“I can’t for the life of me understand the continued backlash on the borrower…”
Maybe it comes from this scenario being repeated over and over:
1. Media presents sob story of FB who laments how they were deceived, bamboozled, etc.
2. Housing bloggers do the 15 minutes of research that the writer of the piece should have done in the first place and quickly discover (choose one or more from list):
A) Borrower refinanced multiple times to fund purchases completely unrelated to housing.
B) Borrower was a Carlton Sheets disciple who also bought 17 pre-construction condos in Las Vegas.
C) Borrower lied blatently on loan application and/or turned a blind eye to obvious fabrications made by the broker on their behalf.
D) Endless variations on this theme.
It would be nice to think these are abberations. But I know better. I remember the cocktail parties and water cooler conversations where I had to listen to these people drone on about their real estate investment savvy.
The vast majority were speculators. They got high snorting granite countertop dust and watching HGTV and bought into the greatest housing bubble in history. And now they want to be bailed out.
Which isn’t to say that the lending industry and used house salespeople didn’t do their part as well — they did. But the borrowers were, by and large, complicit in the whole affair.
