[StBernard] Is it Dems or GOPs?

[Westley Annis]

Wendy,

In principle, I agree with everything you said.  When you talked about some
lenders taking advantage of people, that touches a nerve with me.  Sure, you
have horrible lenders out there, "predator lenders" is the term often used.
They are few, but give a bad name to the lending industry.  That's why the
feds have gone after and caught many of these and put people in jail.  Some
these bad lenders closed up shop before they could be caught.

Just as with anything that is "booming" you'll always have a criminal
element that will try and take advantage of the situation and honest, hard
working people.  You also mentioned something that really ticks me off when
I hear about it - the part about the realtor "breezing" through the closing
and only summarizing the docs - this is about a wrong as you can get - and I
don't care how many loan officers or realtors I piss off by saying this.

As the borrower you have the right to make everyone sit there and wait while
you or someone else reads through each and every document...I know I did it
at my closing.  Sure, everyone was pissed at me that I made them sit there
for HOURS, but hell, I don't' care - it's MYYYYYY money and my name going
down on the dotted line - not theirs.  Besides, for the amount of time
(which isn't that much) they've put into the entire deal, the way I see it
is they're getting well paid for doing very litte, so they can sit there and
wait for me to read through all of the docs.

And while I agree with about what adjustable rates have done in many cases,
there were some good, legitmate reasons behind it.  You probably think as I
don when it comes to the following:  by law all mortgage loans should ONLY
be fixed rate mortgages; by law no one should be allowed to finance a car
for more than 48 months (but I really perfer to cap it at 36 months); by law
everyone should have to put at least 20% down to purchase a car (new or
used), and 10% to purchase a home.

I'm even starting to hear about mortgages going 35 and 40 years...that's
absurd.  Oh, and here's my favorite suggestion: by law a credit card company
should calucate your monthly payment based on a 36 month pay off from
whatever your balance is.  Hell, the credit card industry would shoot me for
proposing such a law if I was in Congress.

John

P.S. Wendy, what is your direct email address...or you can email me at
scurich at bellsouth.net. 

-----Original Message-----
John,

   Here is where I disagree, atleast with the attitude it's not my fault
attitude. Thanks to Katrian I had to buy 2 houses in 5 years. I had realtors
try and sell me houses that were just outside my price range. Showed me how
if I had an adjustable mortgage, I could buy more house, etc. While I
managed in the house in St. Bernard,I struggled hard. The secod time I
learned. WHen I looked for a house, I was the strong arm. I insisted on a
house where I could make payments if I lost a couple of weeks of work due to
sickness, which allowed me to save some money. I took something smaller, but
more affordable. Are you telling me you never had a client or ealtor kind of
hint that they needed the value a little higher so they could make numbers
work? 
   I also don't think that not so great credit necesserily means people
won't pay their bills. I tend to believe that home ownership is better than
the altenative, which is apartment living. It goes to the broken window
syndrome. If you have nothing invested then you have no loss when something
goes horribly wrong and their is no care to something that isn't yours. You
do have that ONE article, however, on CNN there have been numerous stories
of people who were not given all of the facts during there closings. I know
when we were signing our papers, the realtors tried to "summarize" each page
as I tried to read each one because it would take too much time to read all
of this "stuff". Being allows you to stand in a place of knowledge, others
may not have understood. 
   The adjustable rates have screwed the entire financial market, and while
you blame the CRA, blame the greed and creative thinking of Wall Street. The
CRA may have been passed by dems, but it was exploited by Wall Street.

Wendy