Posts Tagged ‘mortgage crisis’

The Home Mortgage Saga Continues

// September 2nd, 2009 // 2 Comments » // Moron of the Week

The infamous Indymac Bank (One West) has once again refused to modify our house mortgage. What is the excuse this time?

“Your expense/income ratio does not fit into our system.”

Huh?

When asked for clarification, the service representative explained that our expenses are much more than our income, hence the loan could not be modified.

Yes, well of course our expenses are more than our income. That is precisely why we are seeking a loan modification!! If our income was more than expense, why would we seek and receive modification?!

This is a common problem facing home owners wanting to modify their loans–the banks are refusing to budge and forcing people out of their homes. A reader comments:

Indymac is doing the same thing to us. We are on our third attempt to modify our loan. Twice they’ve told us to pay a certain amount for three months only to deny the modification at the end of the third month stating paperwork missing or that offer is no longer available. I don’t know what to do. I can’t afford a lawyer and to pay the doubled loan amount they conjured up because we were late on a property tax payment. We reimbursed indymac for their property tax payment, but they misappropriated the funds and state that they can’t take such a payment eventhough they told us to do so. Now they are just screwing with us trying to steal our home.

It is a concerted effort to steal our homes. This is the narrative: When we call the lenders for help with our mortgage, they tell us there is nothing they can do till we miss a payment. So we go ahead and miss payments and then the warning letters arrive. We file and refile income/expense reports, negotiate for a good package but keep getting rejected. The process drags on for months, costing us time, money, energy and sleep. They keep losing files, misappropriating funds, crashing their systems, changing their numbers, and rolling out ‘new packages’ that they later reject when you apply for them. A year later, they tell us there is nothing they can do but ‘foreclose’ the house. How many stories fit into this narrative?

Indymac, here’s a counter-narrative for you to comprehend: modify our home mortgage because you are surely not getting our house. If you do get around to foreclosing our house, you face a loss of over half a million dollars. Why don’t you grow a brain and do what is best for you?

Morons of the Week: ‘Indymac’ (OneWest Bank)

// August 6th, 2009 // 5 Comments » // Moron of the Week

Indymac and the people who work on the mortgage modification programs at the bank have to go down as the morons of the month. Apparently, even under the services of One West Bank, it is still an utter failure as a financial institution.

Background: There was a time when we had equity on our home but with the real estate bubble burst, the property has gone from $710K to $250.

In the past year, due to the recession, we have lost more than 50% of our gross household income. It is no longer possible to pay $3.5K per month as mortgage, especially with a similar property tax figure per 6 months. And there is nothing to gain from foreclosing. But Indymac and Citibank–our two house mortgage loan owners–have been relentless in their pursuit of God-Only-Knows-What.

(Citibank actually wrote a letter this past June saying that they would send someone to our property to inspect whether we are still staying here, and we would have to pay for it. Our attorney took care of that ridiculous proposition).

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Another Failed Nativist Sequel – Illegal Aliens Caused Financial Collapse!

// September 26th, 2008 // 2 Comments » // Immigration

The nativist hate-o-sphere is at it again. After blaming legal immigrants for causing global warming, now illegal immigrants are facing the brunts of their latest accusation. What is it? Why, don’t you know, those migrant workers, low-income wage-earners, illegals in the military, undocumented students struggling to afford college, caused the financial collapse of Wall Street, Main Street and are responsible for the foreclosures. Now we need a $700 billion dollar bailout for them! See what Quaker at DreamActivist has to say about this.

(Psssst, while the nation is conveniently distracted, lets also give DHS $4billion for overbudgeting on old technology)

Tancredo ran in the Republican presidential primaries on a platform devoted strongly against illegal immigrants (a noun, verb and ‘illegal alien’). He garned less than 1% of the vote but that has not stopped him from obsessing over those illegals and running around to ‘catch them.’ We cannot blame him though; forget ‘illegal aliens’, ethnic diversity is a sight for sore-eyes in his state so of course he is longing for rarity.

So, despite the fact that the last movie flopped, illegal aliens are responsible for the mortgage crisis, booms nativist Tom Tancredo, in a new theatrical sequel. Viewer discretion is advised. Strongly advised.

If these 38 million illegal aliens are in fact, attaining mortgages on housing property, that means they are buying houses (creating demand) and paying property taxes on them in the thousands annually. Wait, that cannot be right, ILLEGALS don’t pay taxes, they just reap all the benefits that belong to American citizens!! Which one is it Tancredo, ALIPAC, and the nativist blogosphere? Are you screaming double-bind with little room to wiggle? Did not think the erroneous claims all the way, did you?

Alleged anchor baby, Michelle Malkin is adamant that it is no coincidence that foreclosures have hit hardest in cities that are ‘illegal alien sanctuaries’ such as “Loudon County, Virginia, California’s Inland Empire, Stockton, San Joaquin Valley, Las Vegas, and Phoenix.” Even if we were to accept that these cities are largely hit due to illegal immigrant presence, we would still be making the mistake of assuming causation when there is in fact, only correlation.

The correlation is explained by the fact that the housing bubble created massive jobs for illegal immigrants in construction, who settled in those areas. Fueled by the boom, the INDUSTRY over-built using the old adage, ‘if you build it, they will come.’ The Census held that immigrants, legal or otherwise, are good for the housing market — they created demand and bought houses that otherwise may remain on the market, creating losses for builders. When the market started to unravel in 2006, the bubble burst as is a tendency inherent in the capitalist system, and thousands of undocumented immigrants in construction work found themselves unemployed with no ‘cushion paychecks’ and unable to afford mortgage rates. Now, do we blame companies and industries for overproducing or do we blame workers for simply doing the jobs they were given? The answer is simple.

For the more seasoned reader – Even if you believe that illegal aliens are to blame for some, even a tiny bit, of the mortgage crisis because lets admit it, we do have lenders who help straw buyers access loans, do consider that attrition through enforcement has created a self-fufilling prophecy. The idea of attrition through enforcement is to make life so tough for illegal immigrants that they would self-deport. Counties like Prince William and states like Arizona, Oklahoma, Rhode Island (flowing with illegal Canadians),  pride themselves for driving out ‘illegal aliens’ by getting tough on them. Lets deploy ICE in various cities, and round-up the working mothers of undocumented families in the thousands. It makes for great entertainment for the nativists, but the TRPs don’t translate into any sort of economic or social gain.

Guess what is left behind? Well, yes, the children have the huge mortgages on their hands now. But eventually, empty houses, bank losses upon ‘bailouts’ and no one to buy the homes in foreclosure since the overwhelming number of consumers do not have the capital to invest at this time. Well, congratulations to nativists and nativist policy-makers — if you are blaming illegal aliens for the ‘mortgage crisis’ three more fingers are pointing back at you.

Without immigrants, legal or illegal, we have even less demand for housing, and hence a falling rate of profit for the real estate bubble. BURST! If you want ‘illegal immigrants’ gone, be prepared to pay the price of huge losses to the economy. Don’t turn around and blame immigrants, legal or illegal, for the mess that they just may have cushioned or softened.