Foreclosure? Save your House, Your credit and Your Rights
Foreclosure is a very scary word. It carries with it a public stigma that includes embarrassment, personal failure and the threat of a lasting negative impact that affects your credit rating, future real estate purchases, even the ability to rent an apartment after you have lost your home.
Foreclosures are at a 30-year high brought on by interest-only loans, no or low down payments, adjustable rate mortgages and a sagging real estate market. Greed and over-inflated prices drove lenders to bait borrowers with loans they simply could not afford to repay.
The old saying “What goes up must come down” applies to a soaring real estate market that was sometimes unrealistically over-priced. Alan Greenspan refused to utilize the Fed’s power to rein in the sub-prime perpetrators arguing that the damage from a boom and bust would be less than the damage from regulating the banks. It is now quite obvious that decision was irresponsible and lame. This was like asking Americans to play football without referees. Maybe Greenspan thinks 5 million foreclosures is an acceptable price to pay?
As sellers continued to get their inflated prices and much more in the past few years, many homes sold with multiple offers that bid the home prices up-usually to an artificially high level. Consequently, we are having a sharp downward readjustment of prices that may last for the next few years. As an example, it is estimated that 12% of Californians will sell their homes at a loss in 2008, up from the 2.5% just a year ago in 2007. Nationwide the trend is becoming evident.
“Stated income,” a loan qualifying practice in which the borrower did not need to provide the lender with proof of income, was commonly used and abused by both borrower and lender alike. Many in the lending industry call these “Liar’s Loans,” that have impacted the lenders, borrowers, investors and the economy. P.T. Barnum, the famous man of the circus once said: “A Sucker is born every minute.” It now appears that the American taxpayer is being suckered into more government handouts, and more corporate welfare. Its time to throw the lending criminals behind bars not rescue them at taxpayer expense.
If you are presently in foreclosure, or headed in that direction, be assured that you are not alone. Thousands of people every day will find themselves in this awful situation-many times not of their own making, but due to ill-informed buying decisions and possible immoral dealings of unscrupulous mortgage brokers.
As a realtor for 14 years in California I have seen these abuses in lending upfront and personal. After the US House and Senate bailed out Bear Sterns with $30 billion it became apparent that saving Wall Street was more important then saving main street. I decided to write Defeat Foreclosure that can help the homeowner save their home, their credit and protect themselves from the foreclosure scam artists. For more information see http://www.defeatforeclosure.org
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