Posted on 06/11/2017 10:12:00 AM PDT by artichokegrower
Robert and Dolores Sexton never saw it coming: a classic real estate ruse the Bay Area retirees say has cost them the home they bought almost 42 years ago.
The couple says they quit paying their mortgage and started paying a Southern California company that promised to work with their bank to renegotiate their loan. But the company disappeared, the bank foreclosed and now an eviction notice demands the Sextons pack up and leave by 6:01 a.m. Tuesday.
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
“Sounds like he’s been doing stupid things for many years... then when he got sick and really needed the equity it had long been used up on something else. “
Sold for $1.3 million. He could have sold out and moved to Florida pocketing $300,000 after new house.
“Then even worse, instead of some basic research on the computer and re-financing to a lower interest rate. “
Not an option. The bank turned them down.
Not in CA. Ever hear of Proposition 13?
He probably could have sold it for around $800K 7 years or so ago and pocketed over $700K... instead of borrowing $700K to do a remodel which led him to this point.
“He probably could have sold it for around $800K 7 years or so ago and pocketed over $700K...”
And missed the next $600,000 increase in value?
“instead of borrowing $700K to do a remodel which led him to this point. “
They had borrowed multiple times over the years.
Yep... that prop 13 is pretty cool... it even passes down from parent to child upon mom's death. My MIL was in the same house since 1959 so her prop assessment was locked into the 1975 valuation when prop 13 started.... taxes were around $1500/year even after my wife inherited it.
We could have lived there had we wanted to... for real cheap. But, we didn't want to stay in L.A. and the place needed tons of work.
Now we live in FL and pay $9K/year in taxes for a house that cost us 23% of what we sold that one for.
That prop 13 is probably a big part of California's problems though... because a lot of folks are paying so little in property taxes compared with other states... they need to make up the difference somehow.
Doing ok with his pension. Won’t starve.
Robert E Sexton
Title: OPERATING ENGINEER, UNIVERSAL
Pension: SFERS (San Francisco Employees Retirement System), 2016 $58,675.97
Retired 2009
Retired 8 years ago when 62.
The voters that keep electing them were educated by tools and fools of the public school system.
Government workers are parasites given “work about” tasks that amount largely to nothing including government worker “teachers”.
Parasites, parasites the lot of them all.
Probably. But it does seem like they were living off that mortgage also.
The bank may have turned them down but there are other banks and mortgage companies out there. They might have been able to find a deal. Better yet they should have sold the house taken their profit, maybe $500,000 and just have moved somewhere a lot cheaper to live.
A bird in hand is worth 2 in the bush.
I have a feeling CA is in for another "correction" any day now... it's overdue really.
We had one in L.A. in 2005, and I felt it coming... so we sold our home and our investment property, both in the Spring of 2005. The market there in L.A. completely tanked in August... and the buyers of both properties wound up in foreclosure within 3 years (oh well).
Our primary residence, which we bought in 2000 for $545K sold for $1.36 million... the investment/rental property we bought in 2003 for $560K sold for $880K.
If I had property in L.A. now I would definitely be selling... because it has "that feeling" again.
>>so why do they still have a mortgage after 42 years is the relevant question
My brother-in-law, used to tell me that after paying for his $150K 30 year mortgage for 28 years- now he only owed $450K with 25 years left..refinanced it and took out equity about every 18 months...of course, he is an uber-liberal so it’s not that hard to understand.
He is also a piss poor money manager. According to a records search of the property, they have been in and out of financial trouble since 1980 a mere four years after purchasing, what at the time was a relatively modest home.
No kidding. I am in Cleveland and our property taxes on a $180K home are around $3k a year. However, half a mile north in one of the ‘burbs and the taxes would be twice that.
Again they are not with the time of day... You can negotiate with your creditors if you want to and if you can’t make your payments or they won’t work with you a BK attorney is who you should contact. The entire industry really has no reason to exist.
As I said most are owned by credit card companies themselves or are flat out frauds. More often than not you are just going to wind up in a bigger mess trying to have some third party player play this “role” for you.
That is more in line with mine. Which I just checked are $265 a month for taxes. I think that is still a total rip off, but what are you going to do. I live in a hot bed of Liberal Lunacy!
Amen to that brother. Fortunately, if one is resourceful it isn't any more difficult or expensive to work on your own used car these days. And they tend to last longer than they used to with proper maintenance. An older version of Office or one of the open source alternatives work just fine. High speed Internet without cable TV add ons is relatively inexpensive and you can purchase on-line content such as Netflix and DirecTV Now for cheaper than cable. Their are numerous MVNOs which provide cell service for much less than the primary cell service providers with no contracts with inexpensive used cell phones. So despite all the big business scams designed to part you from your money... there are more alternatives these days than ever.
Dear jim from C-town,
(the only ‘c-town’ I know is now called Chiraq)
re; ‘read the article’ I did, and I did NOT say he didn’t ‘earn’ the healthcare. Purple Hearts get a LOT of V.A. healthcare.
re; ‘poor money manager’. There are a lot of Vietnam Vets, myself included, that came from low income families that lived from paycheck to paycheck, even back then. Some of us had some simple money education in our junior/senior high school work, and some lived where they were expecting to work where their fathers worked ... and then came them having that ‘lucky’ draft number, and all that went out the window.
In case you were not informed of such, some of us went ‘over there’, already resigned to the possibility of being shipped back in a bag. The awakening to the overcoming of that, for some, began that “Great! Now, what the ‘x’ do I do?!?”
Having lived through all that, for a lot of us, put a lot of what hometown Americans might have called daily stress of life issues, into one big bucket called, ‘D’is ain’ nuttin’ but s(p)it, so why da heck even get up in on it?’, which just devalued EVERYTHING in everyday life, except you wake up one more day, one more day, etc. Yeah, sure ya meet a girl, get sweet on her, maybe even marry her, but even THAT is part of that ‘bucket’.
This is not an exercise in making an excuse, just an observation, because I’ve been there with the house issues, myself.
Dad said: “Ya keep the lights on, food on the table, a dry roof over your head, clothes and shoes with no holes, and that is enough.”
dear semimojo,
re: “Not in CA. Ever hear of Proposition 13?”
That must’ve happened AFTER 1985, when I left, for the last time.
Only if he did his twenty.
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