Home Buyers As Victims: Spare Me, Please

Via The New York Times and Clusterstock picks up on the victimization meme. What seems to be lost is that no one "pulled their teeth" to get the homeowners to sign deals they probably never should have signed in the first place ... if they had the brains God gave your average Termite. In my experience, you can't buy a home today without knowing every detail of the deal you signed, such are the disclosure laws already on the books. In one way or another, these people gambled - now they've lost. But the big bad bank should now take it on the chin?

And spare me the sob stories, please. Unless one is born to serious wealth, if you live long enough, you're likely going to have some tight times, often by choice when you first marry, or start having kids. How about a little more responsibility on the consumer end for a "change." That's the way America once worked. And, frankly, it tended to work pretty well.

In the end, all they're doing is transferring the costs to other consumers and taxpayers who pay their bills or use common sense when making them. Just who's going to fund all these compassionate customer service mechanisms people are whining about? You are, that's who.

The NYT reports on how cumbersome and difficult it is for a homeowners -- even with someone working on their behalf -- to talk to their bank about getting a loan modification. Pulling teeth is not an apt comparison. A better one might be: dealing with a health insurance company.

Comments

[SE Florez]

To more accurately reflect their content and mission it is time to change the name of dominant media culture enterprises like the NY Times to the "Daily Victim Report".

[PA]

If the mortgage is so onerous, just walk away. Quite a few banks will actually pay you a little bit to not trash the joint if you leave it intact.

[SacTownMan]

You gotta love the state run media staying on script with the reference to like "dealing with a health insurance company".

Are we timid little sheep too stupid to see the non-stop propaganda campaign to help Xerxes get his progressive agenda rammed down our throats?

EVERY day the local McClatchy newspaper has a negative story on healthcare topics running on the front page.

The average American is easily led like lambs to the slaughter. They get their news from the Pravda media machine that has assumed the responsibility of passing on the Soros crafted message. There is simply no ability of the masses to see through the brainwashing campaign that is under way in this country. Astroturfers also continue to troll on conservative blog sites like Dan's in an effort to manipulate the message.

Wake up people before it's too late!!

Just like the people in Hondurus this weekend that kicked out their own socialist dictator. We must act to take back the great republic from those that would see it dissolved. The Pravda machine says "coup" but the reality is the freedom loving patriots had enough of this tool trying to gain permanant power like his buddies Hugo, Raul, Fidel and Xerxes!

The process includes impeaching the 8 scumbag Republican house members that voted for the "Crap and Take" bill. I e-mailed and phoned each one of their offices this weekend and vowed to do everything in my power to see them defeated.

It is time to get your asses of off the couch and get motivated to save the Republic from bigger government and socialism. Keep waiting for someone else to do it and we all perish along with our liberties!!!!

[IslamoLlama]

"-- What seems to be lost is that no one "pulled their teeth" to get the homeowners to sign deals they probably never should have signed in the first place ... if they had the brains God gave your average Termite. --"

Shorter Dan: People wouldn't fall for con-artistry if they weren't so damn stupid.

"-- In my experience, you can't buy a home today without knowing every detail of the deal you signed, such are the disclosure laws already on the books. --"

Real Estate Agent Dan Riehl explains the ins and outs of home ownership, from his laptop in his mommy's basement.

"-- But the big bad bank should now take it on the chin? --"

If I am in the business of extending loans and I fail to do even the most rudimentary background checks on my debtors' credit, should I be the one to suffer? Given we were hearing a stirring rendition of "Let'm all fail!" just six months ago, it's amusing to see the small government conservative come rushing back to the defense of big business. No surprising, mind you. Just amusing.

"-- In the end, all they're doing is transferring the costs to other consumers and taxpayers who pay their bills or use common sense when making them. Just who's going to fund all these compassionate customer service mechanisms people are whining about? You are, that's who. --"

Businesses never take loses. Either you bail out a bank and it comes out of your taxes, or you end up paying more down the line when you apply for a mortgage / refinance your loan. The business itself never suffers. Revenues never fluctuate. The only people that ever see a fluctuation in wealth are the consumers and the taxpayers. This is demonstratively true. Behold: All of Dan's examples.

[Rob Crawford]

"Shorter Dan: People wouldn't fall for con-artistry if they weren't so damn stupid."

Have you ever taken out a mortgage? I'm gonna guess no, because there's no possible way for someone to NOT know what they're getting into when they take one out. You're even encouraged to have a lawyer along with you to double-check everything.

Easily 90% of the times you sign or initial, it's a government-required form that says yes, you were aware of part X of the terms.

[North Dallas Thirty]

I love it when Islamo proves what a complete moron it is.

Last week, when arguing for cap and trade, Islamo tried to spin that increasing costs for doing business would not result in price increases for consumers.

But now, Islamo argues the exact opposite.

"Businesses never take loses. Either you bail out a bank and it comes out of your taxes, or you end up paying more down the line when you apply for a mortgage / refinance your loan. The business itself never suffers. Revenues never fluctuate. The only people that ever see a fluctuation in wealth are the consumers and the taxpayers."

"Shorter Dan: People wouldn't fall for con-artistry if they weren't so damn stupid."

Translated Islamo: Anything that goes wrong in my life is always someone else's fault.

Classic example of IslamoLlama's behavior and values system: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25888546/

According to IslamoLlama and the Obama Party, that family was "conned" and is not to blame for anything. Nothing was their fault. None of their decisions were wrong, and white people are likely to blame for all their problems.

"Real Estate Agent Dan Riehl explains the ins and outs of home ownership, from his laptop in his mommy's basement."

Ah, the mother fetish of liberals. Perhaps their view of other people as being there solely to pay for their problems, clean up their messes, and take their verbal abuse tells us everything we need to know about theirs.

Here's a tip, Islamo; the vast majority of us have jobs and houses of your own. We know you project your own situation onto others, but don't assume because you can't live without free rent and unlimited welfare from your parents that the rest of us can't.

[SacTownMan]

Shorter Lame-O

"I'm a asshole"

[Ran]

"Shorter Dan: People wouldn't fall for con-artistry if they weren't so damn stupid."

Um, yeah...

"Given we were hearing a stirring rendition of "Let'm all fail!" just six months ago, it's amusing to see the small government conservative come rushing back to the defense of big business."

Um, no. Not quite. That is not what conservatives are saying. Some Banks deserved to fail, and they should have. Some were in healthy positions, they should survive. Freddie Mae - Mac Fanny, too, ought to have collapsed. Any Big Business that Gets in Bed with Big Government sux. Worse, Big Business loves a competitive advantage, and how better to gain it that sleeping with Barney's Frank and the Boys at the Fed?

The part left-out of the equation is that serious market distortion caused by lending laws that requires risky loans. Note the Community Rape Act, and how those "troubled assets", rather, liabilities, were packaged as good loans and sold-off...

We don't have a free-market, we have a regulated market distortion that demands irresponsible lending. We don't have competition, we have Big Business and Big Gov in a cluster-f^ck. We have liabilities being sold-off as goods.

And the best you can come-up with is "Real Estate Agent Dan Riehl explains the ins and outs of home ownership, from his laptop in his mommy's basement"? I think Dan keeps you around because you're so f^cking typical.

[syn]

I was in Manhattan real-estate where the almighty co-op dictates who can and cannot buy property; the problem with co-ops however is that they can also keep people they don't want living next to them out of their buildings.

IslamoLlama

It is interesting that most upper westside, upper eastside co-ops located in prime neighborhoods only allow rich, white liberals of a specific religion who only read the NY Times into their buildings; any minority customer I had who was financially qualified was always rejected. Co-ops can reject without providing any reason whatsoever.

Further, only rich Hollywood celebrities who religiously read the NY Times can afford property in Soho and Tribeca; the same people who pretend to care about poor people and whatnot.

Anyway; home ownership requires personal responsibility and if you cannot read the fine print or do not understand what you are purchasing the you are not capable of owning real estate.

[tim maguire]

This time, Islamo is making some completely valid points. The banks designed these mortgage instruments, the banks marketed these mortgage instruments, the banks targetted these consumers with these mortgage instruments.

Let's say you're a first time home buyer. You have an idea of what monthly payment you can afford but have no idea what that translates into in terms of total mortgage. That you are buying means you are hopeful, even optomistic about your future. The banker starts talking, he brings out an army of accountants, analysts, MBAs and says all our expert analysis says this is what you can afford. And if you know anything about these mortgages, you know they were carefully crafted to exploit the borrower's optomism about the future.

It's the bank's money, the bank's instrument, the bank's marketing plan presented to a hopeful non-banking professional. Is it really a surprise that many people were convinced by the bank to take that mortgage? And is the bank really blameless when it turns out they threw their money around stupidly?

And then I come to libertarian websites, sites where by and large I agree with the blogger, and I read a version of events that has me picturing roving bands of predatory working class family men, mobs hunting down poor defenseless multinational corporations, which are cowering in the corner hoping the mob passes them by.

Sorry, that dog don't hunt. The banks bear primary responsibility for the fact that they loaned their money to too many people who couldn't pay it back.

[North Dallas Thirty]

And finally, let's not forget what the Obama Party and Barack Obama are pushing for these days:

"Back when the housing mania was taking off, Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank famously said he wanted Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to "roll the dice" in the name of affordable housing. That didn't turn out so well, but Mr. Frank has since only accumulated more power. And now he is returning to the scene of the calamity -- with your money. He and New York Representative Anthony Weiner have sent a letter to the heads of Fannie and Freddie exhorting them to lower lending standards for condo buyers.

You read that right. After two years of telling us how lax lending standards drove up the market and led to loans that should never have been made, Mr. Frank wants Fannie and Freddie to take more risk in condo developments with high percentages of unsold units, high delinquency rates or high concentrations of ownership within the development."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124580784452945093.html

It really shows the duplicity and lies of Barack Obama. He orders banks to lower standards, then blames them when those low-standard loans default.

[North Dallas Thirty]

"Let's say you're a first time home buyer. You have an idea of what monthly payment you can afford but have no idea what that translates into in terms of total mortgage."

http://realestate.yahoo.com/calculators/afford.html

http://cgi.money.cnn.com/tools/houseafford/houseafford.html

http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/real-estate/buyerguide2004/afford.asp

Believe me, there are more. Not to mention any real estate agent worth their salt.

Those are the kinds of things I consulted when I bought my first home, and somehow I managed quite nicely to get by without being preyed upon. Why are other people allowed to claim that the banks "made" them take out mortgages, when I myself was able to avoid their hypnotic sway? Why should my taxes be increased because I did the right thing? What does that reward, "libertarian"?

[PA]

The banks obviously feel they can do better in foreclosure by sticking to the original contract than by renegotiating.

[lala]

When I lived in an apartment bankers were always knocking on my door trying to get me to take out a mortgage. They were all over the place, begging people to march down to the bank. Resistance was futile.

[IslamoLlama]

"-- Have you ever taken out a mortgage? I'm gonna guess no, because there's no possible way for someone to NOT know what they're getting into when they take one out. You're even encouraged to have a lawyer along with you to double-check everything. --"

And all lawyers know everything, and no one ever makes mistakes.

A bank is also supposed to do the minimal work necessary to verify things like employment status and income level before handing out loans. Seems like everyone was dropping the ball on this.

I'm currently a renter precisely because after contemplating home ownership I decided the mortgage process held more complexity and less flexibility than I was willing to tolerate.

I know you big strong conservatives with your keen intellects can scan a ten page mortgage agreement littered with jargon and fine print and understand every last word in all possible legal contexts. But some folks just aren't as brilliant as you are, and the extra two or three hundred dollars in legal costs associated with having lawyer read it for you is too expensive - on account of some people not being hard-working enough to afford it. But it's true. Some people will sign a contract without understanding the contents even though it should be physically impossible for them to do otherwise.

"-- Anyway; home ownership requires personal responsibility and if you cannot read the fine print or do not understand what you are purchasing the you are not capable of owning real estate. --"

And yet the banks issuing the loans appear to have disagreed with you on this count.

"-- We don't have a free-market, we have a regulated market distortion that demands irresponsible lending. We don't have competition, we have Big Business and Big Gov in a cluster-f^ck. We have liabilities being sold-off as goods.

And the best you can come-up with is "Real Estate Agent Dan Riehl explains the ins and outs of home ownership, from his laptop in his mommy's basement"? I think Dan keeps you around because you're so f^cking typical. --"

Hey, I agree with you completely. This mess was a beautiful marriage of Big Business out of control and Big Government throwing blood in the water. I admit, I was poking fun at Dan for his mixed bag of lack of education and lack of empathy. It seems a bit absurd to wave of millions of working Americans as stupid or lazy, when the guy doing the waving is unemployed and living on the charity of his family. Had Dan been in a similar position - tempted by the lure of affordable housing or cheap HELOC loans when living on a blue collar non-union salary and suffering under rising energy expenses - without his rich elders to fall back on, I don't see any evidence to indicate why he would have made a more prudent decision.

So this "blame the victim" mentality is ridiculous. If you want to talk about "Rich latte-sipping Soho shopping NYTimes reading selfish amoral liberals" you don't need to look much farther Dan's own city block. At the end of the day, it seems your beef is with affluent racist New Yorkers, politics be damned. And, again, I don't know what this has to do with the housing crisis or the broader economic policy at play.

The question is whether we should have tighter or looser regulation on how mortgages are issued and how securities are traded. Should the SEC and the Fed have their eye on derivatives? Should investment banks and savings banks exist as a single entity? Should taxpayers offer low interest loans to banks or to individuals hurt worst by the housing crisis or should the market be allowed to sink further without aid?

These are the issues on the table for debate. Dan's arguments favoring the conservative approach stem from his belief that people who got bad loans should be punished - economically - for taking them. That banks, by contrast, should be spared any regulatory encroachment because they didn't do anything "wrong" that the marketplace won't eventually punish it for on its own. And that everything will eventually sort itself out naturally, with some form of business Darwinism killing the losers, rewarding the winners, and filling in the gaps with new successful enterprises.

My argument is that Dan has no flipping clue what he's talking about.

[North Dallas Thirty]

"That banks, by contrast, should be spared any regulatory encroachment because they didn't do anything "wrong" that the marketplace won't eventually punish it for on its own."

Again, notice how Barack Obama's puppet is blaming the banks while ignoring the fact that Barack Obama ordered and continues to order the banks to do more risky lending.

"Back when the housing mania was taking off, Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank famously said he wanted Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to "roll the dice" in the name of affordable housing. That didn't turn out so well, but Mr. Frank has since only accumulated more power. And now he is returning to the scene of the calamity -- with your money. He and New York Representative Anthony Weiner have sent a letter to the heads of Fannie and Freddie exhorting them to lower lending standards for condo buyers.

You read that right. After two years of telling us how lax lending standards drove up the market and led to loans that should never have been made, Mr. Frank wants Fannie and Freddie to take more risk in condo developments with high percentages of unsold units, high delinquency rates or high concentrations of ownership within the development."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124580784452945093.html

Barack Obama is blaming the banks for obeying his orders. That's the inanity of the Obama Party and of its puppets like IslamoLlama, who are blaming the banks for not verifying income and job status when they are screaming that doing so is "racist" and "disadvantages minorities".

[seekeronos]

"--- We don't have a free-market, we have a regulated market distortion that demands irresponsible lending. We don't have competition, we have Big Business and Big Gov in a cluster-f^ck. ---"

Most history books I've ever read describe that type of arrangement as being typical of "fascism".

[North Dallas Thirty]

And speaking of fascism, here's the brownshirt leader Islamo.

"Some people will sign a contract without understanding the contents even though it should be physically impossible for them to do otherwise."

Odd, when you consider what Barack Obama and Islamo support.

"The NBC affiliate in Milwaukee has just filmed Democratic campaign workers handing out small amounts of money and free food to residents at a home for the mentally ill in Kenosha after which the patients were shepherded into a separate room and given absentee ballots........The center ordered absentee ballots on behalf of all the residents and then allowed Democratic workers to run a bingo game there. The residents were induced to vote with free refreshments and quarters as bingo prizes."

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110002530

Also notice how Barack Obama fully supports what he screams are "predatory lending practices" when he's getting kickbacks for them.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/919177,CST-NWS-pritz28.article

[Charlie]

Lets not forget all the Acorn thugs that went into banks and demanded that they issue loans to risky applicants, as well as picketed in front of their banks to embarass them into lending

[Nishner]

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/70985.html

WASHINGTON — In a rebuke of the Bush administration, the Supreme Court ruled Monday that a federal bank regulator erred in quashing efforts by New York state to combat the kind of predatory mortgage lending that triggered the nation's financial crisis.

[joyMc]

If home buyers who purchase homes they cannot afford using mortgage instruments they don't take time to understand are the victims in forclosure situations, then so are fat ladies who invest in spandex, diabetics who snack on candy bars, one armed alligator wrestlers, guys who just got divored by topless dancers, and South American train surfers.

[North Dallas Thirty]

A bit more detail from Nishner's attempt to smear the Bush administration.

"While siding with the states, the Supreme Court ruling clarified that they can't issue their own subpoenas and instead must pursue enforcement action through courts.

"An attorney general acting as a civil litigant must file a lawsuit, survive a motion to dismiss, endure the rules of procedure and discovery, and risk sanctions if his claim is frivolous or his discovery tactics abusive," Scalia's opinion said."

In other words, Cuomo and his fellow leftists have to act like any other litigant and can't arbitrarily abuse their positions -- which is the only thing that Cuomo was doing, given that both he and Barack Obama support "predatory lending" if they're receiving kickbacks, as I detailed above.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/919177,CST-NWS-pritz28.article

Meanwhile, this ruling is a mistake, although one that will be readily fixed; banks simply won't do business in states with idiotic rules like New York, or they will charge much more for the privilege.

[lala]

Andrew Cuomo, HUD, flipping houses in Harlem - so much written about it - here's a sample -

http://www.citylimits.org/content/articles/articleView.cfm?articlenumber=192

[Rob Crawford]

" Some people will sign a contract without understanding the contents even though it should be physically impossible for them to do otherwise."

Can anyone translate that into English? "Should be physically impossible for them to do otherwise"?

Yeah, people fuck up. People get in over their head -- banks get in over their heads.

So why should those of us who DON'T have to bail them out?

[IslamoLlama]

"-- So why should those of us who DON'T have to bail them out? --"

Because, when millions of people - from bankers to home owners to real estate agents to derivatives traders - get over their heads, the entire economy suffers. The people your business services start losing money, which puts you at risk of unemployment. The value of your house plummets because dozens of other people in your community go into foreclosure.

We don't live in a vacuum.

And all the money in your savings account - all those dollars sitting in accounts with Bank of America or Citigroup or Wells Fargo or any of the thousands of banks that owe money to the above three - suddenly goes into risk when these mega-banks get into this much trouble.

If these huge banks go under, there simply doesn't exist enough money in the FDIC to cover your savings. That's the bottom line. If the financial system collapses, I guarantee that you will suffer for it one way or another. Even though you didn't do anything wrong to deserve it.

[seekeronos]

"--- If these huge banks go under, there simply doesn't exist enough money in the FDIC to cover your savings. That's the bottom line. If the financial system collapses, I guarantee that you will suffer for it one way or another. Even though you didn't do anything wrong to deserve it. ---"

It's already too late for that.

We are simply waiting for the other shoe to drop, and all the bailouts did was worsen the situation - by prolonging and increasing the amount of interest that will be due when the govt. printing press can no longer print those $100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bills that won't be worth a 1/100th of a penny today.

[Nishner]

Considering the banks are now paying back TARP funds, rather than going out of busines, seems like something must be working.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Ten leading banks won approval to repay money from the government's controversial TARP program, regulators said Tuesday, which could represent approximately $68 billion in bailout funds returned to taxpayers.

http://money.cnn.com/2009/06/09/news/companies/banks_tarp/?postversion=2009060916

[Rob Crawford]

"Because, when millions of people - from bankers to home owners to real estate agents to derivatives traders - get over their heads, the entire economy suffers."

So punish the folks who screwed up, don't punish the people who did the right thing. And stealing what I earn to hand out to people who screwed up is punishing me.