So people were dumb enough to buy during the bubble homes they couldn’t afford. Then they live for free for over a year. Then the bank forgives/reduces debt.
Yep. Feeling like a chump.[/quote]
Yes, indeed…feeling very much like a chump.
Just yesterday, I was counseling a friend about her upcoming foreclosure and explained that she was really the winner in the whole deal. They’ve lived in their “owned” home about as long as we’ve lived in our rented home, and have paid about the same total amount for housing costs over that period because they didn’t pay for about 9 months, and had modified payments for about 9 more months. Technically, their monthly payments were much higher than ours, but with the free rent and modified payments, the amount is close to what we’ve paid over about 6 years. They also haven’t paid their prop taxes, and the lender has been paying for their homeowner’s insurance.
They stopped paying their credit card payments and medical bills, too. The husband lost his job, but that was many years ago. They’ve been using the home ATM as a way to fund their lifestyle ever since, and were able to pull out a few hundred grand that they apparently won’t have to pay back. We renters certainly didn’t receive a few hundred thousand dollars over the years we’ve lived in our rental homes — that we don’t have to pay back.
Don’t get me wrong, they’re stressed; but they’d be stressed no matter what. If they were renting, they would be in a much worse place because they wouldn’t have been able to access all that credit which funded their lifestyles for the past few years…and they wouldn’t have been able to live for free for 9 months. If renters stop paying their rent, there’s no Turko Files rushing to our rescue when we’re being evicted. No journalists write about our sad tales. No, we’re just evicted.
They will probably file BK, but I have a feeling credit standards will be dramatically loosened in the future; without all these “deadbeat” borrowers, the economy will come to a screeching halt. “They” won’t let that happen, so I expect foreclosures, shortsales, and bankruptcies to be glossed over at some point in time.
Sorry davelj, there’s no way around it…those of us who tried to do the responsible thing are most definitely chumps, and they rub it in our faces every day — like with this announcement about principal reductions.
