis for his tax cuts for the super-wealthy and the creation of a permanent landed aristocracy, via elimination of the Estate tax. Surely Republicans have similarly repudiated both of these policies on account of their negative impact on our economy and our goverment's balance books, as well, right?
…Right?
Almost like it was planned. Notice how the problem only started during a 2008 election year. And…..only got worse as we got closer to electing a Democrat.
Well Citibank is a corporation. Corporations are people. People need houses. Therefore fuck the homeowners! Thanks again SOCTUS.
I think you got that abbrevation wrong. The proper spelling is SCROTUS
Wasn't it some obnoxious asshole media guy complaining about people who got suckered into these deals (by people like said asshole's friends in the financial gangs) who started this tea party bullshit?
Isn't the fault of this housing crisis due to a combination of predatory lending, dishonest realtors, and little government regulation?
Oh, wait. The market is supposed to solve these problems.
i think you mean rick santelli?
fuck that guy.
Yes, that's the asshat.
How soon Chascates forgets.
PALIN-SANTELLI 2012!
Don't be silly. The only reason megacorporations made bad loans was because Barney Frank forced them to. And the only reason they invented a whole bunch of weirdass derivatives that allowed them to bet against their own bad loans was because liberals held a gun to their heads, and said, get rich selling a bunch of shit investments to each other until everyone's living in an underpass except you rich motherfuckers.
Also, lazy blacks are at fault.
Almost like they knew it was going to happen and they wanted to protect themselves.
That was the stated reason. However, it was shown that the meme was pre-made for him by the various Koch groups, which was why all those "spontaneous" groups were already set up.
This post will be (cont) and abbriviated for space.
Jeff and I bought our dream house, the last one in a new development, the model home. Upon moving in, we discovered that the builder developed the whole subdivision to sell to out-of-state buyers during the boom. AZ, CA and NV was drained. Investers were buying 5, 6, 10 homes at a time, during groundbreaking and selling once the driveway was poured, at a tidy profit. Internal memos forbade selling to locals to live in the homes.
The bubble burst and out-of-state buyers, including an unnamed person, for legal purposes, involved in the actual "payola" scandal scurried to rent the properties out to any warm body that would pay a few hundred dollars. I have no problem with renters. I am talking about frat boys who would move in with nothing more than a handshake and then the carnage began.
Jeff and I hired a lawyer and had to cough up $30K in one year to him. The evidence in our favor was 18-inches thick. The builder, a local U of NM alum football QB hero dumped his company after we bought the last house and merged w/ his partner, changing names of the Co.
We only asked that he buy the house back and allow us to leave. The case ended in mediation, with the mediator telling us that he was a close personal friend of the builder and that the builder was going to file for bankruptcy and "tough shit" The builder admitted everything but once someone goes belly-up you are screwed.
The builder is back in business, under the new name. His mortgage company is back in business. My old attorney is still taking on new clients in this case, knowing how it's going to turn out.
The builder was slick, he tried to break us, financially. He would be sent 800 pages of evidence, at $1.50 a page, plus paralegal services and then he'd ask for an additional copy, on our dime. In NM, you have to pay the witnesses. Imagine having to pay the dickweeds who screwed you over to testify.
I have the legal papers and one of these days we will move away. I am going to publish a book about the U of NM QB football hero and I am going to use his own words against him. Nothing but his confessions and the book will be free.
I have friends who bought a nearly new $700,000 home in Redwood City, CA (and this was before the worst of the bubble, so it probably had a book value over a million at one point) only to find out it had been built so poorly that it was going to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to fix. Same thing you ran into – builder promptly declared themselves bankrupt, the principals re-incorporated and started building again. I (at the time a law school student) told them they could try to pierce the veil/demonstrate fraud but it would be a bitch and a half, and even if they did there may not be anything to get back, and figured they'd probably just fix a few things up and dump it if they could.
Unlike me (or you from the sounds of it) my friends both have considerable personal wealth and the husband makes serious money in computers (now at Google, then on his first of several startups). So they went ahead and sued and made the builders life as hellish as they could. In the end they got some stuff fixed (and they still live in the house) but basically turning the guy into a pariah was much more satisfying. So occassionally, on some small level, justice does in fact get done.
Thanks for sharing your interesting story. I am glad they stuck with it.
I have a friend who just started working for Google and he's never been happier in his life.
Our builder tried to tell us that we weren't sold a "Raylee" home and no where did it say his company name. It was even etched on the house keys, on every sheet of paper, on the binder that held the warranty, etc. They even gave us a bottle of Raylee wine after we signed with the Raylee pen. He was slick and I will get him back one of these days.
HAMP = Hopey's Affordable Modification Program.
I know, I know, "FDL that way —————->"
I'll make sure to tell Ken, too.
~
And to top it all off, he's fighting to keep a house in the Valley.
Well, California is a liberal state with Mexicans, so clearly this is Obama's fault.
& those Messicans need to stop ogling Juan Williams's obese white girlfriend, while they're at it.
Okay, I haven't read the comments yet, but I did glance at the FDL story, and independent of whether or not HAMP is a terrible failure (it is) or Citi is a terrible bank (it is), the guy in the story — a swimming pool contractor — bought a $900K house in Northridge in "late 2007".
I guaran-fucking-tee you that the slowing and imminent bursting of the Cali real-estate bubble was obvious to all by the start of 2007. By late 2007, the bubble was already visibly deflating (the statewide median price declined 12% in 2007). This guy's fundamental problem is that he financed a house while prices were collapsing. I'd like to be more sympathetic, but I can't manage it. He built swimming pools. Was there a robust demand for swimming pools in 2007? Fuck, no.
Look, the guy obviously got mistreated by Citi, but he makes a terrible poster-child for the evils of HAMP, or whatever, because he voluntarily put himself in the shit, and given his line of work he should have known better.
I live in Cali. Lots of people live in Cali. Lots of people have "issues" with their home loans, even if they didn't 90-100% finance (that's what a $4200/mo payment on a $900K house means, BTW) an overpriced house in late 2007. Damn near none of them are getting any relief from HAMP either, and many of them would be better examples.
I stipulate that Citi is a heartless, and also very prone-to-err, bank. I can actually muster some sympathy for Mr. Fletcher's family. But I still have to point out that Mr. Fletcher put himself in a giant hole, when he probably should have known better; and I'm also curious as to whether he ever read the documents he was sent that said he'd be granted a permanent modification to find out WHAT the terms of that permanent modification would be (Hint: they don't have to be the same as the terms of the trial mod).
Clearly (according to him) he got shitty/misleading responses from Citi's customer lack-of-service people. I find that quite easy to believe. But I still wonder what his actual modification documentation said. This seems to be missing from the FDL article.
Ken, you know as well as I that there must be a million people in Cali with equally depressing failure-to-modify stories, but who were less responsible for putting themselves in the shit. Why you pick this one to highlight?
You make a very good point, thank you. There will always be those who cry, "the sky is falling" prematuraly and those in denial, "buy now!" Who do you trust? How many people actually predicted "don't buy that Toyota if you like your brakes to work?"
The worst thing about Glenn Beck, hawking gold sales, is that people that he spooks into investing don't have that "spider sense" to know when they should sell that gold before they lose their shirt.
In good times, everyone is there to sell you a mortgage, gold, etc. Once the bottom falls out they are silent.
I generally concur. If you don't know, those Citibank phone reps are poorly trained fatasses, most of whom work out of a shitty corporate megaplex in Missouri (although I'm sure other phone centers exist as well) and whose whole extended clans' housing wouldn't be worth a two bedroom bungalow in Northridge. I can gaurantee you that these just above minimum wage slaves have zero sympathy for his plight or anyone else who got boned by the housing bubble, seeing as how they own their trailer outright ever since Zeke got his settlement check.
"Why you pick this one to highlight?"
There was just something very common about it. The guy has kids, kids need to go to school, you want to get in a decent school, it looks like houses are still going up because they have for almost a decade, the reasons go on and on.
The guy wasn't the story, to me. Citi was the story. And with foreclosures suddenly up again for January, the mortgage holders/servicers are going to continue to be the story, and the story is going to continue to be awful.
I'm probably carrying this too far, but in late 2007 the only people who thought houses were still going up were — politely — not paying attention.
After I was cast out of the tech biz, I spent a few years doing mortgage loans. I wasn't terribly successful at it, because I had this aversion to signing people up for deals that I thought were too risky. I stayed active through part of 2007, just to tell prospective borrowers "DON'T DO THIS" when I got the chance.
I've encountered a large number of people who refused to believe "don't do this", even when supported by charts with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back explaining each one. I gave up. You don't make many commissions by telling people not to buy shit.
I'll agree with you that Citi's shitty customer service is a story, and that the foreclosure grind is a story, and that it's awful.
But the real awfulness is all the folks who just got sucked into the shit, and who haven't gotten any kind of relief offered to them. This dude dived into the shit, and got offered a lifeline, and then got jerked around. I'd still like to know what his modifications doc said.
"I'm probably carrying this too far, but in late 2007 the only people who thought houses were still going up were — politely — not paying attention. "
Or, maybe he was paying attention, but was swayed by a fast talking "expert". Still doesn't excuse him…but I know a few folks in the mortgage industry that got out. They can tell you stories about fast talking bullshit artists that will curl your hair.
Back around late 2004 or early 2005, I saw a story in the LA Times profiling Californians who were buying into the market. All of them had taken out those insane ARM mortgages that were going to triple and quadruple their monthly payments after a few years. And these were people who were not in lucrative professions (one was a nurse in her late 20s, as I recall, and there was a married couple that both had working-class jobs but had somehow found their way into an $850,000 house.) I remember thinking "These people are fucking nuts." And the economists quoted in the article were essentially saying the same thing, while also warning that the overheated market was not sustainable.
What really stood out was a stat in the article: the percentage of ARMs taken out statewide had gone from 2% in 2001 to 48% in 2004. People were taking huge risks that their salaries would go way up in five years so they could make those balloon payments, though considering wages have been stagnant for thirty years there was no reason to believe those windfalls would happen.
My point is that while I can certainly sympathize with this guy's desire to buy a home for his family, perhaps near good schools for the kids and whatnot, he did take a GIANT risk, and he did so at a time when, with a little research, he could have easily apprised himself of the downsides. Or maybe he did know those downsides and took the gamble anyway. Either way, in this case he was gambling in a way that risked his family's stability and sense of security. That's a hell of a thing to take chances with, especially since, as STW pointed out, the air was leaking from the balloon by late 2007.
the banks were also telling people they could "refinance" later on down the road when the rising home price would give them instant equity. the continually rising home prices……….up into infinity.
How could a swimming pool contractor think he can make enough to afford a $900,000 mansion?
Well, while I think Mr. Fletcher was an idiot, a $900K house in Northridge in late 2007 would have been more like a nice middle-class house.
Overpriced, and in a collapsing market, but not a mansion as I understand it.
"A nice middle-class house" around here is in the $150-400K range; having a place cost almost a million that is anything less than a mansion is insane.
Forget SorosBot it's
Chinatown California.Two illustrations of how insane parts of California got:
1. Read a story in about 2003 or so about a nurse in SJ who had saved 250k in cash to buy a starter house – and couldn't even get a 2 br crap shack. That was the final nail in my desire to move back to NorCal – at least before the bubble burst.
2. A year later, my parents left Torrance. It is a nice enough area (for the armpit that is North Torrance/Gardena/Hawthorne/Lawndale/Compton), middle class but near lots of working class/sprawl. My folks bought it on a 15 year note in 1975 and were pissed it went from 45k to 55 in the last week before they bought it. It is a 3 br ranch on a slab, tiny lot in a 40 year old development and it wasn't in pristine shape. Sold it to a friend on a handshake as a starter house for the friend's kid at what was probably below market. Final price – 475k.
Bought a much nicer place in Carmel, Indiana, on a double sized lot, put 50k into giving my mom the kitchen of her dreams, and still cleared 200k on the deal. So yeah, you could spend 900k and not get much.
I am in no way criticizing you or your parents; it sounds like they did a smart thing, got a good deal and are happy.
But for us "coastal eleet snobs", isn't the punchline of that story "Yeah, but now they live in Carmel, Indiana?"
My mom has a small one bedroom house in Sacramento that she paid 425K for. This was after housing prices started coming down. Her neighbors bought their small two bedroom home for 700K. This is in a neighborhood considered to be lower-middle class, in an area that is nice but not premium like the bay area.
I was shocked at how cheap the housing and rental prices were when I moved to D.C. California was insane for a long time, and it's going to take even longer for it to recover from the crazy.
That's okay, it looks like the creditors are getting ready to foreclose on CITI Field.
(Lets here it for Team Madoff!)
Break up the Mets!
(Seriously: my Brewers will take Jose Reyes off their hands. Throw in Beltran, too. (Since our CF Carlos Gomez is dog-shit.))
For the price of that one house, he probably could have bought four-and-a-half very respectable houses in any posh lake or riverfront suburb with kick-ass schools and prepatory academies here in Metro Detroit. Though, a pool contractor isn't exactly a steady job in this climate to say the least.
Once I have my credit-card (only) debt paid off — should be mid-2012 — my dream is to move to Detroit, buy a house for 10,000, & get a job at a Windsor, Ontario, strip-club as a dj. I'll play way too much Carpenters & Belle & Sebastian & totally bum everyone the fuck out. But I'll have fun.
Plenty of dj jobs in Detroit (along Eight Mile) and in working class suburbs. You don't have to risk the occasional humiliating/arousing/annoying strip searches at the border.
But, but, Canada is so exotic, especially Windsor.
Home ownership used to be the American Dream. Now with the deflating values, one-sided loan agreements, predatory loan marketing, rapidly rising taxes, eminent domain laws, sharp practice and thuggish approach to collection, it is fast becoming the American Nightmare. My son and his wife (in their mid-40's) have awakened and smelled the coffee. They are paying off the last three or four years on their mortgage, thus there is very little interest to write off. Taxes go up every year and appreciation is a distant memory. They have acquired a $150K motor home and have decided to make their home on the road in the very near future. I am of like mind.
They have acquired a $150K motor home and have decided to make their home on the road in the very near future. I am of like mind.
"There's room to move as a National Park Volunteer!"
Luck of the draw, roll of the dice, etc, I had put off buying a home for years. I originally bought a trailer and a chunk of land when I got out of college, as I was working in the oil field and only home 5 or 6 days a month and didn't need anything fancy, figuring once I moved up in my chosen field I would buy a home that did not have axles. A couple years later I invited my granddad to stay with me, he was 79 and had recently lost his second wife, he'd had a couple of heart attacks so I figured he could come down to TX and run out the clock, figured a couple years at most. I put off buying a house, as I did not want to make him move again, plus I was working for the govt by then and travelling to Europe (and subsequently to Central Asia and the ME) a lot. (cont)
…After 13 years, though, I'd had enough (never did find the old man's Dorian Gray pic), and bought a 3500 sf home on 2 acres for $199K 2 yrs ago. Turns out I hit it right as the market here bottomed out. Usually my luck runs completely opposite to this.
Completion of side story: Grampa stayed on at the trailer, started going downhill, and I shamed my parents into taking him in back in August, he's thriving out at the guest house on the ranch and will be 95 in June. Fucking Energizer Bunny. Maybe the good deal on the house was karmic payback for looking after granddad for all those years?
I have no doubt of that Karma part. I have the Golden Eagle (Geezer) Free Admission Pass to all Nat. Parks. I figure I can stealth camp by motorcycle (much easier to conceal than a 4or 4+ wheeler) across the Country if I find myself footloose. First, though, would be a N to S walk of the Appalachian Trail taking my own sweet time!
Say hi to Mr Sanford!!
I lived this but was able to get the mod. Luckily. it halved my payment but added 50K to my loan due to the 14 months of modified underpayments and fees etc they tacked on, plus when i asked for a itemization of the fees they refused to give it to me. Over a barrel and fearful of loosing the mod I shut up. luckily the house is not underwater ( we under paid in most people's opinion) and i have a loan modified for the life of the loan not just 5 years. (25 more yrs) a hamp success story apart from the 14 months of utter fucking hell as we went from 30 days late to deeply behind as they said "oh we're so behind….we need to train more people…"
I work at a small regional bank in collections, working out actual hardship modifications with people. Fortunately with my current employer I am able to offer fair terms with a quick turnaround on new documents and no hanky-panky. Roughly half of these deals end up coming to naught because the first lien on the house is held by Chase or Wells Fargo or Citi or someone on that scale and they seem to be hellbent on fucking it up. Based upon dozens and dozens of conversations with homeowners I am now absolutely convinced that the largest banks are intentionally making the HAMP process cumbersome. They want to be able to say they participate in the HAMP program while at the same time minimizing the number of accounts actually modified. So they hire too few staff to administer the program, fail to train them, force people to go through phone tree hell to talk to anyone, make sure that the foreclosure department and the HAMP department don't talk to each other (end result: you can get a HAMP modification and be foreclosed on at the same time) and they fail to assign a specific person to work each case, so you speak to a different person each time and have to give the bank your life story every single time you call in.
It sickens me on a daily basis.
Why do you hate The Invisible Hand (America)?
I've been the guy to knock on the door, look someone in the eye and tell them they don't live there any more. That hand ain't so fucking invisible when your job is to be its middle finger.
I am still rather baffled myself as to how folks could apparently in all seriousness whine about how unfair President Obama has been to those blameless banks and insurers.
Aside from the banks and their hangers-on, who is whining?
Because, it's always groping us unsolicited.
No means no, Invisble Hand!
Don't the banks get more money if they keep people in their homes and paying? It's not like owning the house themselves would be worth much. So why fuck up the HAMP process on purpose?
I'm not doubting you, I'm wondering what their angle here is.
I got no snark here. Years of graduate school made me financially conservative – some would say cheap – yet gave me a good credit score (pay tuition on a credit card then pay off the card when your stipend or loan comes through). When we were shopping for a house in Baltimore 8 or so years ago everyone was pushing us to spend more and put less down. We ended up buying the cheapest house we saw and putting down more than 20% – not because I am smart but because I am stubborn.
Though I did tell two colleagues not to buy in 2006-7 because even I could tell this was a unsustainable bubble.
This is why we deal with a credit-union and not a major bank. They're staffed by people whose lightbulb isnt very bright, but at least we're not totally buttfucked (just sometimes).
Got my mortgage through my credit union, and they promptly turned around and sold it to fucking B of A. I was not happy.
My wife I went through this housing crisis selling 2 homes and buying one. I’m too lazy to go into the details but we came out of the mess in financially good shape, mentally not so much. We saw a lot of foreclosed houses in the process many of them trashed by frustrated owners. I also came to the conclusion that Wells Fargo is one very evil corporation.
"…also came to the conclusion that Wells Fargo is one very evil Corporation." As opposed to the very good ones, which are????
Corporations are amoral eating machines – devouring everything in their path in the name of profit.
Snark free: I run a small collections law firm. I just settled a case for one of my credit unions (still the good guys) that had a second trust (mortgage) on a house, and Citi had purchased the first a few years ago. Citi went to foreclose on the first trust and found out their predecessor in interest had screwed up the legal description and the mortgage was recorded against some random other property. They had no first lien, knew it, and tried to foreclose anyway on both properties, even though the random house had no connection to anything. When they realized that they had no lien, they sued my credit union for '"unjust enrichment" because the credit union would not agree to correct what had become Citi's problem. After pointing out to Citi in my legal filings that you can't foreclose on what you don't have a lien on (d-uh) they paid off my client in full.
After settling, I sent an anonymous note to the random house advising them that Citi had tried to foreclose on their house. A month later, a buddy of mine said he was representing the random house suing Citi because Citi refused to release the bogus lien, saying it was still in foreclosure.
No problem, except the house has been owned for 40 years by the same couple, and they don't have a mortgage. Moral? Find a credit union, bank there, avoid making profits for the financially obscene.
Good advice. I can't recall ever hearing of a CU going tits up or fucking over its customers without cause. Could be that non=profit thingy or that tight regulation thingy, ya think?
Now hold on a damn minute here–if you're suggesting that CU's are some kind of model for responsible lending, just how the hell is anyone supposed to get obscenely rich off'n 'em? That's not the American way!
Furgive me. wuzn't thinking, cuz, call back the hounds.
At this point the only way I'm going to be satisfied if you can walk down Wall Street and see a banker hanging from a noose on every lamp-post. Sure, some might think it's extreme but there's really no redeeming value in these fuckers – they gobble up everything, demand HUGE bonuses for cheating their customers and whine when anyone complains. Fuck them all.
Separate thought – beware of the television shows. Before the .com bust there were several "Wall Street" shows – flashy stock traders, etc. Before the housing bubble burst there were all of these "house flip" shows – buy a house for $X slap a coat of paint on it, sell it for $X + Y.
We're starting to see some "gold" shows so Glenn's followers will have something new to complain about soon.
It's like the probably apocryphal story of the Wall Street Magnate who avoided the Great Depression who when asked why he sold when he did said "When the paperboy started giving me stock tips I knew it was time to sell."
A house near my disabled son's just went into foreclosure. We'd like to move closer to him and it's a "nicer" house than ours (for reasons that don't apply to this story). Wells Fargo owns it and my wife caught the guy putting up the sign and said she'd take it. She's been observing the people Wells Fargo is sending in to repair it and also the former occupants while they were looting it. (They stopped when she said we might buy the place, which was nice of them.) The plumber they sent warned my wife about what he has seen and said the house isn't worth more than 150K. The occupants told her where the water damage was. Now, knowing we're watching, Wells Fargo is installing white carpet to make the rooms look bigger (which does not fool me for a second) and slapping new bathroom fixtures and paint over places where my wife has already seen mold and water damage. I'm sure they're going to give us some price as close to 300K as they think they can get away with, but when we detail what we know they've done to cover shit up, I think they will see things our way. We have enough equity in our old house (been there 24 years) to pay cash at 200K, and I know the most vicious real estate/construction lawyer in history, so we'll see.
And we'll finance it through our Credit Union after making WF think we'll do it through them as I don't trust WF as far as I can throw Texas.
I LOVE you Citibank. Me next! Me next! Who's a good bank? YOU are!
Practically exactly the same thing happened to my hair stylist.
The banks are evil.
*Warning – no snark *
I feel the most sympathy for folks like barbara_I who were defrauded. Though I do feel bad that this guy overpaid for his house and that these banks' unethical tactics are only aided by the administration's wrong-headed HAMP program, I don’t think this situation is anyone’s fault but this homeloaner. With his income (I am guessing $90,000 in 2007 fro pool cleaning?), he should have bought a condo in Reseda, not a ranch house in Northridge. Of course, then, he would have to live near and go to school with the poor Brownz. So sad, but working class people have few options about where they can live.
This guy – like most so-called middle class Americans, are greedy. That’s why he bought too much house, that’s why he jumped on the HAMP mod (even though, if he was prepared to sell at the time, he knew the realities of keeping that financial albatross), that’s why Obama and all the Democrats scrambled to come up with the loan mod program, and that’s why banks quickly got on the bandwagon. They all understand how entitled and greedy Americans are — so entitled, they won’t believe you when you say “You are too fucking poor to own a house in California — go rent somewhere and save your money. Please.”
Also, this guy got off lucky. Approval of a loan mod usually means banks force you to resign mortgages docs that essentially waive your California rights to write off the balance on a defaulted loan. Meaning, once you get the mod and you still get foreclosed, banks can come after you for the hundreds of thousands of dollars you owed on the mortgage, which they couldn't have otherwise. Compared to a lot of other HAMP suckers, this guy got off good. Sadly.
Not pool *cleaning,* pool *contractor.* He was doing $250K a year. Look, I don't think anyone should buy anything unless they've got the *cash,* and then they should still not buy most things, but if you're a sole proprietor doing $250K a year (I assume his wife works, too), then you would be encouraged to buy a $900K house in SoCal during boom that went from 1995 or so until 2008.
And he's going to lose his house and his credit is destroyed and he lost the $300K in down and payments he's made, so I don't know if that meets any standard definition of "lucky."
When I was a lad we lived in a rolled-up newspaper in the bottom of a septic tank. Then the bank foreclosed on the newspaper. . .
You posh bastid!
My decision to throw a coat of stucco on a modified garage turns out to have been the financial win of the century.
Built a house out of straw bales, chicken wire, rebar and stucco.
I believe I'll avoid tracking him, his trail is reputed to be slippery to the extreme.
Slippery – like it's well-lubed?
One would need snow tires, even if in a 4-wheel drive Hummer.
Aside from the banks and their hangers-on, who is whining?
A couple of hundred clowns with misspelled signs.
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