A high-living couple at Smith Mountain Lake walked away from their home recently, mailing the keys to the house, along with the keys to two luxury cars, to First National Bank of Christiansburg, the holder of the mortgage and the loans on the fancy cars.
The cost of living the high life came due when their adjustable-rate mortgage payment tripled and they couldn’t pay the bills.
For too many years, too many Americans lived beyound their means, using easy credit to buy things they neither needed nor could afford. Now the piper comes to call and he demands payment.
Part of the blame lies with the banks and mortgage firms that made it too easy to buy "McMansions" and expensive homes through jumbo, 100 percent loans and no-interest mortgages. Part of the blame lies in an economy that flew too high for too long before plummeting to the ground in a long-overdue crash.
But those who made the choice share the blame as well, chasing the high life without regard to the cost. When the bill came due they couldn’t pay it and their pursuit of the good life also brought the walls crashing down on many who were just trying to achieve the dream of home ownership. We have friends who weren’t really living beyond their means but who now face negative equity in their homes because the housing market went South.
Like too many Americans, we chased that illusionary good life for too long, living high, driving expensive cars, buying fancy clothes and taking fancy vacations. Luckily, we escaped before the crash, cashing in and moving to the simpler life in the country.
I’d love to say we managed this through sound planning but I can’t. It was luck. Blind luck. Nothing more. As my granddaddy liked to say, even a blind hog finds an acorn once in a while.
no Wonder Floyd is winning . Look at the determination on the face of that buffalo!!!
I blame the Brokers who pushed these loans for a hefty commission, and the banks that allowed these kind of mortgages in the first place, believing they would make a killing in the long run. But the real blame goes to an administration and congress that passed laws that makes this possible to begin with.
Many people, even those in the McMansions believed that by the time their interest rates went up their property value would have increased, to the point that they would be able to re-finance using their equity as a good down payment and to get a lower interest rate. The brokers told them that!
Unfortunately given this country’s war debt, the related increased cost of gas, oil and all the associated costs that go along with that, middle class people are getting bogged down in debt and the result is falling real estate demand and no equity in the McMansions or McMinis either.
The sad thing is we the middle class are the ones who struggle the most. While those at the top level are making a pot full on top of the great wealth they already had. The war industries are bring in more wealth than most of us can imagine. While we in the middle are struggling to keep our head above water, and trying to stay safe from the imports, that bring them much profit.
And if out of all of this, some of the banks and mortgage companies bit the dust, I say they deserve it, and I hope they get what’s coming to them!