Letters to the Editor
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Need a correction
The opening bid on the Crisp mansion was $1.8 million, with an "m", not a "b".
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FUCKING SCUMBAGS
This turd should be in jail for many many years. He and the other parasites and scumbags like him are fully responsible for this horrible mess that we are in. After all, without flipping fucking jerks like this, the housing prices would be nowhere near where they are.
The ONLY reason that CA houses are in such a horrible mess price-wise is toads like this. These houses are often very very small, and selling for thousands of dollars higher than anywhere else in the country.
For you CA jerks, let me tell you about my house. 5200 sqft, 9/10 acre lot, 4 bath, 5 bed rooms, family room is 30x35 with 19 ft ceilings.
Cost, in 1997: 172,000
That's what you CA idiots are missing. Buying a nice house for a reasonable amount. And what did you trade that for? The opportunity of selling each other the overpriced property down the block until all prices went thru the roof.
I'll tell you one thing that would fix this: repeal Prop 13, so that everyone would be punished in property tax by the misuse of the resale of houses.
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No one should be bailed out by the banks or by our government
I am one of the home purchasers who actually had a decent credit score and income. I went for a traditional 30 year fixed mortgage. I found myself being outbid on homes by people who had no business purchasing a home in the first place. No money down and teaser rate mortgages were actually pricing honest home buyers out of the market. I ended up finally paying more for a home in a bidding war only to find out later that the people bidding against me were not even qualified to own a home in the first place. The banks who devised these schemes and the people who are taking up space in the homes they should not own are the ones who should shoulder the burden. Foreclose on them all. Kick them out so people with real incomes and real loans can pay a decent price for a home. To protect them only penalizes people like me who actually did what the market should have allowed in the first place.
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thanks sirocco
fixed
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grease splatter
If the consequences cause the overall economy to slide into a recession the so be it. We all suffer when a polluter fouls our air. We all suffer when we allow election fraud to put undeserving into office. We should all suffer when we allowed this debacle to occur.
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Take a look at London ...
Britain has its own bubble ... and fraud ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zo7wphNdgRs&feature=related
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No bailout for anyone
I kind of agree. If we don't stop these scams at some point, they will just keep occurring over and over. I'm thinking of the S&L debacle, I'm thinking Enron, and all the other crap in between.
Let the whole mess sink the economy. Then tighten up the rules, tighten up the regulations, and reinvigorate the SEC.
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"Them or us?"
hahahahahaha
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I'm of two minds on the bailout
Oh, how I'd love there to not be a bailout. I'd love to see the speculators, the greedy, and (not quite as much) the stupid slowly twisting in the wind. Maybe prices would go down, and maybe I, a person with good credit and financial management skills, would actually be able to buy a house. To, you know, live in.
On the other hand, who knows what the ripple effect would be throughout the rest of the economy. I was out of a job for a long time during the last recession, and working a truly soul-sucking "survival" job for a long time after that. I feel like things have just started coming together for me, as far as actually being able to save significant quantities of money, rather than simply avoiding going into debt. I really, really, do not want to go through that again, and if a bailout will prevent it, then, well...
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Repeal Prop 13 indeed.
Property tax assessment might not keep the bastards honest, but it will keep the bastards from sinking so low they take everybody else down with them. Up here in Canada the CHMC has a clearly defined ratio for undewriting high ratio mortgages (that's a govenrnment agency, by the way) and part of that ratio is the assessed value. If you're out by more than the tolerance then they send in the big guns. who can then be sued if the loan is defaulted. Not perfect, by any means, but more checks means more rationality and fewer opportunities for illegality and fraud.
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Capitalism will eat itself
Someone tell Bush that his interest-rate freeze plan is a form of price control. Price controls never work. Plus they contravene free market capitalism. Privatize the gains and socialize the losses. That's the American way.
Let's just wait until the law of unintended consequences starts to rear its ugly head. If the IRS changes the rules on debt forgiveness, we're going to see a whole lot more folks walking away from upside-down mortgages.
And where were the regulators during this debacle? Lowering interest rates down to 1% and encouraging people to take on adjustable rate mortgages. Oh my Sweet Alan Greenspan, the annals of history will not look kindly upon thee.
Things are going to get a whole lot worse, I'm afraid. Hell, I think we're still watching the shoot-around before the game even starts. I'd express outrage on behalf of the taxpayer, but as far as I can tell the taxpayer won't be able to bail us all out of this mess. Our foreign enablers should be expressing outrage, but we'll hit them with default on sovereign debt before it's all said and done. The US Treasury is already effectively bankrupt anyway.
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not quite sure...
I can see that I'd make a terrible real estate scam artist. I'm trying to figure out where Crisp and associates actually made any money on these things. Tell me if I got this correct:
- Salinas buys house with loans of $640,000
- Salinas gifts 99% of property to an associated company
- Company sells house to Tu Crisp for $959,000
At this point, original $640,000 loans paid off, leaving ~$319,000 in excess, 1% going to Salinas, rest going to the associated company.
- Bank forecloses, gets $525,000 back and takes a hit of $483,000 on bad mortgage.
It seems that the real problem here is that second sale, and whatever convinced the mortgage lender in that sale that it was an acceptable loan. Sounds like, for the most part, it was a combination of false information provided to the bank by the borrower, as well as a faulty appraisal and risk assessment process by the lender.
I can see where there are bad mortgages held by some bank or another, and any securities based on those mortgages would be riskier than it was probably expected to be.