They might as well call this a depression. Why give it the alternative name of recession? They both mean the same damn thing! The way my life has been going I might be in the same situation as the lady in the picture. In fact, many people will. The financial crisis is a very real one for me. Currently, I am in dire need of money. Luckily, I had the good fortune to avoid being stuck in a sub-prime mortgage that I could not pay off. In 2003, my sister & I sold the property we inherited from my grandmother. But before we did, we were the victims of such a loan.
We did not qualify but there was a reason why we sought a loan. There was structural damage that needed to be repaired before we could sell it. Well, we made a huge mistake by using a lady who was quite cunning to help us in this process. But first let me give you the backstory. You see, my grandmother died in 1998. After her passing, my sister & I learned that we had this inheritance. But to complicate matters, we were in probate & the executor was beyond non-compliant on everything. She was my grandmother's friend but not ours. Her only interest was the money that she would get for taking on this role. The executor wanted us to hurry & sell. She was combative & evasive whenever we asked her for money from the trust. Even though she was the guardian of the money. This went on from 1998-2002. We were in probate for almost five years!
While all this was going on we were trying to get through the grief that we felt. We had neighbors who had known us since we were children turning on us. They were fearful that we were too young to handle the property. It was a large house that we had no money to keep up. That is how we got caught up in a terrible loan with a balloon payment after 2 yrs. Thank God we were able to get through that long drawn out probate & sell it. Look what happened just five years later. In 2008, people are being foreclosed on & they are having difficulty unloading their property. Sometimes people get taken advantage of in times of grief. That is what happened to my sister & I. We had noone on our side except God.
I listen to a lot of commentators on various cable t.v. shows. Whenever they comment on the bailout, we always hear about the people who got these loans for selfish reasons. Maybe we should not have gotten a loan that we did not qualify for but we bailed ourselves out of it. No government help at all. Why are we only talking about the recipients of these sub-prime mortgages? What about the persistent lenders who prey on those who really need help? The people who provided us the loan knew our situation. They were predatory lenders who were hoping we would default on it. We almost did. These people were the ones who were greedy.
In the end, the house sold for $100,000 less than it should have. The woman who arranged the loan offered to do everyhing for us since we were obviously grieving. Her brother was a contractor who could offer us a deal on the repairs. His "deal" was to start working on the house for a cheaper rate. We needed a new foundation & roof due to earthquake damage. All he did was jack up the price & avoid all of our calls until we agreed on his new price. The windows were still out when we got rid of it. And his sister made a hefty commission from her loan referral (that was through a lender she knew)& she disappeared. We made a lot of decisions that we would not have under normal circumstances.
Before people make judgments, they should understand there are a lot of victims out there. We were incredibly young greiving heirs to my grandmother's fortune. We did not go out and buy a house we knew we could not afford. The loan was taken out for repairs & got spent on the ridiculous $2,300 monthly mortgage payments. In addition to that, we had to move out of the house & rent an apartment for $1600 a month. About a month after my grandmother died, we discovered that there were rats. They were getting in because the foundation was basically gone. IT WAS A HORRIFIC NIGHTMARE! I've learned a invaluable lesson from that experience. And now that's my depressing mortgage loan story. What's yours? Leave me a comment & let me know where you think the country's headed. Are we in a depression now?
