[quote=Tillers] . . . I was kind of disappointed it was so one-sided though for the buyers as victims. When the family that lost it took out a first of $750K and another $300K and were only paying interest (not even the full interest at that) they shouldn’t have been held blameless. . . [/quote]
Tillers, my understanding was that the 2nd buyers (who purchased in 2006 and were foreclosed on) paid $1,250,000 for the property. They took out a $900,000 first mortgage, a $225,000 second (“piggyback”) mortgage and put $125,000 down (or 10%).
In my mind, if these buyers only had $125,000 to put down, they should have purchased a property that cost no more than $625,000, making the $125,000 a 20% downpayment. If $625,000 in 2006 would not buy them a suitable property where they wanted to live, then they should not have purchased a residence at all.
These buyers are NOT blameless, possible language barrier or no. If they couldn’t understand what was happening with their first mortgage as a result of the payments they were choosing to make (Option 1), they had about 3.5 years to seek assistance with someone who could explain it to them before they were foreclosed on.
I didn’t come away from the video thinking it was portraying the 2nd owners (who lost the property to foreclosure) as “victims.” They did touch on the “go-go” mentality of the public re: residential RE (buy before you are priced out of the market!) I saw this mindset back in 2004 at a firm I was working. Many of the employees there were just crazy-excited to buy ANYPLACE, just to “get in.” Also, the commentator tried to elicit sympathy from the last buyers, who recently purchased the property for $765K.
