Obama Says A Baby Is A Punishment Obama: “If they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”
Posted on 09/28/2008 9:18:42 PM PDT by Kitten Festival
Edited on 09/29/2008 6:38:48 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
There are two things my father wishes I would never discuss on this blog. My love life, and my finances.
I'm cool with avoiding my love life. Not much to report there. I hope it stays that way.
But with finances, I feel obligated to speak up. But before we enter into that discussion, visit this link to understand what happened with the mortgage industry to cause the current situation.
Got that? Okay, good.
Now, my situation, and how it is impacted by all of this.
A little more than a year ago, I bought a four-bedroom tract home with a pool, in a very nice subdivision in Scottsdale, Arizona, for $570,000. It was the most I'd ever paid for a house, and certainly much more than a similar house might have cost me back in Albuquerque. Still, we hoped the gifted school thing would work out, and, according to conventional wisdom at the time, felt that buying was better than renting, even if we left after a short time, because of the tax benefits of interest paid on a mortgage.
I put $120,000 cash down on the house, thinking it was safe there, and might even grow. I figured it was a good investment because that's what people like Suzie Orman used to say, until, like, last week. Arizona was said to be booming, and the mortgage, while steep, was something I could handle, thanks to my supportive and loyal readers and other assorted sources of income.
Fast-foward to this summer. The gifted school thing has not worked out. We do not like Phoenix and Scottsdale very much. We are homesick for our friends and family in New Mexico.
I am up to date on my mortgage payments, but all around us houses are going on the market at slashed prices, being abandoned, or coming up for lease. The prices begin to drop drastically, as homeowners in our area see their shady loans balloon out of reach and they lose their homes to foreclosure.
Suddenly, the house I bought for $570,000 is worth...$380,000?!?! Amazing! I know this because it is a tract division, and that is the price the same model is going for right now. And dropping with every week that passes.
What this means is that I, as a responsible homeowner, am now paying a mortgage of $450,000, on a house worth $380,000 - and the price continues to drop. By this time next year, I would not be surprised to learn this house is worth $310,000, or less. I have lost every penny I put down, and am now, astoundingly, in negative equity, which grows only more negative with every payment I make. Does this make sense to you? Not to me, either.
I never thought I would be the type to end up in foreclosure, but last month I made the decision to stop paying my mortgage. To just walk away. Not because I can't pay it, but because it is foolish to continue to do so. I am aware of the new FHA program designed to refinance homes like mine at their current value, but I don't think the dropping prices are going to bottom out for a long time. It's just not worth it, either way.
I attended a foreclosure workshop sponsored by the state of Arizona, to learn about the laws, and realized that by simply walking away from this disaster of a neighborhood, city and state, I could save myself a lot of money and heartache - at a heavy price to my FICO score.
One of every three dollars in Phoenix is tied up in the real estate development industry, which has all but ground to a screeching halt. The local economy is tanking. Things will not get better for a very long time, if they ever do.
So, couple weeks ago, I put the house up for sale, and closed my checkbook to my lender, forever. Screw 'em.
It took me a while to get over the good old puritanical guilt about that, but I'm done. I'm not feeling remorse for looking out for myself and my family. The government is bailing out the bankrupt lenders, including my own. But who is there to look out for people like me? No one. That's who. No. One.
The conservatives will try to tell you this crisis is only impacting irresponsible homeowners, who got into mortgages they could not handle. Wrong! If you own a house in any of the areas hit hardest by this thing, you are wasting money if you continue to pay for a worthless property. Many of us realize this, and we are walking away, mailing in the keys, saying "thanks but no thanks for this bridge to nowhere."
It was not easy to come to terms with this, to realize I would never recover that money. But once I did come to terms with it, I felt free, in charge of my own destiny and wallet. I was ready to walk away from the house, to propose a deed in lieu, or to foreclose if needed.
As it stands now, I have an offer on my house of $405,000. That is $50,000 less, roughly, than I owe on the loan. This means I will have to ask my lender to give me a short sale, even though they - the lender - will still turn a significant profit on this property. Does that seem fair to you? No? Me neither. But there's not a damn thing I can do about it.
Assuming my lender accepts the short sale - and I imagine they will, given the situation, but won't know for sure until next week - I will suffer a pretty terrible blow to my credit rating. It could drop as low as the high 300s, which means I can't get any kind of loan for at least three years.
I am prepared for that. I am not happy about it. After all, the bank loaned me $450,000 - and will end up making $600,000 on the deal, from my down payment, a year-plus of on-time mortgage payments, and the home sale for $405,000. But I will still be penalized. Make sense to you? Me neither. [EXPLETIVE DELETED] The system is broken, and no one but Barney Frank seems to give a [EXPLETIVE DELETED] about people like me.
So, think about this. I played by the rules. The banks did not. And, here I am, not only losing a massive amount of money, but being punished on my credit report for a housing transaction that, in the end, makes money for the lender. Twice. Because the lender will not only get my money, and the new owner's money, but also a bailout from the Federal government, at taxpayer expense, because it is impossible to put an exact value on the losses, so the Fed is just guessing...at $700 BILLION.
Not fair? Damn straight it's not fair. But I am quickly learning that very little in he deregulated wild west of Milton Friedman "trickle down" economics is fair. It's nothing but gambling with rich liars, who, as we might have guessed, don't have much interest in letting any of their coins trickle anywhere. And here I was, lecturing my in-laws on their casino habits, when I did not know enough to see the fireball headed my way.
But I am ready to suffer the consequences, because I have decided that, unless I can buy a thing in cash, I am not going to buy anything anymore. For the amount I paid on this house in the past year (the $120,000 down, plus about $50,000 in mortgage payments) I could have purchased a home in cash on the West Side of Albuquerque, and never had to worry about anyone taking my home from me again.
So it is that I've decided not to wait this out (it will be years before recovery, if one comes at all), and to move all of us in with my pops, who owns his home outright, for the next three years or so. Each month I will make a check out to myself, to my savings account, in the amount I would have paid on the note for my house in Arizona.
Within a few short years, I will have enough money to get us a little house somewhere. In cash. Maybe in a country with a healthy economy. It feels good to have freedom again, even if the lender and credit agencies are stealing my money and stabbing me in the back for it. Such is the life of an escaped slave.
I suppose I am learning, at a micro level, what the banking world is learning at a marco level. Don't spend money you don't have. Live frugally and intelligently, and remember that people matter much, much more than things.
The bonus of all this, if there is a bonus, is that I have learned that stuff is just that. Stuff. Family is what matters. And I feel incredibly fortunate to have a family willing to take me in while I make this transition, and begin, once and for all, to accumulate real wealth instead of shadow money and the appearance of prosperity that have sadly become the American way.
I know it's a drastic move. But those of you who know me understand that I am all about the drastic move, when it makes sense. I am not afraid to be out of step, if it makes sense to be such. I am the woman in the Latin aerobics class at the gym last night, who insisted on doing the 8-count routine starting on the 1, even though the rhythm-deaf, unqualified instructor kept mixing up her beats and counts, starting on the 2 here, and the 5 there.
Everyone else in the class followed the instructor, because they, sheep at heart, surely thought she was right and they were wrong, even if her moves didn't match the beat and instinct told them otherwise. People are too damn polite sometimes. Sometimes, you have to be upfront and honest. You have to trust your instincts. The others in that class were too polite to be free-thinkers. Same with many of my neighbors, who will keep on paying these thieving banks money they will never get back, exorbitant rent to an undeserving landlord.
Not me. Hell no.
I will stand there and look a fool to the actual fools, doing the right thing because I have actually thought about it. I have never worried about looking smart to other people, and I'm not about to start now.
Questions?
Posted by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez at 12:16 AM
It's going to be a long line, hire an attorney and have him take the deed to the bank. She then can walk away with payment in full and no bad credit.
Parva Alicia est.
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Obama Says A Baby Is A Punishment
Obama: “If they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”
Yup, pathetic. “I don’t like the decision I made, so I’m taking the easy road. WAH!”
Still into the old spam postings I see.
Obama Doesn’t Want His Daughters Punished with a Baby
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNzmly28Bmg
CNN on Obama’s Infant Born Alive Act Rejection
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPZCXcTwZPY
Jill Stanek on Obama and Born Alive Infant Protection Act (MUST SEE)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIdbYjmbFzo
Obama Cover-up Revealed On Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Bill
http://www.nrlc.org/ObamaBAIPA/ObamaCoverup.html
Explosive Audio Found Obama arguing against BAIPA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypDwNpgIUQc
Babies left to die!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIdbYjmbFzo
Pathetic is the best word I can think of.
STICK it!
Give me a break! No one cares about her except for Barney Frank????? Lady, do a little investigation! Learn who the main fools were that adamently denied there was a problem with these loans and pushed the laws that forced them to be available.
She seems to be under the misimpression that the down payment of $120,000 she made on the home represents some form of profit paid to the bank who made the mortgage loan, rather than being paid to the seller who sold the house to her.
The bank is clearly a loser financially, as the $450,000 principal amount of the loan cannot be recovered by $405,000 worth of house plus one year of mortgage payments.
And then she blames her problems on the lender -- "screw 'em", etc.
Typical liberal.
Obama Says A Baby Is A Punishment Obama: “If they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”
I feel for her situation, but in her blog entry she’s blaming the free market for something it didn’t do. All too common, especially these days. For starters, the housing and banking industries are anything but “unregulated.”
Well no. She’s making a business decision. Which is what Wall Street and the Bankers were telling home buyer for the last six years. They changed the view of the home from the classic “putting down roots” to “it’s a great way to make money.”
And when homes no longer become a way to make money, you’ve got to cut your losses.
we got stuch with two houses right after my dad passed away in 2005, made mortgages payments on both houses by our both working 16-18 hour days most of the time, finally sold the house at $20,000 under what we owed
we lost all of our savings, 401k - everything and then some - it was horrible and I would never do it again, but I wasn’t thinking right because my father was terminally ill with melanomia
but we thought it would be unethical to just walk out on the house up in MN...to let it just go into foreclosure...there were so many times that I didn’t hink we’d make it and through the grace of God, we just barely did
Now- the one thing I’d say that is probably one of the biggest problems in this mess is that too many states have 100% home equity 2nd mortgages. We had taken on out a 2nd on our house in MN a couple of years before we sold it - back when the market was going up like crazy. My spouse was in school and we used it to pay his tuition. In MN, they allowed us to take 100% of the value-the first loan.
Here in Texas - they put a 80% cap on mortage total indebtedness after refinancing. Meaning - if you refinance in 5 years after buying your house, and your want to either refinance of get a home equity line, the total of either the first OR the first + second can not be more than 80%.
We refi’d in Tx last fall to consolidate the debt we occured through the mess we got ourselves in over 2 houses. We were lucky that we live in an area of TX where the housing prices are still good and even slightly rising. But, when we did the refi, our national bank lender told us that Texas had by far some of the least foreclosures of the country because of that 80% rule.
So see - when you put down 10% or 20% down on your house here in TX, you can’t pull it out with a home equity loan until your home value swallows it up and then some.
It’s a HUGE safety mechinism to protect homeowners from overborrowing and help in times when housing bubbles pop, but people need to still sell their house. So unless house prices drop more than 15-20%, you’d still walk away clean.
No, it doesn't seem fair. But a lot of decisions do not turn out fairly.
Banks are greedy and unfeeling? Who knew?
God forbid Barney Frank have any more to do with our financial institutions.
vaudine
Well that’s a good point I suppose (although it still strikes me as just a dishonest thing to do). And I definitely don’t agree that “Barney Frank is the only person” that cares about her! She obviously doesn’t see how he set her situation up.
The only reason she paid so much for the house to begin with is because of the fraudulent loans and easy credit that artificially drove up the price of housing. If not for that, she would have paid much less for the house to begin with.
Say what you want, but she has made the only wise decision.
What is being misunderstood here is the actual ‘value’ of the home. It is not $310,000 or anything else which the foreclosures in the neighborhood suggest. Your liquidation price is actually what you are referring to. Of, if you were a bank, that would be your ‘mark to market’ price. And now you have some idea of why banks are screwed.
If you HAD to sell your house this week because of some personal disaster, you’d be screwed and walking away would be an option. And if the bank had to get liquid immediately to make the regulators happy, they would have to discount the real estate collateral they have on the books to whatever they could get on the courthouse steps (which is essentially how you get your foreclosure prices).
There is no rational reason why banks would need to liquidate those assets in 15 days instead of 90 days. And since the SEC sets the regulations at the FASB for accounting rules which require banks to mark down the value of their assets to whatever price they could get THAT DAY!!! (how F’ing retarded, huh? But the SEC still isn’t budging).
So, the banks are essentially walking away from mortgages exactly the way you are talking about walking away from this house in Scottsdale. And when they do that, they essentially devalue all their assets to somewhere near ZERO and then there is no amount of cash they can have on hand which could balance out that kind of liability. And then JPMorgan buys them for $2 a share and laughs like a crack dealer at a hollywood after-party.
If you walk away from this home for any reason other than that you decided that Scottsdale is no more exciting that ALB or you simply just miss breakfast at the Frontier Restaurant and those damn sweet rolls (and the worlds best machaca breakfast burritos....), you are making a large financial mistake and walking away from your $150,000.
What is happening in D.C. will likely fix up much of the problems in the lending world, and PHX is one of the four worst markets in America since half of your neighbors were speculators anyways. You are going to have to wait a while for the foreclosures to disappear. And once those are gone, nobody in your situation is going to want to sell in the $300Ks or even the $400Ks so your neighbors are going to be holding out for better pricing just like you will be wanting to.
But if you freak out in the middle of the crisis, you are going to take it in the worst way possible. And you will have handed $150K to a bank you is now getting off the hook with the Feds. If you had the ability to hang on even a couple more months, you would be negotiating with your new lender to reduce the balance of your loan to appear to match your current market condition (which might even be LESS than your original purchase price AND your down payment).
So....unless you were really screwed and had to get out you might have missed out on a great opportunity and you also mishandled the situation as a whole.
Feel free to pass this along. I know from what I speak. I do this for a living for lots of people including people who now find themselves in this situation. You walk away only when there is no chance of future success OR you run out of money. As soon as the idiot banks move their loans over to REAL banks there will be a whole lot of negotiating going on (finally!) and people will get happy about their mortgages again.
But I do really miss breakfast at the Frontier. Good times. Good times....
She is just another moron who thinks it is a violation of her rights for the world not to revolve around her.
Every cent in the national debt represents an attempt to finance that delusion, plus a whole lot more. Now congress and the president are about to write a huge check to kick that can down the road a little ways.
Every time they do this they just increase the cost of actually dealing with the problem.
Knock it off, narses. We share your apathy for Obama, but your antagonistic way of expressing it in unrelated threads is just not FReeperish.
So, think about this. I played by the rules
No you stupid twit. You did NOT play by the rules.
THIS is the kind of person I want to see financially crucified.
Buying a house used to be for making a home over the years.
I had to stop reading right there ! I guess we don’t have to lie awake at night wondering why the gifted program didn’t work out, do we ?
Only Barney Frank cares. Hmmmm. Alisa doesn’t sound like a masculine name, but, hey, he/she/it is a Liberal so who knows.
Also given the quality of your writnings, the reason the “gifted school” thingee didn’t work out may have less to do with the school then it does with genetics.
Yea I’m going to get seriously chewed out for this but I FULLY understand her feeling in this and feel like doing the same.
We bought our house 4 years ago for 226K, put down 25K plus closing costs an additional 16K (yes I know the 25K didn’t go to the lender I’m not a blonde). The estimated value of it right now is less than 150k, sigh.
We’ve made each of or mortgage payments on time; always in well before the 15th which according to our mortgage is the drop-dead date, except for September of last year.
My mother-in-law took a sudden turn in health and passed away September 8, 2007. We flew to Texas on September 5, not knowing she was going to pass away, just knowing it was bad.
When all was said and done, the funeral etc. We got home on September 15th at 10:30pm. We reminded each other on the plane coming home to pay our mortgage as soon as we walked in the door. I didn’t know that payments made after 6pm were dated the next day until we looked on the 16th and say the payment posted date.
Ok, I’ll admit, it’s completely our fault for not remembering to make the payment while we were dealing with her death, but that is not an excuse. In the end, we paid late. We heard anything from our mortgage company but the following month, we sent in a late fee included with our normal payment, and continued to make our monthly payments.
Last Tuesday, a full year later, we receive a letter from our mortgage company saying they are raising our interest rate from our original 5.2% to 18.5% due to the late payment, September 2007.
They also want us to pay them $1,700 in interest and penalties for the late payment. It seems that the late fee we sent in was considered a principle payment and applied thusly. According to them, we never paid the late fee. Oh, and because of being late, we are now in “special handling” and are barred from using the internet to make payments, check loan docs or our account. Real nice.
So we get on the phone with them and are told, if we do not pay the additional charge plus the new mortgage amount, they will foreclose on us within 30 days; that is their policy of course.
As I’m sitting here typing this there is a HUGE part of me that wants to do EXACTLY what she is doing. Tell the bank to stick it and walk out.
Instead, we are heading off to see a lawyer about this to see if they can actually do what they are doing, and attempt to re-finance this thing if they can.
It seems to me many mortgage companies are trying everything possible to increase interest rates, garner fee’s etc on their good paying customers to make up for those who have defaulted.
Who knows what will happen.....I guess it doesn’t pay to be honest anymore.
Her reasoning is priceless, and is representative of the selfish rationalization of liberals that have screwed up our country:
Someone commented here last night about the fact that my downpayment went to the seller when I bought this house, and not the bank.
True.
But!
The provisions of these government bailouts of the lenders are such that the LENDER will recoup that money (and any additional money they would like to tell Paulson they lost, whether true or not), while I WILL NOT.
See?
The point is, the "free market" tanked. In a true capitalist system, the companies would be allowed to fail as a consequence of their bad decision-making (in this case, giving loans to people who did not qualify for them, then selling those loans in bundles to international investors as "sound").
Also, the offer on my house is for $405,000, not $450,000. This means it will be considered a "short sale" by my lender (even though they will not have lost a dime on this house). I will therefore have a "short sale" on my credit for years to come, meaning lenders won't want to give me money - even though I have never been late on a mortgage payment (until this month, when I voluntarily STOPPED paying).
If this all makes sense to you, I congratulate you on your vast wells of denial and your ability to creatively interpret the truth.
As for me, I'd rather put my money in savings than continue to give it to a corrupt lender who is poised to, with the help of the Bush Administration, rob the American people blind.
Well.....at least her conclusion is somewhat sound. That being live within your means. Go debt free, frugality. The rest is rationalizing, blaming everyone but Alisa for making a bad decision and Alisa not even having to carry the full brunt of that decision.
Barney Frank is the reason the system is broken. If it wasn't for people like him the housing market would be perfectly fine....
Its not a lose until you sell.
Why not hold on to it and rent it, even for less than the mortgage (I do). I get equity and it will go back up eventually. May take years to get to what it was but, the mortgage gets smaller and there will be equity again.
Unfortunately, I think if the extra amount is not explicitly stated as being for something else, any extra is assumed to be for the principle. I had no idea that mortgage interest, like a credit card, could be increased because of a late payment.
I wish you luck. I just can't believe that it is in the bank's best interest to foreclose on your home rather than work out this small problem. I hope you can work something out.
Don’t know if you know it or not, but the Texas law is relatively new. For a long time you couldn’t borrow money on your home - that protected a lot of homeowners from preditors as well as from making a stupid decision. Wish they had never changed it. We’d be in even better shape.
“I would not be surprised to learn this house is worth $310,000, or less. I have lost every penny I put down,...”
Ummm....The house you went into debt for to the amount $570,000 was always worth $310,000 or less. You just paid way too much because you made a bad decision. And it it cost you lots of money. That’s why they’re called “bad” decisions.
Around Phoenix, Paradise Valley, Scottsdale, a bunch of money for a tract house will get you a bunch of stucco slathered over chicken wire and tar paper. Lots more money will get lots more of the same and ain’t none of it worth what people pay for it. Or try to pay for it.
But through boom and bust everyone thinks, contrary to simple common sense, “I figured it was a good investment because that’s what people like Suzie Orman used to say, until, like, last week. Arizona was said to be booming, and the mortgage, while steep, was something I could handle, thanks to my supportive and loyal readers and other assorted sources of income.”
Here’s a clue: Suzie Orman won’t pay your bills. And Arizona is always booming just before it’s busting. I know. I worked there for years patching up repo houses for banks when people just walked away from half million dollar shacks.
So to you, Valdes-Rodriguez I offer my tag-line. Unlike Suzy Orman’s advice it still applies this week.
I have to say those are the worst mortgage terms I ever heard of. Sounds like you bought the house on a credit card!
Bad thing is, it’s not even in the terms they can do this.
Late payments are clear - if it is not paid by the 15th, a late fee of $35.00 is assessed if the account was paid by the last day of the month.
If it was not paid by the last day of the month, they have the right to renegotiate the terms of the loan, and in that case provided the sent you written notice, via certified mail, that the loan is late and give you 30 days to correct the situation before they can do anything.
From what our lawyer said Friday mortgage companies are doing this all over Florida, hoping to find people who either can’t read or won’t fight them.
Guess they picked on the wrong people.
She/s an idiot. It is wrong to bail out the big companies, but it would be equally wrong to bail her sorry ass out.
It was her choice, her strategy, to do what she did. She could keep the house and make her payments and eventually the worth of the house will rise. It’s frikin Scottsdale for cryin out loud. Everyone who lives around Scottsdale says they live IN Scottsdale.
Whiny baby. Would you have been sharing all the profit you would have made with all of us if the market went the other way? Ride it out. You’re an adult. Responsible for your own actions.
Boy, this woman is an idiot. She has all the typical liberal personality traits: arrogance, smugness, entitled, self-centered. And, she thinks Barney Frank cares about her...LOL. He’s one of the major causes for her predicament.
They didn't know they were dealing with a FReeper! Good luck with the bloodsuckers.
"I could have purchased a home in cash on the West Side of Albuquerque, and never had to worry about anyone taking my home from me again..."
"II have never worried about looking smart to other people, and I'm not about to start now..."
No worries, I would say your plan is working. No one is going to mistake you for smart!
That being said, I know a lot of people who are contemplating this same situation.
I do feel sorry for young families just starting out, though. My children owe more on their home than it's current value. But they bought it as a HOME to live in, not just an investment. And their plan is to ride it out, assuming they can stay employed. Big assumption.
it’s=its
Why don’t they just go back to Mexico where they came from ....
p.s. no wonder Daddy doesn’t want little Alisa writing about her finances. Or about her lesbian love life, which explains why she’s such a fan of Barney Frank.
The funny thing is, there are a lot more bigger houses out there thanks to this stupid overdevelopment, spurred by idiotic lending practices.
These homes are more expensive to heat, to cool and maintain.
You're right, though. Almost every single case of so-called market failure is actually the result of hamfisted government intervention.
“why would someone offer her 405k on a house that’s only worth 380k ?”
That was what I was thinking...could be size of the house or most likely newer updated stuff inside. I’d still lowball the least expensive house on that block if I were them and upgrade on my own...but, I ‘m just a common sense kind of guy...
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