Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dale Baker who wrote (55296)	3/22/2008 12:17:52 PM
From: slacker711	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542060

She looked at only one house and paid too much for it: $430,000 for a run-down, one-story duplex in Alexandria, triple what the house had sold for the year before, and $5,000 more than the asking price, according to real estate records. She agreed to a high-interest loan that would cost her more than $3,000 a month, more than 70 percent of the $4,200 that she and her husband brought home monthly. She signed papers in English that she didn't understand. One said she was married to a man she didn't know. First let me say that it seems like saying that you are married in order to buy a house would constitute fraud and so the quote later in the article that nothing was illegal doesnt make much sense to me. In any case, I am wondering if am I supposed to have sympathy for Glenda Ortiz? She spent nine years in the country without learning English which should have been her first defense against getting into this situation. However, even without learning English, a little bit of common sense would have kept her out of the situation. Paying 3x the price that the house sold for last year doesnt make sense in any language. People dont lose their brains just because they cross the border and dont speak the local language. The fundamental problem was that she wanted to live in a house that she couldnt afford (and money is a universal language). We might need increased regulation, but it isnt to protect the Glenda Ortiz's or the Bear Stearns of the world. It is to protect the rest of us from the greed/stupidity of people like Ortiz or firms like Bear Stearns. Slacker