Posted on 12/27/2009 6:54:46 PM PST by FromLori
Many homeowners who are tens thousands of dollars underwater on their mortgages — meaning they owe more than the value of their homes — have decided it's just not worth it. Some, like Heather Baker, can even afford their payments, but they're walking away anyway.
Baker is done with being a homeowner. Last month, she stopped paying her mortgage.
"Who says that my American dream has to be a home with a white picket fence and all of that?" says Baker, sitting at her dining room table.
But that's not what she was saying three years ago when she bought her four-bedroom home in a distant suburb of Washington, D.C. Baker was about to turn 40 and felt like she needed to own.
"I was like, 'Wow, you know, I need to have a home. I need to be in a home,' " Baker says. "My birthday was in September. I purchased the house in August. So I got the house before I turned 40, but it wasn't a great investment."
A Bad Investment
She figures the house she bought for $465,000 won't sell for more than $225,000 now. That lower figure is what a house down the street went for earlier this year in a foreclosure auction. Like a lot of people, Baker bought her house with no money down.
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
ping
this just ticks me off so bad with us having to back all these mortgages
She is such an idiot, she doesn’t deserve to be a homeowner. She needs to be a renter for the rest of her life. When she is old and gray and doesn’t have two nickles to rub together and can’t figure out why she needs to revisit this decision.
She is more than just an idiot, she is immoral, sloughing off her financial problems on us. These people need to suffer severe penalties for this, yet they seem to walk away scott free. She is one major dickhead.
I hope the mortgage company goes after her for the balance and takes everything she has.
If I walked into a bank and stole $240,000, how much jail time would I serve?
That’s what this woman is doing: she is essentially taking the difference of the amount she borrowed ($465k) and current market price ($225k) and stealing it from the bank. This is fraud and robbery in my opinion, not default.
Why isn’t she serving jail time?
“She figures the house she bought for $465,000 won’t sell for more than $225,000 now. “
Which means she will have to pay $240K when the bank sells it. You cannot walk away from a mortgage. You will owe the money.
“She figures the house she bought for $465,000 won’t sell for more than $225,000 now. “
Which means she will have to pay $240K when the bank sells it. You cannot walk away from a mortgage. You still owe the money.
Nope. Still here, still happy, still able to afford my payment.
American dream on loan from China
So it’s okay for the Banks and Insurance companies to screw us over and Investment Banks walk away from Mortgages they don’t want but not the ordinary Mr. & Mrs. John Q. Public?????????
Give me a break!!!!!!!
Thanks Rahm.
(yes, we know you were on the board that caused the whole Mae house of cards to come crumbling down!)
Not only is she down right criminal, but she has the gall to give and interview and explain her criminality. Would you tell your story this way?
She isn’t the first or last person to be upside down..just one of many who have no concept of honor.
If this is a widespread trend it’s very troubling. Yes we can pile on and say how irresponsible she is and we’d be right, but part of the fault lies with a crappy education that worries so much about teaching multiculturalism, self esteem, condom usage and victimhood and nothing about basic personal finance that people make decisions like this. Next we have a culture emanating from Washington that tells us that things will only get worse and you don’t need a stake in the country, you just need to line up for checks from 0bama’s “stash”. This person needs to realize that yes house values are down but if you bought in a good area they will go back eventually and a house should be a place to live first and an investment second. Finally this is from NPR so I take it with a small grain of salt.
True but then there's no rant.
In the old, bad days where minorities couldn't afford a house, people were required to put 20 percent down in order to get a house. People had to work for years, and save, to get that money. If this lady had put 20 percent down, that would have been $92,000 of the purchase price. Think she'd be walking away? Think we'd be having all these foreclosures?
Thank you Democrats.
This really gets me irritated, Lori.
Hubby and I worked hard for 15 years to pay off our mortgage. We bought no more house than we could afford (taking into account only ONE income, not two), and irresponsible people do this?
“Which means she will have to pay $240K when the bank sells it. You cannot walk away from a mortgage. You will owe the money”
Guess again....
These are all the mortgage walkaway trustee sale states, meaning they are non-judicial foreclosure states.
In those states, generally, when they foreclose on you, they cannot pursue you for their financial losses.
Many, such as California, do in theory allow a lender to choose judicial foreclosure but in those cases the lenders only do so if a borrower has significant other assets. This is the “one action” rule that lets the lender either pursue non-judicial foreclosure, at lower cost and less time, or judicial foreclosure that costs more money and takes more time but lets them go after you for their financial losses.
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
District of Columbia (Washington DC)
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana (as long as non-judicial foreclosure is used)
Nevada - note that the lender CAN get a deficiency judgment (See below)
New Hampshire
Oregon
Tennessee
Texas (but even in a non-judicial foreclosure, the lender can pursue a deficiency judgment)
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
These are states that also allow non-judicial foreclosure, and/or where non-judicial foreclosure is more common and deficiency judgments can be obtained more easily:
Michigan
Minnesota
North Carolina
Rhode Island
South Dakota
Utah
Wyoming
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