NY Times Economic Reporter---going into Foreclosure

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Wow. I guess that shows that having good information isn't enough to make good decisions. You also have to be capable of making good decisions.

barfo
 
wow. what a fucking idiot:

The only problem was money. Having separated from my wife of 21 years, who had physical custody of our sons, I was handing over $4,000 a month in alimony and child-support payments. That left me with take-home pay of $2,777, barely enough to make ends meet in a one-bedroom rental apartment. Patty had yet to even look for a job. At any other time in history, the idea of someone like me borrowing more than $400,000 would have seemed insane.

But this was unlike any other time in history. My real estate agent gave me the number of Bob Andrews, a loan officer at American Home Mortgage Corporation. Bob wasn’t related to me, and I had never heard of his company. “Bob can be very helpful,” my agent explained. “He specializes in unusual situations.”
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take home = $2700 a month

house he wants = $460k

As I quickly found out, American Home Mortgage had become one of the fastest-growing mortgage lenders in the country. One of its specialties was serving people just like me: borrowers with good credit scores who wanted to stretch their finances far beyond what our incomes could justify. In industry jargon, we were “Alt-A” customers, and we usually paid slightly higher rates for the privilege of concealing our financial weaknesses.

I thought I knew a lot about go-go mortgages. I had already written several articles about the explosive growth of liar’s loans, no-money-down loans, interest-only loans and other even more exotic mortgages. I had interviewed people with very modest incomes who had taken out big loans. Yet for all that, I was stunned at how much money people were willing to throw at me.

Bob called back the next morning. “Your credit scores are almost perfect,” he said happily. “Based on your income, you can qualify for a mortgage of about $500,000.”
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With a big enough down payment, the banks would give loans without documentation. It's hard to blame them, since they don't expect the house to fall in price like houses did and they don't figure people will walk from the down payment equity.

Having read all 6 pages of the story, the guy was just insane. $700 on his charge card for expensive clothes and running his cards up to $50K is ridiculous.
 
The NYT should really just stick to spiking stories about Obama that could have harmed him during the election.

That's their wheelhouse.
 
PapaG said:
The NYT should really just stick to spiking stories about Obama that could have harmed him during the election.

That's their wheelhouse.
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Hard to imagine how a newspaper can stay afloat by not publishing stories. They must have something else going for them.

barfo
 
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