Posted on 10/09/2007 9:49:33 AM PDT by AngelesCrestHighway
Soledad Aviles dreamed for years of owning a home, with a plot of land where he could grow corn and chiles as he did in his native Mexico. So he felt blessed last year when he learned he could buy a three-bedroom, single-story stucco house on West La Verne Avenue in Santa Ana. Referred to a local loan broker by a trusted friend, he borrowed the entire purchase price of $615,000 from Washington Mutual at a high interest rate typical of sub-prime loans. The monthly payment, as he says he understood it, would be $3,600 -- steep for a glass cutter who made $9 an hour -- but Aviles counted on his wife and three of his six daughters, who also worked low-paying jobs, to contribute. "We took out our pencils, figured out our take-home pay and figured out that if we all pitched in, it would work," said Aviles, 54, a stoop-shouldered, soft-spoken man with a sixth-grade education from Mexico. Relying on the broker's word, he signed loan documents written in English, a language he neither speaks nor reads, Aviles said. He was shocked to learn afterward that the monthly payment would not be $3,600, but $4,800 -- a price that forced him to rent out bedrooms, the garage and an enclosed porch while he and his wife slept on the couch. He fed his family with food from friends and corn he grew. Aviles says he was not aware that the February 2006 loan application he signed dramatically exaggerated his family's income. The application lists him as the owner of a landscaping business with a $7,400 monthly income. His 27-year-old daughter Marlene, who earns $9 an hour in a noodle factory, appears as the owner of a housecleaning company who makes $5,700 a month.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
But I will say that the lending industry needs serious reform if they permit lies on loan applications like this, and lend money to people who clearly will never be able to pay and who are guaranteed to lose their home in the near future. That's a sorry state of affairs. If I did stuff like that, I'd be in jail for outright fraud.
He signed documents he could not read. He knew he could not read them and yet he signed them. As between him and the lender, who loand actual money for him to buy the house, who should we side with? I side with the lender. If you sign something you cannot read you take the risk that it might say anything. In the meantime, he DID get the house. How in the WORLD could anyone making $9/hour think they could afford a house for over half a million? We make substantially more than that, and bought a house worth $116K when we bought it, now worth maybe $200K. People have got to learn to think.
Deport Washington Mutual.
Probably those popular loans where they do not check your income, etc.
Glad I own no Washington Mutual stock....
Yes, but this is beyond anything rediculous. What worries me is, it sounds like the last dogs to the carcass....find the very last person we can give a mortgage to before all “H” breaks loose.
The broker engaged in fraud.
You don’t have to be legal to buy property. In Los Angeles I have seen it many times, you buy a house, rent out each room to a family, and they make your payments. You buy another house and do the same thing. You don’t have to work, just collect the rent. These people call me up to do house plans to add guest houses and convert their garages to living areas. On top of that, they complain that the government wants permits and complain that the government should let them do what they want to their own property. A good portion of my jobs come from people that have been busted by code enforcement.
Oh the woes that liberalism has wrought.
This refers to what is now called “a clown house”?
This is group fraud.
They have numbers in Mexico too. 650,000 is a lot of money in any language.
What is not said is the millions of sub prime loans given to illegals. Everyone knows this is what they were doing.
This was the foundation of the housing boom. Millions of inter city homes were bought by Mexicans who would normally never be able to buy homes and all the non Mexican people went out and bought nice new stucco homes in the suburbs.
Take his house back and jail the broker who is also Mexican by the way. They all knew they were breaking the law when they signed the papers.
Send the city down their now to evict the 10 people living in a 3br house.
Soldad should be busted for fraud.
(feeding his family on corn he grew on a city lot, yeah right)
I believe it. Washington Mutual is as despicable as they come.
Anyone who directly owns Washington Mutual stock (or stock in any other lender like this who waived the rules to keep riding the “boom”) is asking for trouble.
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