Quote:
Originally Posted by Thetagirl218
I am not sure where the poster got the stats from but I know in Florida the amount of foreclosure cases is reaching an all time high!
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No doubt, and I think it is true all over. And the problem is certainly real and of a scale that we many never have confronted.
But, I think it's probably worth mentioning that it's still a pretty small percentage of homeowners overall and that homeownership (or whatever the appropriate term really is for a 100% financed house), I suspect but don't know for sure, it probably still at a pretty high level, maybe even historically high if we go back to immediately before the current "crisis."
I don't doubt that we're heading into a recession and it scares me, but the mortgage crisis, on some level, may reflect a somewhat natural economic correction to some bad business practices in the form of making it too easy for people to buy and walk away from houses they couldn't really afford. And that people signed extensive legal paperwork accepting the terms of their loans, so it's hard to see them as being victims of anything more than their own bad judgment. (Although I certainly make enough mistakes that I'm still sympathetic to that)
The instances of people claiming to have been mislead about the terms of the loan seem pretty rare in contrast with people who took a calculated risk about ARM who assumed that they'd be able to refinance or sell before the ARM went up or who continued to refinance as the house appreciated until they had payments bigger than what they could afford.
I'm sorry if this sounds really harsh and uncaring. I do feel bad about people losing their houses. And I'm certainly concerned about the number of houses that end up in foreclosure and unsold, thereby affecting the housing values and quality of life of all the neighbors. And I'm kind of mad at the banks/mortgage companies who had to see this coming and chose to make an easy buck instead of thinking of the effect on other people when the deal went bad, as they had to realize that it would.
But I don't really think that big government bailout is the way to go here, and I sort of think we're going to be sold one.