Foreclosure sob story of the morning
Nope, the MSM has learned nothing from the subprime debacle, stimulus-palooza, and the foreclosure frenzy. They are still printing sob stories to elicit sympathy for borrowers who don’t deserve it.
Check this out from the San Francisco Chronicle. Cue the world’s smallest violin:
Foreclosed family’s last goodbye to home
Joann Gardner sat forlornly on her living room floor, waiting for the final step in her home’s foreclosure process. The lender’s representative was due any moment to give her “cash for keys,” a transaction in which she would deliver her family home vacant in exchange for an incentive payment.
“I’m glad it’s done,” Gardner said wearily. “I just want to sit down and have some Hennessy.”
Only days earlier, the house had been jammed with boxes and bags holding the worldly goods her family had accumulated during 54 years in the cramped Oakland bungalow.
Now it was entirely empty, the possessions in storage or donated to the Salvation Army. Gardner’s elderly parents, both suffering from dementia and other ailments, had moved a week earlier to a local board-and-care home whose cost would be covered by their Social Security and pension checks. Gardner, who has been her parents’ full-time care provider for the past 18 months, planned to move in with her boyfriend in Vallejo and look for a job, perhaps something at Costco.
Buried into the article, after all the gnashing of teeth, we find out the nitty-gritty:
Joann’s parents, Johnnie Gardner, 87, and Estelle, 88, bought the two-bedroom in the Sobrante Park neighborhood in 1954 for $11,500. His salary as an electrician at the Oakland naval shipyard allowed them to make the payments.
But in recent years, Joann and her brother refinanced it several times for increasingly larger amounts.
The final refinance at the end of 2006 left the family owing $454,000. The monthly payments of $3,362 exceeded the household income of $3,144.
What happened to the money from all the refinances?
Gardner can’t quite say. Some went to paying off credit cards; some was eaten up in huge loan fees. What is clear is that the family has not made a mortgage payment since December 2006.
What the…?!?!?!?!
The money wasn’t going to her parents’ health-care expenses. She didn’t have a job. “Some” went to credit card bills. “Some” was “eaten up” by loan fees.
And the rest?
She can’t even cite some other catastrophic cost– or stupid decision like the Extreme Makeover family made — to explain how $454,000 was pissed away.
And I’m supposed to feel my heartstrings tugged?
All together now: Boo-freaking-hoo.
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I see a parallel between these kind of folks and the lottery winners who end up in worse shape than when they started. Fast easy money….
If this is the “best” sob story the newspaper could come up with then it’s hard to imagine what other stories failed to make the cut. I wonder if the reporter sat through the interview transfixed by this tale of woe or just took notes while rolling her eyes in disbelief that someone could be so dumb.
On the other hand, I have a relative whose family just lost a house to foreclosure after the missus was off work for several months due to a bad fall during an ice storm (on the job injury that DID show up on x-ray and MRI).
This was not an expensive house (under $125,000) and they’d been making payments for five years or so.
The national bank servicing the loan was not helpful and reps were incompetent (lots of runaround; reps failing to note records so that a conversation one week was completely unknown to the rep next time anyone called).
After they were a few months behind, another relative sent enough money to the bank to bring the note current. The bank refused the payment since the mortgage was in default. This is inexplicable.
I think those are know as monthly payments (unreasonable fees for the bleeding hearts.)
In the words of the immortal Rick James:
Cocaine is a hell of a drug.
Every time I read lgm’s and tos’s predictably woozy claims and pretzel logic, I wonder if MM’s site wizards have a “Troll Buzzphrase Generator” they crank up to generate stupid “arguments”, which attract eyeballs the way horseshite attracts flies, thus increasing “hits”, which boosts ad rates and revenues.
Otherwise, how does one explain why such nitwits are allowed to hijack thread after thread with their inanities?
Go over to Hugh Hewitt to see what happens when the trolls take over. It’s not pretty.
To be fair, the story also quotes Joann Gardner (ex-homeowner) thus:
“This is it; I can’t come back here no more,” she said as she walked down the front steps. “I hope it helps somebody to read about this; they won’t be boo-boo the fool like I was.”
She may have learned her lesson, albeit too late.
I have no sympathy for these people.
As I heard on the radio yesterday, “Being stupid should HURT”.
Betcha ole lgm gulps down Aleve like salted peanuts.
I don’t understand how they can refi for more money than they make–I make a decent salary and have for a long time, but can’t get a mortgage in CA because I don’t have a down payment–but these guys can?
It’s insane!
I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that there have been other instances where there were lessons she could have learned before this one. But Rob537, I’ll try to be optimistic too.
Almost sounds like Dave Ramsey
I tried reading what you had to say but I just kept hearing this annoying sound in my head that wouldn’t stop, until I stopped trying to read it.
Why can’t we, the American Citizens who are footing the bill for this bailout, get full disclosure reports of what percentage of these so-called “sub-prime” loans are truly just refinancing gone bad or are investment homes where the investor/con artist never intended to pay the mortgage on the ten loans he got to buy the ten rental homes. I would think the information is there and already compiled but just not being released by the banks and owners of these bad loans so that sympathy will continue and a more bailouts be proposed. When in actuality it is probably a very small percentage that truly got a first loan ARM and now can’t make the payments. Once the govt provided a “solution” (I think I vomited in my mouth a little right there) the loan holders and banks had no incentive to provide their own solutions like renegotiating with borrowers. They just sat back, perpetuated sympathy, and waited for the govt bailout. Nice.
jsr wrote: I think those are know as monthly payments (unreasonable fees for the bleeding hearts.)
Sorry for multiple posts but let’s be honest: there are a lot of lenders out there who
prey onmarket exclusively to people they know won’t be able to decode the pile of documents describing the terms of a mortgage.How many of us take the time to read the big ol’ pile of documents when closing an FHA or conventional loan? I tend to look at the basic disclosure (APR, fixed-rate clause, no pre-payment penalty, etc).
I finally got tired of the avalanche of pre-approved credit offers and opted-out but I became fascinated with the offers from Discover, BofA, Citibank, et al. It almost became a hobby - reading the fine print in the offer (Zero Interest for Life!) to “spot the trap”. Sometimes it was obvious but there were a few now and then that took a little thinking.
It’s not reasonable to expect the average (or below average) IQ person to “spot the trap” in complex terms written by legions of lawyers, accountants, and MBAs expressly to confound potential borrowers.
The mortgage mess is an expensive lesson for all (and one that won’t be learned… we’ll see this again).
As I read all of this bail out stuff and the way many companies being bailed out are donating to the DNC, I have to wonder who is stupid and who is not? Are those of us who are responsible, pay our bills, pay our mortgage as we agreed to do, are we the stupid ones? Makes one wonder.
Since the payments were supposedly more than they had coming in … anyone besides me want to bet that:
1. They lied on the applications about their income.
2. They were including the parents income from SS and retirement as theirs.
3. They never had any intention of making the payments and the money is stashed off-shore somewhere.
4. The basic plan was to make this happen so they could be “forced” to put the parents into a home without other family members condemning them for it.
5. Second part of plan was they were not wanting to spend more years taking care of their parents and this was their way to get their “freedom” from that responsibility and in their sick minds get “paid” for the years they had spent caring for them.
#70 lgm said:
Except, the welfare cheat that President Reagan cited was cheating the welfare system…this lady overextended her means.
Except, this isn’t the first instance of the MSM coddling irresponsible borrowers that MM has cited. Learn to add.
Not according to the very Wikipedia link that you cited:
“In 1976, the New York Times reported that a woman from Chicago was charged with using 4 aliases and of cheating the government out of $8,000. She appeared again in the newspaper while the Illinois Attorney General continued investigating her case.[7] The woman was ultimately found guilty of “welfare fraud and perjury” in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois.[8] In addition, the Associated Press reported on March 8, 1977[9] that “Joel Edelman, executive director of the Illinois Legislative Advisory Committee on Public Aid, has said his committee found that from early 1973 until mid-1974, [the woman] ‘used 14 aliases to obtain $150,000 for medical assistance, cash assistance and bonus cash food stamps.’ Edelman said, ‘She went from district to district. She had a collection of wigs and was a master of disguise. She organized people and upwards of 100 aliases were used.’”
That is hardly a fabrication.
But not this case:
“But in recent years, Joann and her brother refinanced it several times for increasingly larger amounts.”
C’mon lgm, this information is found in paragragh #13 of the article. Learn to read beyond the headline.
I’m not asking you to bail out my gas charge card balance. Do you want to?
Not unless they are opposed to paying taxes to bail out irresponsible borrowers.
Then why do you insist on allowing taxpayers to suffer this?
I did,made sure I understood everything and asked about things I did not. And I am just a neanderthal conservative. I’d be willing to bet this woman, and most people that homes go into forclosre, is a Democrat. I thought they were so much smarter than conservatives?
I dont think it was Hennessey that the money went to… (and what a fine ethnic name Joann is)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sobrante_Park,_Oakland,_California
Lgm I worked 100 hr work weeks for 10 years to pay for my home, send my daughters to college, plus take care of my aging father. I started a business and took large financial risk. I create many jobs with good pay . I don’t want here any sob stories how the system is unfair.
Hennessy??? That’s crap cognac. Remy Martin is where it’s at.
She’s being forced to drink Hennessy now due to lack of finances.
I got a different answer, They blew through $28,366.00 and change per month. 454/18 + 3144
pdv …
good point … I was not including their supposed income … tks
Dont forget that ‘Your Black Muslim Bakery’ is located close by, so they are probably getting a piece of that action, in addition to a monthly government check for everyone in the house
SORRY!! My apologies. I was muti-tasking and didnt go back and re-read about the monthly 3144
So dont forget about their Stimulus Checks instead!!
So stupidity is ok with you here? Funny, she realized that Hennessy is expensive, so maybe I will look fancy if I drink it? She’s smart enough to figure out to borrow against the house for some very expensive things…
I guess that will be an Obama voting family.
Ya, think?!
We reap what we sow. That which is subsidized is therefore encouraged. If the government pays people who adopt certain behaviors, then that behavior will continue and increase in frequency. The government wanted more ethanol, so they paid people to grow corn. Naturally, more farmers are growing corn, which drives the costs up, both for products that aren’t being grown and for feed/food corn. We’ve been subsidizing extra/pre- marital sex for years by handing out condoms, paying for abortions, bogus “sex-ed” training, and covering healthcare costs for those with STDs. If we pay people’s mortgages because those people made unwise decisions, then what shall we expect in the future? The government is changing the rules for society. Seriously, why pay your mortgage if the government is going to bail you out anyway? What’s the consequence? Frankly, it’s stealing. I’m getting very tired of paying for the irresponsible behavior of others. Here are some simple fixes to many of these issues:
1. Pay your bills, or lose your house.
2. To not get pregnant or contract an STD: (a) men keep your zipper up, (b) women keep your legs crossed, (c) don’t do drugs.
3. If we don’t like the higher gas prices due to increased demand, then drill more rather than robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Boo freakin’ hoo is right. I’ve waited a while to put my 2 cents in about this subject, but this story just hits home. My wife and I had been eyeing some property for a while to build on, but it was out of our price range so we watched it for a year and a half until the price came down and I was able to negotiate the price down to where we wanted it. That was in March of this year. We got got our construction loan, and were told when the house was finished we would just convert it over to a mortgage loan, and at the time rates were in the low to mid 5 percent. Now as our construction nears completion, we have been told that the rate now is 7.25 !! Everything has changed, and several banks have told us that the way mortgage companies and banks are going to make up for their losses with this bailout program is on the backs of the good people that pay their bills and live within their means. So our payment is going up over $200 a month. We are now looking at an ARM to get it back in line. So don’t cry to me, this whole deal is a sham. The banks were stupid for loaning the money to people that shouldn’t have gotten it, and the people that got it were stupid for buying more than they could afford. And we get to pay for it!
Is that a Mercedes in the driveway?
As usually, lgm, you missed the point of this post. It was the MSM that picked out this story. They didn’t print it to show abuse by the mortgage holder, but to provide a sob story to elicit sympathy. Michelle is just pointing out how the story does just the opposite.
Dementia is hereditary… right?
I should not read stories like this before my lunch. I am sick of hearing these sob stories that idiots create for themselves.
Where’s my rebate for working hard and being responsible and paying off four residential properties and one business proerty?
/sarc
P.S. Get an f*ing life!
Found her! She’s been on the public dole for 57 of her 58 years. That would run right through the Reagan years.
On a side note, lgm, could you post something like a mathematical formula or something once in a while, just so we know it’s not possible for you to be wrong 100% of the time.
You point out a perfect example of the liberal nannyism mentality.
People are too stupid to know when they make a mistake…so the government must do it for them! Eeeeeeeevillll corporations are always hoodwinking innocent people into racking up $400k in debt for no reason other than to take away houses from oh-so-hardworking families.
Give me a break.
Why, I believe it is, Kris. I guess all that money didn’t go for just Hennessy.
Joann and her brother did not spend $454,000 since 2006. They had been overspending for many years and then refinancing to cover their debts. They were using Lending Tree as a money tree. The real mystery here is why their scam didn’t come to an end years ago.
Who gave them a loan with monthly payments that exceeded their monthly income? Either false information was provided to the loan officer, or the loan officer falsified information and should be sued by whomever provided the financing for the loan.
I can see this on a one-time in your life only basis. You suddenly get a clue, pay off the cards, close the CC accounts, and start a savings program and pay down the mortgage.
This is a 107% housing ratio. what we call the front end ratio- I want to know what type a bank has guidelines that would approve this. This underwriter should be fired or put in jail. this loan should have never been approved. It makes me wonder if it was a stated income loan and the borrower overstated their income (by quite a bit). I would love to see this file - since this is what I do for a living - and see the train of thought the underwriter had and what they were working with.
The deadbeat “children” who stole their elderly parents’ home via “refinancing” should be convicted of a crime. This is elder abuse. The article stated that both parents suffer from “dementia” and other ailments. These unemployed deadbeats scammed their own parents out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. “Just sign here, Mom and Dad. We’ll take care of the rest…”
Have another drink, Joann Gardner, you piece of filth! I hope you end up sleeping under an overpass…
Pssssst…
Did’ja hear the one about the $25B loan the Federal Reserve floated today? 84 day payback, instead of 28 days. Nice.
All because idiots like JoAnn Gardner wants to float second mortgages to buy top shelf booze.
Jerk.
At what point in the story was I suppose to feel sorry for her? I must have missed it.
A few items to note here:
/ They refinanced several times and the total of all of these came to almost half a mil. It doesn’t mean that they had that much $$ in their pocket at the end of ‘06
- How do you sign a piece of paper saying that you’ll pay more than you have? This part is almost criminal.
- Wait, you get ANOTHER loan at the end of ‘06 with payments for more than you earn and immediately stop making payments? 18 months x $3k = $54k they saved.
- so in 06′ she moves in full time with her parents who have dementia and spinal arthritus, make another big loan, and instantly default on the loan.
- So they were rolling all the fees and finance charges back into a bigger loan? That is a snowball that will crush and kill you.
Was this a scam, did she and her brother intentionally rip off her parents? Don’t know. She states that her parents didn’t qualify for federal help, but now that their home is gone I’m sure that they will.
This was one stupid move after another and the family and lender both are responsible for the fate of the old couple who owned the home.
Given their skills, I wonder how long before their trailer gets foreclosed.
Excellent catch! I was trying to do a similar thing but I didnt see the address.
So, I took your link and ‘drove’ up and down the streets of Joann’s neighborhood. I couldnt find another car *anywhere* that was within $20K of the one in the driveway
A lot happened in a short period of time, between 18 and 24 months ago and possibly more compressed: The refi, the last payment, becoming “her parents’ full-time care provider” — which probably involved firing someone who actually provided care for the octogenarians, and then sitting on her arse with a bottle of Hennessy.
This is the story of a 51-year-old grifter, whose latest game was to have her parents either sign the house over to her, or sign the new loan documents, in either case participating in fraud since most of us honest folks can’t get mortgages with payments higher than our income. No word on the brother, probably decided to keep his picture out of the paper.
Hey Costco, say you won’t hire such an irresponsible or dishonest person and I’ll re-up my membership now.
The only thing missing from this story is a slip-and-fall lawsuit against Wal-Mart and a mysterious back injury that prevents Joann (or her brother) from working. Maybe I’d better shut up, I may have given them an idea for their next scam…
The irony here is that while the MSM uses this as Exhibit A of the horrors of foreclosure, in reality, this is typical of borrower’s excess.
The reason they don’t know where the money went is they were in a constant state of robbing Peter to pay Paul. Clearly, they created a lifestyle that was outside their means. Then, they started using the equity in their home to support that lifestyle. Of course, everytime they refinanced the bigger loan also created a bigger payment. Since they already couldn’t afford their lifestyle, each subsequent refinance made things, ultimately, even worse.
It’s likely they struggled to make the payment on their original loan and once it got to 450k it was astronomical. The money went to pay off a mortgage they couldn’t afford. Once property value stopped going up the house of cards folded.
This is a lesson in excess not the horrors of foreclosure.
I am truly amazed that the SF Chronicle would leave out details of the story that would disturb most anyone with common sense. (The previous sentence was brought to you all with oxymoronic detail.)
And well spoken too…
Holy #@%&..! This article and these people are supposed to elicit sympathy from a reader?
This should be wallpapered on the halls of Congress with the caption…
“Keep this crap up people… and you ain’t gonna come back here no more!”
They swiped $454,000 in cash out of this house… plus bailed on $67,000 in payments for it. They’re not victims.. they’re thieves.
And maybe she should switch from Cognac to something less expensive.
Unreal…
My money is on San Fran Nan having invested it for them in Slim Picken’s windmils.
I don’t feel sorry for the siblings or the lenders. They borrowed $450,000 on a 2 bedroom, 1 bath, 1,140 sq ft house next to the railroad tracks. Then they blew the money. Stupid borrowers and stupid lenders.
I feel so bad for the parents. I don’t think people who diligently pay off a house, would in their right mind take out that many loans. People of that era lived within their means.
I smell fraud. I don’t think those old people were in their right mind.
I did some math — turns out the loans bought over 18,000 bottles of Hennessy. Or enough for one bottle a day for 49 years…
Looking at the picture gallery attached to the article, two things jump out:
1) The Salvation Army is taking some of the furniture, old-looking stuff but with a high replacement cost. Charity is fine, but in this case it looks like a continuing lack of frugality. You can store a recliner and a nice credenza for many months for the cost of replacing either one.
2) It is never said that Joann was previously married, or that there are siblings other than her brother. Yet her niece has a different surname. Out-of-wedlock childbirth is not a crime, but together with other factors it can certainly point to a pattern of irresponsibility. I’m sympathetic to the parents whose kids mortgages their house away, but the evidence suggest that neither of the 50ish kids was raised well.
3) The paper says that it has had prior coverage of this family, but a search comes up with nill. I wonder if we would learn more from earlier articles.
If the MSM can’t invest in more than an obese mother and daughter team from Ohio… and now, the painfully irresponsible Joann Gardner…to define their “heartstring-tugging” sympathy cases, can you imagine the caliber of news that we have been getting from these same clowns when they report from far away battlefronts like Iraq?
In the immortal words of Saturday Night Live:
LGM, you ignorant slut.
People here are not saying EVERYONE is abusing (although a lot of the people in foreclosure did). We are, as in an earlier case Michelle pointed out, mocking idiots who have a house that is owned free and clear and through their own stupidity pissed it away. Then your MSM comes along and wants to make the “victims” a sob story. That dog won’t hunt.
Here’s the real stick in your eye: that income, all half million of it, is now tax free. Think of that: 1/3 of California is laughing its collective ass off about how they got over as good as the huricane scammers did. True, they didn’t live 25 feet below sea level, but they’re Californians…
In my area this house (with what looks to be NO yard) would be worth about $50,000, in its current ram shackled condition. California is so out of whack with real estate prices/values that they contributed to this mess themselves. Gotta love the enviro-wackos.
So, they squeezed $450,000 out of their parents’ house, haven’t made a mortgage payment in 18 months, haven’t worked a day, and are being PAID TO LEAVE. And the Chronicle delivers this as a sob story?? Whoever said this above is right, this is obviously a scam by the kids to milk their defenseless parents dry and then throw them in a senior home. It’s so obvious.
lgm…listen up.
cocaine.
I don’t think anything else could have used up all that money with nothing left over. It’s wicked stuff.
The parents of these losers worked their whole lives to pay for this house for their family just to have their loser kids throw it all away.
It just makes me think back to the two “plump” ladies who were complaining that they could no longer afford to buy ice cream because their government handouts just weren’t sufficient enough. Their father had worked for the same company for 30+ years, yet all of his children and his childrens spouses were living off their government checks, none of them working.
I can’t help but wonder if these parents are passing on some of the same values that they have apparently lived by. They have worked hard, so their children can be big nothings.
Welfare queens, freebie state and federal benefits for illegal aliens, the liberal MSM, etc.
All “anecdotal” to liberals. Never a possibility that their well laid plans are grossly out of control due to a simple lack of understanding of human nature.
And all the while, liberals like lgm praise and support the incremental dismantling of our society.
Life is definitely starting to imitate art: read “Marching Morons” by C.M. Kornbluth, a short story from the fifties. Look up a description of it on the web and tell me I am wrong.
As for “enjoying the suffering of others,” watching the demonstrably stupid publicly hoist themselves on their own petards is an object lesson for everyone, and they deserve our scorn.
Apologists like lgm are simply enablers. “Many people have lost their homes because they were misled about the terms of the loan?” Can they read? If not, again we return to the problem of liberal infested public schools.