USAGypsies

A friend of mine forwarded a petition to me to sign that generates an email to the various reps of the state. I wondered if I could post the link here as it is a petition to the US Government from home owners of homes in America.... basically anyone who is affected or cares about the number of people facing or been hit with foreclosure because the system doesn't work. Is it okay to post a link here or somewhere else in the forums?

Duncan Roberts

How doesn't the system work? My opinion is it works fine. When people try to buy more than they can afford or try to save money by getting a mortgage that's great short term but bad long term, that's when they get bitten.

Rete

I won't say that is a harsh stand to take because there is truth in it. However, bear in mind that in today's recession/mild depression, many of those home owners have lost their long held jobs that they felt were secure and may have owned their homes for many years. It is far more than just buying a home you couldn't afford.

Duncan Roberts

I agree but that's a risk every home buyer in every country faces and unless some plan gets put in place where if you lose your job you don't have to pay your mortgage, it's impossible to get around. That's a piece of the system that will never change and no amount of signatures on a petition will help.

thinbrit

The system has not changed. So these people were either ignorant of how it worked, or took the gamble.

Why should people get assistance now? What about those who lost their homes last week, last month, last year, or in the last decade? How are those people any less deserving? I lost a home in the 80's when I got divorced, it was sold at auction at a loss. It took me over a decade to repay the debt. I made a mistake, and I paid for it. I knew how the system worked, and signing the mortgage agreement didn't give me a God given right to have help from the state should the economy tank or my circumstances change. I gambled, I lost, I picked up the pieces and moved on.

Why should those renting or those who are struggling to pay their mortgage now have to help pay for someone else's mortgage?

We fly the stars and stripe here, not a red flag.

fatbrit

Just need a bit of judicial activism to right it!

Judge Jeffrey Spinner ruled that their lender’s behaviour had been “harsh, repugnant, shocking and repulsive to the extent that it must be appropriately sanctioned so as to deter it from imposing further mortifying abuse”.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle6932535.ece

Steerpike

If the petition is as badly worded as your explanation of it, I wouldn't bother.

There are several contributing factors to today's problem:

1. The house-buying public suspended common sense and signed their life away on mortgages that were pretty clear on the fact that the rates could (and common sense tells you WOULD) increase after a short period;
2. they did not question why house prices had risen astronomically over the past few years, and did not take into account a likely corresponding DROP in those prices;
3. the lending industry started lending money to people who did not have sufficient income or stability to warrant the loans; they got away with this because the industry invented fancy ways to package and hide these bad loans, and sell them on to other unwitting investors.

It's the last item that really pulled the system to its knees - the entire investment community fell apart when the extent of the bad loans became apparent.

People were certainly duped into taking loans they should not have taken, but - they signed documents that, had they bothered to read and digest, would have been pretty clear on the consequences ...

If you want to petition for something useful, then 'loan modification' is not a bad idea to push for. There is little justification for any lender charging more than 5-7% at the moment; it's in both lender's and borrower's interest at this point to compromise on the loan rate.

Jerseygirl

Aren't you now living back in the UK?

scrubbedexpat099

I agree with the last point

Having said that if there are freebies to be had why should those who are paying their loans not get something?

Or even more so those who did not get loans to start with.

(You only have 3 congress people to contact anyway)

Steerpike

As a responsible loan-paying person, I'm certainly not keen on others getting deals to help them deal with their own lack of caution, but - the reality is, their foreclosures affect MY equity, and anything that will get the economy back in business is good for me; I was almost able to retire 2 years ago, now it looks like it could take another 5 or more years to get back to that point - IF things go well! So I'll suck it up on the details, as long as the overall picture improves.

Duncan Roberts

The thing that annoys me is the tax credits. First we sell our house and look for a new one knowing full well we're not first time home buyers but feeling a little annoyed that we don't get 8 grand when we're selling to a first time home buyer AND buying a house, but whatever. Then having owned our house for 4.5 years we miss out on the new $6500 tax credit for people who have been homeowners for 5 years and buy a new house. If we would have known all this we would have waited 6 months before we did anything rather than lose the thousands of dollars we've lost so far.

coopa_troopa

Can you give me some info about this? Or where I can find out about it? We bought a new house last year but have been homeowners for 5 years.

Thanks

Duncan Roberts

http://federalhousingtaxcredit.com/faq2.php

Don't think purchases last year count.

chartreuse

You think that's bad? We closed on December 29th last year. If we'd waited 3 days we could have had a free $8K windfall...