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| Written by caldwellb02 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Sunday, 01 November 2009 16:07 | ||||||||||||||||||||
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One of the dedicated people on Loansafe.org sent me this. Loansafe.org is a forum dedicated to helping people with mortgage issues, loan modification, and basically helping people stay in their homes. Since congress, the administration, and pretty much anyone in any position of authority - real or imagined is doing essentially nothing to help people losing their homes we'll have to fight for themsleves ourselves. Here's the letter and the links to the petition are at the end: Whether they have lived in their homes for 20 years or 3, there are tens of thousands of American Homeowners now caught in a never-ending nightmare of negotiating with their banks for a loan modification. Many of these homeowners are the members of the loansafe.org community forum, and they are fighting mad. We as loansafe ban together to provide facts and general support – purely driven by the desire to help the American homeowner. This is made ever more frustrating because the banks have the media’s ear. The banks have the ear of the highest levels of the government, including the Treasury Department. They have that ear because of the power they wield financially and politically, and this must stop. This is a national crisis that is tormenting people because it strikes at one of the most basic of all needs: their homes. People are struggling and confused. They are being lied to and if it wasn’t for people helping people many would be falling apart. And many homeowners are afraid to speak up because of the power that the banks hold. This is a national crisis, and we the people need to step up and be heard The leadership team at loansafe.org has put together a petition to congress and to the Federal Government. Many of them and others are working to get legislation passed in their home states. This petition should be signed by anyone and everyone in the United States that is registered to vote. Homeowner or not. Here are some of the almost criminal facts of our economic condition: · During the years between 2004 and 2008, banks began to reward risky and reckless behavior by their employees regarding home loan products. These risky behaviors were rewarded by bonuses, and complemented the already unreal bonuses given then and still given today to their CEO’s. Bank A saw that Bank B was bundling their mortgage products and selling the package on the open market. The loans became more and more risky, and frankly ludicrous. If you believe for one moment that our fine “backbone” financial systems did not see this bust coming, you have not done a lick of homework, or your glasses are too stained-glass to see the sun of day. What did they care? They were being paid in cash for these bundles! · Banks and mortgage brokers advocated refinancing and home equity loans to give more buying power to the American public. Suddenly, the first time homebuyer that never should have qualified for a loan at their current salaries was becoming eligible. Many got a great LOW-INTRODUCTORY rate of 6.5%, but these were often on Adustable Rate Mortgages. Banks offered subprime mortgages to naïve, first time buyers, often promising that they would not doubt be eligible for refinancing at even lower rates in a couple of years, and often adding excessive fees and hidden loopholes. This reckless behavior and unfair influence by banks and mortgage brokers made more people eligible for loans, and created higher demand for housing. The prices of homes kept rising. More and more subprime loans were being granted. More loans were bundled, the banks got richer and then ….POP The market collapse brought big bailouts for banks, and tremendous decreases in home values for the homeowner. Often these homeowners had also been dramatically affected by loss of other income and other hardships that made the increasing ARM payments impossible to sustain. People dealing with unemployment and other hardships were walking away from the homes they’d lived in for years. Others, like those on the loansafe community, though armed with a wealth of information about the loan modification requirements and providing support in every way possible, have been negotiating with their servicers for months if not years. Every other house is a walk away in some part of this country. More walk-aways and more short sales leads to plummeting home values. Our smartest real-estate brokers, and the mortgage folks we had worked with all of our lives thought we would be able to refinance out of these loans after our lock in periods expired. But that is impossible now, because a high percentage of homes in the United States are underwater. Banks are playing Russian Roullette with one of our basic needs – our shelter – our homes where we live each day. And it is the homeowner who needs to make this change, because our government is watching the banks. We trusted. We trusted our banks. And now they have completely abandoned the American public – Joe Middle-Class. The HAMP programs initiated with great intent by our President, in an unfortunate circumstance of time, are being played over by our banks. Banks deny modifications for unreasonable reasons (one of the latest received by many is “Your Hardship is not a permanent situation.”) Homes are being foreclosed on in the middle of trial modifications. Other homeowners are being offered new loan ABOVE their original mortgage agreement. The banks are getting funded for trial modifications, but have no one overseeing their efforts in modification permanency. The program is not working as intended. It is time to save the American Dream, and get Wall Street out of Main Street! Click here to sign the petition
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Comments (10)
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If you can't trust your banker....... who can you trust?? My grandfather used that phrase a lot. You needed a little extra money and the bank scratched something on a scrap of paper and you signed or didn't sign. It didn't matter because everyone trusted the bank. His granchildren trusted the banks and signed their reams of paper to get the American Dream. Instead we got lies and trickery and are being forced out of our homes. Who should we trust now??  |
terrance
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one west bank no help all run around miricale round. frauders , the true part is this what they do payment plan ! than bam!!!!! The majority of the offers are nothing more than a plan to keep homeowners in debt and a state of bondage for years to come, according to Brent T. White of the James E. Rogers College of Law. Attorney Walter Hackett writes on his blog Livinglies how "a homeowner will be offered a 'workout' that can result in the homeowner being 'worked out' of his or her home." He explains it in his post. Thousands of frustrated and frightened homeowners have posted their stories on blogs and forums like givemebackmycredit.com or Loansafe.org, a community of over 20,000 homeowners getting together to save their homes and turn to each other because there's no where else to turn. |
AZOwner/Melissa
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LABS labsr4me, I will respectfully disagree with you. There was criminal activity in our "financial back-bone" that really begins to be highlighted in 2006, with Goldman Sachs. There was criminal activity in 06-07-08 with AIG. It's all public, however, I am still wondering why folks are still receiving bonuses and not being stripped of every asset they own and thrown in jail. Well, I do know, our "financial back-bone" owns everything. And to have those "too big to fail" actually fail, would put us in a hugely different situation, "wishing we had at 10% umemployment rate". Yes, I signed my mortgage. However, I also received $80 thousand dollars of upgrade incentives for nothing, as long as I locked into a mortgage written by my builder. This is illegal. Unfortunately, I only discovered it 3 months past my 3 years of purchasing this home. SO, there was a huge incentive for people to sign these loans, and comfort in the fact that everyone was offering them -- 30 year fixed was an old way to finance (incidently, the ONLY way I financed my previous 4 homes). It's the American way and the American Dream. If you believe that 3/4 or more of the middle class, or even half of us, went out and signed for mortgages that we could not afford so that we would fail, you're sadly mistaken. In addition, a market variation of 10 - 20% is tolerable. In my area and the greater city, we have lost over 50% of our value. That is not normal, nor should it be expected. In Phoenix, there is still a 10% foreclosure rate. You think that we are all stupid? You thank that we all would have taken that kind of risk on our family homes? Tolerance my friend, your pane of glass, through which you see life, is not the only view, and it certianly is not the majority reality. |
labsr4me
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... Hey Tree, nice to hear from you...you should be proud, your streak is intact...you can't respond to a different viewpoint without a personal attack and calling people names. Where did I say that meteoric rise or fall was normal? 60% drop in a week? That's not represented in that chart either. You can't just focus on the fall, and ignore the rise...but too many people ignored the rise. My point of the graph was to represent that over the years there have been periods of 10 - 20% declines in housing values and for about 25 years between mid-50s and the late 70's average housing values declined 8% (over 25 years!!!) and to automatically assume that the value of your house would rise or hold its value in the short term time frame of an ARM is, in my opinion, naive. The article below the graph actually lays blame across the spectrum, and this has been my point, homeowners need to take responsibility too, not just blame the banks...."Instead, they (housing prices) skyrocketed by 86% due to Alan Greenspan’s irrational lowering of interest rates to 1%, the criminal pushing of loans by lowlife mortgage brokers, the greed and hubris of investment bankers and the foolishness and stupidity of home buyers." But no one wants to admit that last part. ARM's are priced lower than traditional 30 year fixed mortgages for a reason. RISK...there is inherent risk that interest rates will rise when the ARM "matures" at its adjustment period; there is inherent risk that the value of your house could change when the ARM "matures" at its adjustment period. Those risks and consequences are borne out in the loan documents. If the loan document says the interest rate increases 5% when the ARM gets to its adjustment period and the bank instead charges you 10% that's fraud and can and should be prosecuted...if the bank raises the rate 5% as stated in the document, that's the risk the borrower took when accepting the loan. The alternative to taking an ARM is to get a 30 year fixed loan that will have a higher rate, and that higher rate may not allow you to buy that house that you could get if you went with the ARM. So people want the house they want and to either save some money in the short term or buy a house that otherwise maybe they couldn't afford, or wouldn't want to afford because they'd have to cut back on other areas of their lifestyle, they got an ARM, and now they are stuck and don't like it. Had they chosen a conventional mortgage, they wouldn't be in this boat. But they didn't, they chose a vehicle that had more risk and the terms are now onerous. Terms that were in the document. AZOwner/Melissa: $200,000 underwater implies a home value of near $400,000 at some point, that doesn’t sound like middle class to me. I never said the homeowner was the criminal…my point is that homeowners made a choice of how to finance their homes, and those with ARMs assumed risk in order to get the lower rate and better terms. No one forced anyone to take an ARM, you made a choice, the terms of which were laid out in the documents. The market conditions have changed, albeit drastically, and now all I hear Is how the banks screwed everyone. These loans weren’t “designed to fail”…do you really think the leaders at the 100+ banks that have been closed this year were making loans with the sole intent to ensure they lost their jobs, benefits and the bulk of their net worth which was tied up in the value of their institutions? Caped Shitheader: I don’t hold the banks in high esteem. I find the fingerpointing at everyone else but the man in the mirror disingenuous. I don’t know everyone’s individual story, and if there is fraud, and I am sure in many cases there is, than those institutions should be brought to justice, but I didn’t make the choice and assume the risk to get the low rate of an ARM. If the federal government has provided money to the banks to shore up capital ratios and provide modifications for homeowners, then my tax dollars are being used to mitigate the risk taken by holders of ARMs that have repriced. Is all this an unfortunate mess? yes...do I wish that someone loses their home? no. Do I believe there is some fraud in the system? Yes I am truly sorry that people are in the predicaments they are in. I understand that I'm not going to convince any of you that you have any responsibility in this at all...you can't admit it, and won't admit that you were trying to get a great deal, and accepted the risks to get that deal. I am by no means stating that homeowners are criminal, or fully responsible for the mess. on the flipside, you're not going to convince me you are all innocent victims who were tricked, cajoled, forced into the ARM structure of financing. We will agree to disagree. |
TreeGuy
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So you're retarded? It's incredibly retarded to call a 40-60% drop in a week "normal" or "a valley" and to think ther's a peak coming anytime soon. |
labsr4me
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Home Values http://www.businessinsider.com...rds-2009-2 There are plenty of peaks and valleys over the decades...to think your home will always appreciate and hold value is naive...especially given the value increase of the last 6 years before the bust... |
Caped Shitheader
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yup You may want to read this, although it might make you not like the banks you seem to hold in such high esteem: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/100/story/77791.html |
AZOwner/Melissa
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Dreadful account of hostage taking -- mortgage labsr4me -- you poor dear. And I bet when you resumed your posture as the good middle-class puppet, and the bottom dropped out of our economy, you climbed the to the highest point, of the highest building, and jumped. That would explain your brain damage, although I'm not so sure the outhouse roof is that high. All of us good little doobie, middle class, homeowners, that signed these loans did not sign when our homes were 200 thousand dollars under water, nor when the interest rate on these loans was 15%. Actually, we thought our homes would retain their value so that we could refinance in a a reasonable period of time! Imagine! Assuming your house will retain it's value! Now, there's a novel concept that you might want to consider for awhile. The criminal here is not the homeowner. It is the banks that willingly handed out money like water, and designed these loans to fail. Foresaw the economy failing, but kept selling that bad paper, and insuring the bad debt. Get a clue. . . |
labsr4me
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"God loves a working man...never trust whitey!" When I refinanced my home several years ago, I had a very similar experience to what is described above...I was peacefully sitting in my home, when the doors suddenly crashed open and flew across the room....striding through the cloud of debris were several masked marauders with briefcases in hand. I didn't have time to get out of my chair before I was chained down by this unyielding mob. I was then told I would be forced to refinance my house...one marauder actually held a loaded pistol to my head. When I finally said I would consider their offer, they pulled out a one page document with a glowing list of only benefits...low interest rates, interest only payments, no equity required...when I asked to see the rest of the documents, they said "absolutely not." When I asked if I could have my attorney look at it, they said "absolutely not." I said I didn't want to sign it, and they took my bound hand and forcibly signed my name on the dotted line...then they said....that's it...we are closed. I never had a chance to read the documents, have my attorney review it or think about or discuss whether I could afford all the terms of this new deal because I never ever got a chance to review the terms....THOSE BASTARDS FORCED IT DOWN MY THROAT AND I HAD NO ABILITY TO WEIGH THE RISKS OR MY OWN ACCOUNTABILITY. Without a doubt, all banks should be closed, I agree....the 100+ that have been closed this year alone aren't enough. I won't be happy until everyone is in the same boat I am in. I want the guy who had the chance to read the documents, and understand the what-if scenarios, and decided he really couldn't afford to take the long term risk for the short term benefit, so he didn't....I want that guy to pay more now, because I was forced to refinance by the black marauders...I want him to directly share in my misery. Everyone should pay by God. |
booggs28
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and that's why.... You rock caldwell - thanks for your time and effort in all that you are doing for the little folks - |
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