When I came to this page I was impressed by the layout but the content is also good and on topic. This is a good quality page. Keep It up.

If the house were worth what they paid for it, and if the loan had really been at the best available rate, the two families would have been building equity like mad, at great personal cost. They were willing to go without essentials (and had to when the payments went up), all in order to save money for their future. This is what we want immigrants to do, no? How many stories have you heard about American immigrants, working through incredible hardship in order to build their lives… it’s the American dream.

I acknowledge a rotten realty agent and possibly complicit broker; but it seems the buyers were trying to take advantage of an “it’s too good to be true” deal which in fact turned out to be “too good to be true!”

Many people try to live beyond their means with the same results - they cannot sustain it for long!

Of course the loan wasn’t made based on a 15,000 yearly income, but on about 60,000 or more (household income, even though the mortgage was made out to only one person).

Of course the families knew what they could afford. Their budget for the mortgage was 3000 per month. They didn’t realise that the broker and real estate agent were lying when they said that this loan would cost them only 3000 a month.

Since the house was apparently worth 150 grand less than the real estate agent and broker valued it at, perhaps these families could have afforded to pay for it if the valuation had been more realistic…

So these two families (that pooled the money for this house) were hoodwinked by believing their real estate agent that lied about the mortgage rates, and found false security in the fact that their broker approved the loan.

Stupid? No. They didn’t have the knowledge to know that US lenders are willing to take huge risks in approving loans, meaning that the approval was worthless. They didn’t know that some real-estate agents lie and cheat to get the sale.

Naive? Yes, quite a bit, with the extenuating circumstances that they are poor and are immigrants. But nothing excuses the immoral (and possibly illegal) behaviour of the real-estate agent and broker.

Those lending institutions that simply made mistakes in their risk-assessment models are being punished correctly: by bankruptcy. Their stock holders and employees may think it’s unfair, but it isn’t - not necessarily. It is of course quite likely that some of these lenders have been knowingly painting a rosier picture, either because they wanted to keep increasing their business, or because they wanted to hide the problems after they became aware of them.

It may also come as a shock to non-Californians, but Spanish is a legal language in California, in the sense that every legal document needs to be made available in Spanish if the negotiations were done in Spanish. Except real estate documents. It’s a legal loophole that needs to be closed.

And in the second paragraph - “Support” should be “make” - so string me up and ignore what I say for sloppiness. Again - I’m, sooooo sorry.

But no - I am not simply concerned with how some people are better off than others. Nor even wit hhow some people who are well off take advantage of those who are less well off (which is very distinct from the first - but leave it to right-wingers to try and conflate the two). No - it is about how Tex just LOVES stories about how DUMB (or immoral, or criminal) non-english speaking (especially, illegal) mexican-americans are.