(no subject)

[eirias]

People who've talked to me about the economic crisis have probably heard my take on home-buyers who bit off more house than they could chew. To wit: Think of your high school class; try to imagine how many of them understood compound interest at the time; recall how many years have passed since the tenth grade. Morally you can say whatever high-minded things you like about signing a contract and responsibility and blah blah blah, but on a practical level, expecting the median American to understand home financing to the point of being able to think critically about loan offers is just a losing proposition. If you don't want people to leave the thinking to the experts, you're gonna have to ditch the ideal of homeownership for the common man.

So: I think my attitude is about as sympathetic to the mortgage-screwed as you can get. And even still, there are people out there, apparently, who make me wonder: What on earth were you thinking?

Comments

[leora.livejournal.com]

Yes, I have a lot more sympathy for cases where people felt they could handle their loans but then one of the wage-earners lost his/her job or unexpected medical problems cropped up or such.

I also have some sympathy for those who really didn't understand the terms and didn't understand how bad it could be. But if your job is to write about such matters, I expect you to have some understanding of it.

[smarriveurr.livejournal.com]

*nod* The way he writes about it, they had no reason to expect they would suddenly be making a lot more money when they put the half million dollars in as an offer. This wasn't a case of a sudden life change, or someone being strung along by a silvertongued lender. He'd written about the kinds of loans he was being offered, he knew his wife was in a rough position for finding work.

He should've been more than capable of figuring out how much he could afford to put down on a house, and how much of a mortgage he could afford. When the loan officer came back and said "Oops, the first lie we tried to tell won't work, we need to hide a bit more information to make them think you can afford this..." Yeah, he should've guessed he couldn't afford it. No sympathy.