Cui bono? Does a home buyer really benefit buying a home overpriced by more than the incentive?
This is no benefit to the American citizen except maybe in some abstract emotional sense. It’s ploy to keep home prices high so the banking system does not implode. Put simply: Falling home prices=bankrupt banking system. So they wrap it up as some sort of gift to the home buyer. Most detractors frame it is some sort of welfare to the public when in actuality it’s a handout to the banking industry. Well not really a handout, a desperate attempt at maintaining an already-rigged-by-fraudulent-accounting solvency.
As I said before, with ever deteriorating economic fundamentals, it’s an increasingly costly and losing battle.
While they are desperately trying to inflate housing they are delaying the inevitable on the other end.
My own personal experience with Citi: We stopped paying our mortgage in April. So that is…six months with no payment. They call every 3-4 days (but lately have gone as much as 2 weeks without calling). I am not in foreclosure yet. They tell me they don’t know when they’ll start the foreclosure process, but that I’m “in danger” of foreclosure. Well, no crap. I’m amazed, as I was sure they’d start foreclosing way sooner than this.
Oh, and lately the calls from Citi have been recordings telling me to please hold for the next available person, but then it disconnects and I never talk to a person. This has happened probably the last 5-6 times I answered the phone.
I called Chase back in January, when I was 90 days past due. Another representative told me that I would automatically be evaluated for a loan modification.
“You should just wait until you hear from one of our negotiators,” he told me politely.
Another two months passed without anyone calling, so I tried again in late March.
“I’m sorry, but our analysts have been backed up,” yet another Chase rep told me, even more politely than the previous one. She said each analyst had about 500 distressed borrowers to deal with, and it had been taking about five weeks for customers to get a direct response. The delays seemed to be getting longer.
I was actually beginning to feel sorry for Chase. It seemed to be so flooded with defaulting borrowers that it didn’t have time to foreclose on my house. Eight months after my last payment to the bank, I am still waiting for the ax to fall.
This whole thing has turned into theater of the absurd with the game plan of complete denial and repeating past mistakes.
Lets change the accounting rules and pretend the losses are not there
Lets delay foreclosure as long as possible.
Lets have the government give out subprime loans with no down payment because it worked so well before
