Well, this week in bankruptcy court I thought I saw a record, some guy dumping six houses.
But later in the week when I told this to a guy who does thousands of bankruptcies, he said that he'd seen a guy who dumped nine.
I think the guy dumping the six houses was Middle Eastern, and my guess is that a lot of the houses were for family members and when one defaulted the whole thing went down, or maybe there were variable rate mortgages that locked too high.
Looking backward, the first bankruptcy guy I saw this year (after initially being hired to handle only family law, before the bankruptcies went nutz) was trying to pay $5k monthly mortgage on $75K income before taxes.
He got a $950K mortgage on $75K income by saying he made $20K per month ($240K per year) on a no-doc loan. I sent him away, warning of fraud charges.
Now the local judges are saying they won't find fraud in a no-doc loan case, where's the justifiable reliance?
But I am still not going to take his case. I don't want to have to explain away a claim that he made $240K/year.
This guy is Asian, used an Asian mortgage broker. I see similar things with Latinos using Latino mortgage brokers, Middle Easterners using Middle Eastern mortgage brokers.
And for many of them, they cashed out all the equity in ridiculously valued houses, pocketed the money, and what does it matter to them that they file bankruptcy? The lenders love them, they know they're dealing with people with no common sense whatsoever.
Friday I got a call from Wachovia wanting to lend money to a lady whose bankruptcy case is about halfway through. |
