Monday Sober Thread: Domicilia

This has me absolutely furious:

<a class="postlink" href="http://finance.yahoo.com/loans/article/111500/the-25-year-foreclosure-from-hell" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://finance.yahoo.com/loans/article/ ... -from-hell</a>

Unscrupulous mortgage brokers and soulless big banks certainly have contributed to the mortgage crisis, but there has been far too little attention paid to the douchebags who feel entitled to a $600,000 condo on a $30,000/year salary. This bitch should be drawn and quartered.


Focus: Been foreclosed? Skipped out on the rent? Tell your side of the story.

 

Re: Ain't I clever

I will admit to bumping this out of pure personal curiosity. A lot of people are eager to blame the mortgage crisis on unscrupulous banks and lenders, and they surely had a hand in things. However, they were aided and abetted by millions of people who saw an opportunity to buy property they could never possibly afford, and did so anyway.

I live in an expensive area because that's where I work. I rent. The only time I have had the resources to maybe, possibly buy a place worth living in was about 10 years ago. A nice condo that was about like a standard 1br apartment was going for $102,000 in a particular city. I was living on grad student money at the time and, though I had some down payment cash in the bank, I couldn't make the numbers work and ended up renting. Within a couple of years, the ARM explosion drove the cheapest condo in that same city up to well over $300,000. Now things have settled down and that same place is probably $250,000. Is there any legitimate reason why that place's value has gone up 2.5X over 10 years? Did they discover gold there? Did they build a mountain of new industry next door? No.

According to the statistics, I make good money now. I still don't really know how I'll ever be able to afford a house on my income alone. The craziness of buyers apparently grows faster than my paycheck.

What are your experiences with the housing market and foreclosure?

 

I rented a house in Chula Vista for a while. Nice big three bedroom on a hill, a block away from the shitty part. Rented it from a guy named [REDACTED] (if I remember right) who claimed to be not only a landlord, but an inventor, which is material to the story inasmuch as to give you an idea of his delusions of grandeur.

I was driving a '69 Camaro as my daily driver the entire time I lived there. The rentorship of the house had passed from a couple other Navy guys to me (all of whom signed on to the lease at the appropriate times). [REDACTED] the dickwad tried to evict us because my car had an oil leak. He claimed it was causing irreparable damage to his property (i.e. the concrete driveway).

He threatened to evict us three months before the lease was up, and we ended up caving and moving (without breaking contract, because it was at the lessors request) two months early.

Problem was, he tried to sue me afterward. He claimed exaggerated cleaning prices for electrical outlets, light switches, carpet (which, under California Renters law, is the responsibility of the Lessor to replace after a year, which we were well past). The kicker was that he wanted to sue me for $8000 to replace the driveway, which he claimed I had ruined beyond repair, in violation of the lease.

I was in the Navy at the time, and took it to Navy legal. As it turns out, oil spill on a driveway is considered normal wear and tear on a property. He wanted to sue anyway. I really hate court, I've had bad experiences.

The whole thing went away after I had hired a concrete cleaning crew for a couple hundred bucks (which didn't completely erase it), and then went back to photograph the results. Turns out the new tenant was leaking just as much oil as I was from their beater car, and he couldn't say shit to me anymore.

Moral of the story is, FUCK [REDACTED]. He's a dick landlord, and if you ever move into Chula Vista, don't move into [REDACTED] street.

 

Edit: too drunk to make reasonable points. Please erase.

 

I was renting a place in this town called Watsonville. Watsonville is a pretty shitty city/town. It is about 55,000 residents on the census, and at least 65k+ when you take all the illegal immigrants into account. The place was Mexican central. It was really culture shock for me moving 10 miles north into an affluent town, and being surrounded by white people.

Anyway, some developers built a big condo/townhouse complex in the city for who knows what reason. They were nice units for sure, but they charged ridiculous prices for them, in a town where most people couldn't afford them, and the town wasn't going to be attracting wealthy people, so they had the same loan programs that screwed they system.

After graduating college, Jägerette and I house sat for her parents while we figured out where to live. We found a place for rent in this complex, a pretty large studio. The guy we rented from had bought the place for over 200k, and was moving to SoCal, and figured he would rent it out since there wan no one who wanted to buy it. 950 bucks a month, which left us with a lot of disposable income, so we had that going for us.

It wasn't too far from her work, and I could walk to my job. Almost immediately we noticed that the places around us were emptying out as more and more people got foreclosed on. We figured we were fine, as the owner had a teaching job, and there weren't any problems.

Well one day we get a letter from the landlord saying, oh, the place is in foreclosure, and has been for a few months, and the bank is probably going to seize the property soon.

So basically the guy had stopped paying his mortgage for like, 7-8 months while we were paying him while he was just pocketing the money on a place that he technically didn't even own. So basically we had to scramble to get the fuck out of there. We had about a week to pack our shit up as we didn't know when the bank would show up and lock us out, so we took everything valuable and irreplaceable and took it to her parents place. I had to take time off work, and pack our shit up.

The "landlord" had the gall to ask for the rent for the last month there after he told us he hadn't paid a cent on the place in half a year. I laughed, and told him that I had better get our security deposit back. He told me he would.

I haven't seen it, and it would be too expensive to take him to court.

I went back to the place recently to see if the bank had changed the locks, which they had, it took them months to do it. I was looking to see if I could get in and take the couch and love seat and fridge to sell them to try and recoup the deposit, but I couldn't get in anymore.

What do you folks think, hire a locksmith?

 

As far as I know, Bank of America still has not carried out the foreclosure on my house in St. Pete, FL and we haven't lived there in more than 2 years. Our interest-only mortgage was SEVERELY underwater because of the bubble bursting and the house was falling down around our ears, mainly because of a large old oak tree that was pushing the roof off of the house. My husband's company told everyone that you could either relocate or face layoffs so we moved to Virginia. Now we rent and have trouble finding jobs presumably because of the foreclosure (most employers do credit checks now - especially for my profession). We were damned if we did, damned if we didn't.

For the record, we tried to do a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure but for BOA to even consider it, we would have had to list it for at least 3 months. No agent was going to list that house (we know - we asked) because of the structural problems that the house had (that we were unaware of when we bought the place) and we couldn't really do anything about it from 5 states away. We couldn't even do a short-sale because it was in such bad shape - we wouldn't have even gotten a third of what we owed on the place. Even my well-to-do, perfect-credit parents agreed that walking away was about the only thing we could do. To remove the tree alone would have cost about $10,000 because its roots were under the foundation and that doesn't include the expense to fix the roof after that. Whoever winds up with it is going to have to tear the whole house (and tree) down and start over again.

 

I could be wrong, but brick + window is a lot cheaper than a locksmith and is equally as illegal.

In all seriousness, my buddy went through the same shit. He was given 60 days to vacate from the time the deputy showed up to tell him his landlord hadn't paid his mortgage for 5 months. Then the owner had the gall to come in, accompanied by deputies, to take the stove, fridge, dishwasher, and washer/dryer.

Look up Squatter's Rights. This applies in some states.

 

Hey, there is a recent water bill with my name on it, that should be proof enough that I "live" there

 

I think the notion of blaming the 'home owners' for this is absolute bullshit. It's exactly what the banks and media in their pay want you to think becuase it takes the blame from the banks. When the truth is, the banks were rotten to the fucking core, tricking people into loans they could never afford, committing forgery's, and even foreclosing on homes of people who had nothing to do with the banks.

But of course, just as people like to blame the unemployed for unemployment ("Get on your bike" etc.) they blame the victims here too.

I've only in my life rented private property for one year, but I made sure to never fill out on any paperwork, always telling the landlord I'd send the forms in the post etc. Ran up a large electricity bill in her name and then skipped out on the last months rent.

 

You think the issue lies more with the people saying "hey, given your income and spending habits can you afford a $2,000 per month mortgage for the next 30 years" than the people who signed the piece of paper saying they can do so? The banks only have information on income, credit history and current outstanding debt, they have no way of knowing if you have a gambling problem, expensive drinking habit, feel entitled to go out to eat three nights a week or use enough electricity to power a city every month. You could say they SHOULD know this based on how entitled we all are, but really, the blame should lie on the people who were too fucking stupid to sit down, do the math and realize that they can't afford the payments without significantly scaling back their lifestyle.

Victims? Since when was employment a right? Don't get me wrong, I know a couple of people who probably shouldn't have been laid off, but I know far more people who just haven't gotten around to finding new jobs that really fulfill them yet thanks to the fact that they can sit on their asses and still collect checks. Now don't get me wrong, unemployment is a nice insurance to fill the gap in employment, but with all these extensions it's like a two year vacation to some people. If you don't think extending unemployment benefits means less people looking for jobs you need to take a psychology class. And I'm not blaming the people, they're just doing what the dollars are telling them to do, I blame the government for making 'sit on your ass' a livable wage. The worst part is when these people will finally have to go look for work with a two year gap in their resumes thanks to mama government's help.

Is there a moral to this story or were you just being a dick? Honest question, because you don't strike me as the dickish type.

 

Except people wern't given deals this clear cut. They were told their interest rates were variable but would remain low, but then they sky rocketed. This Rolling Stone magazine article clearly shows many of the dirty tricks played by the banks:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/232611" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/232611</a>

This shit is criminal and yet as always, right wing America blames the victims of such a corrupt and terrible system.

Employment isn't a right, but as a Socialist, I feel it should be.

 

I'm not going to read that article for the same reason you probably wouldn't sit through a Fox News show, they are ridiculously biased. I'll give you this, I'm willing to bet that people were goaded into signing off on mortgages with interest rate risks that they weren't able to assume, but at they same time, IF YOU DON'T KNOW HOW VARIABLE INTEREST RATE MORTGAGES WORK, DON'T FUCKING SIGN YOUR NAME TO ONE. I can guarantee you that the paperwork was clear as day that they could be paying rates as high as they ended up paying, they just wanted to believe they were getting a good deal. It's like the guys who put 100% of their retirement funds in Enron stock because it was doing well, yes, the highs are great in a homogeneous portfolio, but the lows are at ground zero, don't make these moves if you are too dumb to understand the risk, you're a grown ass adult.

Clear out an hour of your time and Youtube Milton Friedman, if you aren't at least partially swayed into the direction of capitalism you are a lost cause.

Edit: just for clarification, I am not a "banks are holier than jesus" guy, my parents lost over a million listening to financial advisors telling them to cash out on my dad's pension, they can clearly be wrong. I'm just saying that people are personally responsible for the level of risk they take, not the person telling them it's a 'safe' risk.

 

When we refinanced, were told that it would be 5 years until our ARM adjusted and in that amount of time, as long as we kept up with the interest-only payments (which we could well more than afford), refinancing back to a fixed-rate loan wouldn't be a problem. Then, thanks to the crash, my house that the bank said was worth 165K was suddenly worth less than 90K. No amount of refinancing in the world was going to fix the ARM problem.

Then the stuff with the tree happened and that kind of sealed our fate but whatevs.

 

Fuck that fucking bullshit. Theres is TONS of jobs out there for people that want to work. Theres too many people that are expecting to work, but dont want to work hard, and expect a big pay cheque at the end of the week. Look at this sorry sack of shit:

http://kitchener.kijiji.ca/c-jobs-part-time-students-Pay-for-job-connection-W0QQAdIdZ246971873

Like holy fuck kid. When I was 17 I was working 30 hours a week milking cows and busting my back working on farms, going to highschool while maintaining an 85% average and I played football in the fall, why cant you? Why cant all the people on welfare and unemployment get jobs and get off unemployment? Because their fucking lazy thats why. No one wants to dig a ditch in todays world, or shovel the shit, or be some bricklayers bitch. They want to get paid big bucks to sit infront of a computer desk all day, well guess what, theres not as many jerkoff jobs out there as people think. And the worst offenders of this; all the people who graduated university with a degree in english literature or liberal arts or any other useless degree. These people think they are entitled to a $50 000 a year job right out of school, well fuck you, you arent entitled to shit. Get a degree you can actually use, then your pussy ass complaints about the "economy" might actually have some merrit.

 

Seriously: fuck this shit, and fuck this bitch.

I may be in Australia, but lending is lending and it's my bread and butter. I'm primarily a consumer credit lawyer. I've seen all sorts of shit from borrowers trying to weasel their way out of things.

For a start, the way the mortgage industry collapse was explained to me by a touring professor was that it was the Clinton administration who started all the shit with the NINJA loans by refusing to allow banks access to federal guarantees unless they participated. No access to federal guarantee equals no ability to roll and continue trading. Which is the simple way of putting it.

I deal with banks, lenders, consumer advocates, government and every other douchebag with their nose in the trough on a daily basis. Banks aren't evil, they're profit making entities. They're required, at law (at least here), to provide the best possible returns for their shareholders. Many of these shareholders can be traced back to pension funds/401k funds/superannuation... so the people who complain generally have a retirement stake in their performance. If you want it otherwise, nationalise banks or a bank. We had one here (the Commonwealth Bank), but then they privatised it and it's one of the worst now.

The simple thing is, banks are a business whose business it is to lend money. No bank comes out and forces an application down anyone's throats, excepting credit cards which is a whole different kettle of fish. If you don't like the terms, don't borrow. If you can't afford to make the repayments, don't borrow. It's not a fucking charity. People have been banging on for years about "responsible lending" and we're even in the midst of a massive upheaval of laws here to enshrine that concept in federal law. Under our new laws, the only thing a borrower has to actually do is turn up with an application form and some documents. They don't even have a positive obligation to disclose pertinent information. The lender is responsible for everything else, has to have a licence to do so and officers can be jailed for getting it wrong.

Several years ago, at a national conference, they were talking about responsible lending. I stuck up my hand and asked, "what about responsible borrowing?" The room went dead silent and everyone looked at me like I was mad.

Self responsibility, people. If you borrow money and don't repay it, it's theft. If you want to go off and live in Socialist land where people just hand you shit for no effort; go for it. From what I understand, they're real hospitable places to live.

 

What information did he or she provide to substantiate this claim? Yes, his administration pushed Fannie and Freddie into these loans, but nowhere have I ever seen evidence that it tied the hands of Wells Fargo, BoA, JPMorgan Chase, etc. More likely, these banks saw Fannie and Freddie selling these loans and wanted their cut.

Yeah, my priest hates it which I discuss the best form of birth control. Wrong crowd, maybe?

I know, I hear Sweden is quite the shithole.

 

You guys are well over the no politics line, get back on focus.