About 20 rowdy people bearing “Save Our Homes” signs descended on the Multnomah County Courthouse this morning, interrupting the foreclosed home auctions that take place on the courthouse steps every morning at 10AM.
I tagged along with a house auctioneer two month ago and found that the auctions are usually swift affairs where the story of the families actually occupying the homes is buried beneath jargon and paperwork. But today as a man in a white hat and dapper brown coat read off the list of addresses to a small knot of home buyers, the crowd of protesters and homeowners organized by housing rights group ACORN swept in the front doors, shouting “Hey hey! Ho ho! Foreclosure sales have got to go!” The courthouse sheriffs pushed the crowd outside, where they continued the chanting and I heard a new phrase: “foreclosure resistance.”
Jose Hernandez is afraid his house will soon wind up on the auction block. He stood outside the courthouse, carrying his five year old son, and explained how difficult it has been to get his bank to discuss lowering his mortgage payment after he was injured during a construction job. “You cannot talk to the banks, they lie all the time. They say they will call, but they never call,” says Hernandez. Several weeks ago Hernandez testified in Salem for the passage of Senate Bill 628, which would force lenders and homeowners to sit down and talk to each other face to face about their mortgage. “I hope the law they’re doing in Salem passes so the bank will talk to us.”
The auction continued inside despite the protest, though one particularly agitated man stood right on the steps and shouted at departing homebuyers, “Shame on you! Stop throwing people out of their homes!” In ninety percent of Multnomah’s foreclosed home auctions, the houses are so swamped with debt that no one wants them and they revert to the bank, who usually evict the occupants and leave the house empty.
Wait, I thought Obama was saving foreclosure victims?
Doesn’t Hernandez have worker’s comp? How much does he owe to whom and why is it difficult to discuss lowering a payment with your agent?
Many, many questions here.
I see, they can scream at people who buy homes, then demand money from the same people in the form of government to bail out their deadbeat a$$e$.
Whew, I’m sure glad I’ve been trying to save and be careful before buying a home. That way I can just pay for other people’s instead and skip the getting yelled at part.
I still fail to see why the banks kick people out of their homes and leave the homes empty. It seems that most of the people could make some sort of payment until they get back to work. What good does it do to foreclose on a house and leave it empty to be vandalized, which happens to a lot of them. I just don’t get it.
Because the majority are not “homeowners” even if they pay a mortgage. The bank is.
And it’s to hard to make a payment if you (stupidly) took out an adjustable rate mortgage (that’s ballooned) or (stupidly) took out your equity money to buy things and now have to pay that with interest.
Houses are not free, and if you can’t pay, you get booted because someone else can.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/hous…
1 in 9 houses sit empty.
The cost of housing is unrealistic with the actual value of houses. The banks know this, they *think* the market will eventually come back, it is the only chance they have to *ever* recoup their investments.
Unless you live in a highly desirable area that gets you profit for where you live, you are paying too much for housing.
The photo caption says one foreclosure per 13 homes. The story also says the ’empty’ houses are mostly new construction.
Unrealistic or not, something costs only as much as people are willing to pay.
(I have an adjustable rate mortgage. It has adjusted down. Have you seen interest rates recently? People that can’t afford adjustable rate mortgages today couldn’t afford the house ever.)
Banks have to mow the grass and other maintenance, keep people from squatting in the foreclosures, and do something about the vandalism. However, they also know that if they fail to throw people out, that everyone else will stop paying them, cause, why would I pay my mortgage if I don’t have to? (They have a difficult problem on their hands.)
Christ, how stupid can people get? Protesting foreclosures? Hey assholes – do some reading on cause and effect.
And a big LOL at ACORN being described as a “housing rights group.” Try voter fraud group – soon to be under indictment in all 50 states!
No, the caption says:
“This Chandler, Ariz., property symbolizes the nation?s unprecedented glut of vacant houses. The county saw one foreclosure action for every 13 households in 2008.”
Something doesn’t necessarily cost what people are willing to pay.
The banks have a financial interest to artificially inflate the prices of homes. If they lowered the prices of homes, current homeowners would bail on their mortgages, leaving the banks high and dry. So what do they do? They pick a low water mark for housing prices and squat on the homes until they sell. Not selling is long term positive for them.
All you need to do is look at Japan, for real estate market that still struggles. And Japan is a very very rich country.
The United States is—for all intents and purposes— bankrupt. We are paying 50 cents on the dollar to loan ourselves money, and there is no chance to pay that money back.
Now you might look at the assets of what the U.S. has, and say we are a very very rich country, but these are intangible assets. No country is going to buy our land or “things” at anywhere near the face value we paid for them, nor would they want them.
Mr. Voluptuous, I thought ACORN were the ones who *REPORTED* the voter fraud? Are you sure you actually read the reports of what happened?
It seems to me that the lending institutions are partly to blame also. They made loans to people who they KNEW@ could not afford the higher payments when the loans were adjusted. I think they did it on purpose to get whatever money they could, then repo the house and sell it again. Only trouble is, the repo-ed houses aren’t selling very well, so the banks are faced with up-keep on empty units. I still say it would be better to let the people that bought the houses stay in them and pay what they can afford, even if you have to re-write the contracts. IMHO