Le Petit Mortgage
Mary at The Left Coaster links to this story in yesterday’s Washington Post about predators and the people they make mortgage loans to. The lead sob story (emphases mine):
Jeffrey Taylor and his wife bought their dream home in Purcellville for $538,000 last August. Now they have to sell it because they are getting divorced and neither one can afford the mortgage alone.
The most they could get for it was $430,000. After paying all the real estate commissions and taxes, they will still owe the bank $118,000.
“Five months later, I lose $100,000,” Taylor, a high school teacher, said. “I don’t think I can take $100,000 into the stock market and lose it faster.”
I realize that I am a lower middle-class kinda guy, so maybe I don’t understand mortgages that large. I mean, that’s just a lot of damned money.
But —wait a minute. This guy’s a high school teacher?
Even if he and his wife had not decided to divorce, they were not happy with their mortgage. They were not paying down the loan at all because it was an interest-only loan.
With an annual salary of $70,000, he does not have enough money for his share of the amount he and his wife will end up owing the bank. So he has asked the bank to forgive the debt, despite the tax implications. If the bank chooses to demand a check, he said he would take out another loan to cover it.
“This has destroyed me,” he said.
Is this guy serious? Even if his soon-to-be-former old lady was matching his salary, there’s no fucking way they should have ever come within a mile of signing on to a mortgage of that kind and size. Are they mad?
Of course, you know whose fault it is. It wouldn’t be the morons who just had to have their dream home; it’s got to be the lending institutions that forced them to put themselves into that kind of debt.
Outrageous.
