Somewhere I read that the “credit counseling” or “debt relief” agencies, the ones that advertise how they don’t reduce debt “they eliminate it”, are owned by credit card companies! And, they don’t really do anything the borrower can’t do on their own. From what little I understand, they merely stop making payment on the lines of credit until the accounts go to collection agencies, whereby then the debts are settled on some percentage.
The whole thing is pretty odious from start to finish — unsecured credit, I mean.
But secured credit - a mortgage loan in theory is different. Collateral. One thing I remember hearing for years, decades even on talk radio shows, was never, ever, buying or selling real estate without having an attorney represent. Apparently hardly anyone does this. If that’s true, it’s amazing that people will borrow 100,000, 250,000 or more usually the largest purchase in anyones life, and all on the fly! But let’s say that this was common practice, and both sides were roughly proportionally represented with their counsel by reviewing documents prior to closing and at close, etc. Could the nightmare of the NINJA loans and ARMS and subprime have been averted? What happened to the PMI that a lot of borrowers were paying for, aren’t the banks collecting on that? Just the tip of the iceberg on questions about these loans and their borrowers. This is not going to end well.
PMI wasn't necessarily a requirement on sub-prime loans with less than 20% down. Some did, some didn't..