Posted on 06/10/2011 12:14:57 PM PDT by DeaconBenjamin
Charles and Jill Segal have not made a mortgage payment in nearly five years -- but they continue to live in their five-bedroom West Palm Beach, Fla. home.
Lynn, from St. Petersburg, Fla., has been living without paying for three years.
In Thousand Oaks, Calif., an actor has missed 30 payments, and still, he has not lost his home.
They're not alone.
Some 4.2 million mortgage borrowers are either seriously delinquent or have had their cases referred to lawyers to pursue foreclosure auctions, according to LPS Applied Analytics. Of those, two-thirds have made no payments at all for at least a year, and nearly one-third have gone more than two years.
These cases can go on and on. Nationwide, it takes an average of 565 days to foreclose on borrowers in default from their first missed payments to the final auction. In New York, the average is 800 days and in Florida, where the "robo-signing" issue is particularly combative, it's 807.
If they want to fight evictions hard, borrowers can remain in their homes even longer while their cases are being worked through.
The Segals have been doing that -- in court. They bought their home in 2003 with an adjustable rate mortgage. After a few years, their monthly payments tripled to $3,000, just as their home-inspection business was cratering.
The Segals want the bank to modify the mortgage so payments are affordable, and they think the court will agree that their lender put them into a toxic loan.
"The evidence will show that we were defrauded," said Jill Segal.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
I really have little sympathy for people who took out adjustable rate loans when fixed rates were the lowest in decades.
I don’t mind their living there at least until the bank wants them out. But the rest reveals that they are lowlife dishonest scum who deserve to be dragged through the justice system at its worst and to end up living in their car.
For the bank, the property has dropped in value to the point that recovering it isn't worth their time. Just wait for the next bailout.
“The Segals want the bank to modify the mortgage so payments are affordable, and they think the court will agree that their lender put them into a toxic loan. “
I agree that when one signs on the dotted line, they should know what they are doing and live with the consequences, but I have wondered how a system could be developed that would tie bankers into not being able to work with debtors more effectively. It makes sense to me to keep the borrower paying rather than going the foreclosure route. Of course, this kind of an economy is a first..
“I really have little sympathy for people who took out adjustable rate loans when fixed rates were the lowest in decades.”
Not only that, they refi’d to the point of a 500K mortgage. They are supposed to be victims? What a crock.
they probably took a buttload of cash out of that refi, too.
It’s just people who tried to play high finance, by tring to save a few thousand by taking their interest at the lowest rate they could, but neglecting to lock it in when there was evidence that it bottomed out.
If the Segals are serious about modifying the loan and buying the house,then I think they should be making their original payment amount into an account supervised by the court.
Check that....after reading the article (I was right on the cash pullout BTW).....this asshole is a real scumbag.
‘I really have little sympathy for people who took out adjustable rate loans when fixed rates were the lowest in decades.”
I have even less sympathy for lenders who approved these loans knowing the rate would increase and knowing the people would not be able to afford them.
So they speculated in the real estate lending market and I still don’t feel sorry for them any more than I feel sorry for people who speculate on Wall Street and lose their shirts.
And here I am a chump struggling to make my payments on time.
I need to start voting liberal and expect everyone else to take care of me because they will. :)
I wonder if the IRS will start going after these people. Seems to me that getting a place to live with no payment qualifies as income.
They do home inspections. They are experts in residential real estate. They did a cash-out refi of a house they bought for $135K when it went up to $750K. They wasted the money and now want the bank to gift them the money.
These people are not victims, they are thieves.
I don’t feel sorry for them either. They choose a precarioud dituation, that was only doable under the best of circumstances.
But that would have been my advice, by the house you can afford and lock in your interest rates when they bottomed out.
People get a contract with a mortgage and are now broke. States sign contracts with unions, and now States are broke.
Banks don’t want to foreclose, because more properties on the market mean lower property values. Lower property values means even lower values of their crappy Mortgage backed securities. This is the crux of their deal with the FED and Treasury, who bought many of their crappy MBS’s
Extend and pretend, delay and pray.
“After a few years, their monthly payments tripled to $3,000....”
I don’t know the details but this is a red flag to me. Any loan of any type that would somehow have terms where a regular payment could possibly triple in cost smacks of “loan sharking”. Under what circumstances would a loan of this type be legit?
I agree the buyer signed the deal but the bank made a loan with unreasonable terms. What would make the bank think that a purchaser wanting a loan designed to make payments at the lowest possible amount would suddenly be capable of paying three times that payment?
This loan should never have been made by the bank to begin with and terms like this border on shady to say the least.
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