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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Les H who wrote (105380)	2/16/2008 12:34:01 PM
From: MulhollandDrive	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 306849

I am looking to refi before my mortgage reset in June. However, I cannot get a loan through Wells Fargo because of the amount I owe versus the value of my property is higher, about $25,000, based on the comp in San Diego. So, the bank wants me to come up with the $25,000 and they will process my loan. My FICO is 760, income is good. What should I do? If I can't get a refi going, I don't think it is worth paying the reset amount then. Is walking away from all this my best solution? Or what other suggestion do you have? i cannot tell you how much this pisses me off i think we can safely say in our 'victimization culture' that any stigma to contract breach is rapidly going by the wayside when you have people with good income and high FICOs even posing the question 'should i walk away'? iow, it's not a matter of not being ABLE to pay, it'a matter of not WANTING to pay....this questioner obviously made a bad deal when he purchased the house for a) an inflated price and b)entered into a contract using an ARM well too bad, soo sad, here's a hint: try BUDGETING, economizing, do whatever to make your payments! and yet he wonders if he should walk away for a measly $25K? does he realize that he will trash his credit rating and will cost not only himself but the rest of us even MORE if this type of behavior becomes 'accepted'? i realize this is anecdotal stuff, but this mentality really does seem to be snowballing it looks like we really are becoming a nation of deadbeats, except, NOT REALLY you see, not all of us are deadbeats, and yes, i still think that most people believe they have the moral and financial imperative to honor their financial commitments yet i'm seeing people choosing to bail like rats from a sinking ship across the financial spectrum, from banks considering backing out of leveraged buyouts to J6P thinking eh, f' it, my house isn't worth as much as i thought it would be, walk away.... and this mentality is being FUELED by the ever increasing crescendo of bail out schemes .....the constant drumbeat of BAILOUT is creating a climate whereby people on the losing end of a bad deal entered EYES WIDE OPEN , are revealing an entitlement mentality, either 'we're TOO BIG to fail (read WS), or poor little me....we're too little'(subprime borrowers) and now this disease is spreading to the middle class we don't even want to go there, people, because if we do, it really is the financial TEOTWAWKI....imagine the PREMIUMS good borrowers will have to pay to subsidize the deadbeats it will leave all the rest of us in between the majority footing the bills through high borrowing costs and punitive fees for those of us with even the best of credit we're not ALL deadbeats, but if we keep going down this road, we'll all be paying like we were well FTS! remember that old saying "one bad apple will spoil the entire bushel"? we're are witnessing the entire bushel of good apples one by one getting spoiled with the bad here's what you do when you have a bad apple.... you THROW IT OUT! you don't leave it there, or even take it out, wash it off and put it back in....if you do, all you do is speed up the process of infecting the rest of the good apples with the bacteria and mold and the slime but we've decided (we meaning our politicians and bureaucrats) that those aren't "bad apples" they are VICTIM apples and we must do all we can to help and preserve the bad apples, and let the good apples be damned well you know what? bad apples are bad apples....i don't care how they got that way, either through stupidity or greed or malice or WHATEVER.... these bad loans need to be either worked out between the principles or, if that is impossible, allowed to default, foreclose, and written off. end of story just throw the GD bad apples into the compost bin.....hopefully out it we can salvage some mulch rant/off

To: Les H who wrote (105380)	2/16/2008 12:44:54 PM
From: Les H	Respond to of 306849

Spitzer suggests recapitalization, federal guarantee for bond insurers Activist investor William Ackman, a managing member of Pershing Square who owns short positions in MBIA and Ambac, said a bailout would not be a favorable outcome. In assigning blame for the crisis, Ackman pointed the finger squarely at holding company executives, banks and rating agencies. "The ratings agencies encouraged the bond insurers to diversify into structured finance risks and gave them additional rating credit for doing so," Ackman said in a statement. Ackman has long criticized the bond insurers and recently sent a letter to MBIA outlining his view on the industry, which received a strong response from the company. At the hearing, Ackman further stated his position, arguing that the banks want to preserve the bond insurers' AAA ratings because downgrades could force them to write down their exposure to the guarantors. A write-down would cost the banks $35 billion to $75 billion in losses, he estimated. Ackman proposed that banks realize losses, bond insurers retain as much capital as possible and rating agencies begin rating municipalities on the same level as other bonds. snl.com