Fighting For Our Homes: Tell Your Housing Crisis Story To Documentarian Robert Greenwald
The most recent housing report shows foreclosure filings skyrocketed to over 3 million last year, up 81% from the previous year. Economic indicators suggest that we're just at the beginning of a down cycle, with no clear floor in sight for the housing market.
One Florida woman was able to bring her situation directly to the attention of President Barack Obama on Tuesday during a Town Hall meeting. Henrietta Hughes revealed that she and her family are homeless, and in need of a roof over their heads. Obama offered up his staff to aid Ms. Hughes after the emotional encounter.
But for those who can't reach to the man at the top, Brave New Films' Robert Greenwald is offering a way to help struggling homeowners let their voices be heard.
Brave New Films is collecting stories from all over the nation from people who have been hit by the housing crisis, but he says he needs help.
"Have you been affected by the housing meltdown?" Greenwald asks on his site. "Foreclosed on? Underwater? Trapped in a predatory loan? Do you know anyone else whose life has been turned upside down by the collapse of the real estate market? Record your story, or the story of a friend, family member, co-worker, or neighbor, and send it to us. If you have a video camera or webcam, then please send us your video. You can also add your written story along with a photo we can post on our interactive map."
Brave New Film's FightingForOurHomes.com website allows those affected by the crisis to submit their stories and videos.
Nearly two dozen submissions have already come in to the site. The following are a but three of the millions of Americans faced with foreclosure.
Here in California, the foreclosures are just unbelievable. There are a couple of my close friends/neighbors facing foreclosures right now--for adjustable loans that they most certainly could have qualified for fixed mortgages on but were talked out of--and it's exceptionally hard not to want to throw things at these bank executives and their whiny entitlements.
There are many levels to this nightmare
demands profit over people. Always.
much does it pay to share the stories?
So you have people who bought a house with nothing down hoping the house would appreciate quickly so they could sell it and make a profit. You have people who bought a house with barely make enough money to make the payments, nothing down and then the loan resets to more than they can afford (if it does not reset and they do not lose their job they could still afford it but the house is worth 25% less than when they bought it). You have people who bought a house who could barely afford it and then lost their job. You have people who have owned their house and refinanced it at a value that is much higher than what it should be and they took the money and bought a boat and a Mercedes and a vacation to Europe and one of them lost their job and the house is now worth 40% less than the refi price and of course they cannot sell the boat and the Mercedes is not worth what they paid for it and the vacation to Europe is only photos on the internet. You have people who bought a house for $250,000 and they can afford it still but the house is now only worth $200,000 or less. You have people who bought a house 7 years ago and have been making the payments and the house is still worth what they paid for it but one of them has been laid off and they just do not have enough to make the payments (6.3% interest) but if their interest rate was lowered to 4.9% whey would just barely be able to make the payment (the saddest of all).
Some of these scenarios are easy to figure out what to do. Some are difficult and some are impossible. The bottom line is this nightmare could have been avoided if there was somebody in the White House who was able think like the guy we have now. The bubble was so obvious and it is much more catastrophic that the DotCom bubble or other bubbles we have seen.
There were loan originators pushing up prices and their own fees.
Appraisers going along with plan, if not they don't work.
Mortgages were securitized so ultimately the broker didn't really care what happened to them.
The enormous pool of world money tempted the greed of the Wall Street Investment Banks to buy more mortgages with ever diminishing standards.
Instead of income, job & assets verified, it became income plausible. Then no doc, liar loans, NINA and then NINJA, no job, no income no assets, no problem.
The April 28, 2004 ruling by the SEC to increase debt to capital ratios for the five largest investment banks from 12 to 1 to 30 to 1, even more. Thus allowing them to more than double their leverage.
The rating agencies overrating nearly everything. There was an enormous conflict of interest in being paid by the people selling the securities. Multi tranche cash CDOs overrated then even junk synthetic CDOs as AAA.
And the most deadly of financial inventions, the Credit Default Swap.
Of course, everyone thought property values would go up forever.
There are noted economists using the word fraud. It was top to bottom.
Now Obama is paying off the fraudsters in full. Congress goes along without auditing the banks.
Maybe they are concerned with the possible reaction of the market if they actually brought the fraud out in the open. Congress has many fat cats too, after all.
statusquObama, change you can only pretend in
The report starts out saying: Foreclosure filings surpassed 3 million in 2008 yet under the map with heading United States, the numbers are:
2008 foreclosure rate 1.8%
2008 properties with filings 2,330,483.
The actual number of bank repossessions is shown in the fourth paragraph as 850,000.
That last number is consistent with other reports I have seen.
The three million and the 2.3 million are slightly misleading, as owners can have a filing but an outcome other than repossession. It still is not good news. It just does quite mean what it seems.
statusquObama, change you can only pretend in
for homeowners, would it be too simple to have part of a recovery package be to convert these ARMs to fixed-rate loans at a fair interest rate? If we're going to give a trillion dollars to banks, this would be one way to make sure some of that money actually benefits Americans.
...forensic accounting audit. It would put a lot of people to work, calculating the tally of corruption.
I warned people and no one listened (in fact, most people called me an alarmist) and now they're losing their homes. Oh well. Honestly, if they wouldn't take so many people down with them, I'd say let 'em lose their homes.
I'm trying to understand the math here. Can someone give an example? So if you got an ARM 5 years ago, rates were around maybe 3-4.5% for a 5/1 ARM and 6.5-8% for a 30 year fixed. A $250K 30 year at 7.25% would be a monthly of around $1705. The same at a 5/1 at 3.75% would be $1157 for the first 5 years. Now that the rate adjusts, let's say its a big jump to today's 30-year fixed rates, that would be around 5.5%, so the new monthly would be $1382. Yes, that's $200 more than you were paying before, but still much less than what you would be paying in a fixed mortgage. Plus you saved some $550 every month for the past 5 years (a tidy sum of $33,000). So how are you worse off? And if your rate is substantially more than today's 30-year rates, can you refinance?
Now I realize under some circumstances you can't or can't make the new payments--say you just lost your job--but would you be in better shape right now with a fixed 30 year mortgage?
Your math is right your % are way off. I know people who are in an ARM that's over 13%. This is just more proof that the economies old supply and demand and market based formulas won't work. It's greedy corporations trying to turn a profit thats better than the billion to pay a CEO a bonus.
That is part of the problem. You have heard about the credit crisis on top of everything else. The banks are not lending. So that causes these people to lose their house as well. If they are close to foreclosure because of an ARM readjusting they probably will not qualify for a low interest rate refinance. Its vicious. they may be able to afford the house but since it is so close to their cost/income ratio they are declined. Just a couple years ago they would have been talked into buying two more houses though. There are a lot of people who should be in jail but of course the states and Feds can't afford to lock them up. Vicious.
its a combination of poor judgement on the part of the buyers, greed on the part of the realty community.Yes people need to live within their means.But the banks and realitors remind me of the snake from "The Jungle Book" Look into my eyesssss and trusssssst me"Why oh why would anyone want to deceive?Oh yeah.$$$$$$ and lots of it.
The foreclosures here in California are not at all unbelievable.
Zero down, interest only, negatively amortized, stated income loans.
What did people expect was going to happen?
In mid 2003, Alan Greenspan told home buyers to get adjustable rate loans. I was appalled when he said that. Rates had nowhere to go but up. While i wasn't thinking "housing bubble", at the time, i could see that Greenspan was leading home buyers into a trap.
"Borrow up to 125% of the value of your home" ads appeared at some point along the way. Zero down, interest only, pay option ARMS. With no lending standard, there came a flood of buyers, and thus prices ramped up. I could see it was a bubble. The Nasdaq was a bubble and we already knew how that ended. Housing was headed for the same end. The only question was when.
It was all an elaborate financial fraud, but one which people all too willingly bought into, especially after the stock market mania.
People should have known better, but the bankers DID know better. They recklessly risked the depositors money.
demands profit over people. Always.
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Was there a California home owner who did not try to get best price for their house? Part of the lure of the housing bubble was that one could buy a house on one day and it could be sold a month later for a profit. At 400,000 median price, a California house was already a debt trap, but people kept buying anyway, because prices kept going up.
People being foreclosed on, figured they were going to profit from selling their home some day, even if they weren't buying for a quick profit.
People who bought collateralized debt, figured they were going to profit from it.
Profit over people is such a silly term. Everyone who buys a house, does so with the intention of profiting from it some day. People join unions because they expect to profit from it.
The last strike in Hollywood cost other people their jobs.
Appraisers going along with plan, if not they don't work.
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The trap of personal responsibility.
10,000 appraisers took the personal responsibility to sign a petition to congress in 2001, complaining of fraudulent appraisals. A republican congress told them to get lost.
The party of personal responsibility wanted them take personal responsibility and lose their job from doing the right thing, or be irresponsible and become part of the housing bubble and catch hell later for being part of the fraud. A no win situation. The party of personal responsibility had no intention of preventing a housing bubble.
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