An Industry In Denial: The Road To Recovery

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An Industry In Denial: The Road To Recovery

As the ongoing foreclosure crisis lingers over the heads of millions Americans, it is becoming more frequent that those, qualified or unqualified, give there opinion as to who to blame and what should be done to eradicate our foreclosure problem.

During the housing bubble, many borrowers frankly told untruths about their income, past credit history or their reasons for wanting to purchase a home. Eagerly, they cashed in on the real estate boom despite their questionable circumstances in order to hastily get their hands on elaborate expensive homes; with astronomical mortgages. Hungry for more money to say the least, many lenders neglectfully over looked these obvious fabrications, and while doing so, hid a substantial amount of oncoming troubles. These undermining tactics, which the banks and lending agencies believed would pad there corporate accounts with double or even triple mortgage dollars owed on a single property; all the while over looking the fact that this gross miscalculation would gravely drive down there precious property value. Thus, leaving themselves the victim of there own plot. Consequently, with so many questionable loans in the market, it’s no wonder that our current housing market has been flooded by a surge of foreclosures.

Moreover, as banks and their advocates in Washington delayed the attempts to address the problem in its onset, they soon provided incomprehensible mortgages with low “teaser” interest rates, basing the qualifications on the applicant's immediate ability to pay the artificially low rate. All the while, knowing that the adjustable rate mortgages would cripple the applicants’ possibility to afford the mortgage in latter months.
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...able 4.6 percent; for many of these, the rate will have to be further reduced even more, far lower than the banking and lending agencies are willing to go. Yet by doing so people will eventually regain leverage as they receive repackage loans, hopefully (not repeating the mistakes of the Great Depression Era) sending them more on their way to the road of security.

In conclusion, as we bear witness to the close of another year, the housing bubble, the inevitable reflections its troubling aftermath in its entirety should be like an “O so familiar” slap in the face. But perhaps one day it will heal us of many of our costly and mislead ideas about home ownership and remind us that if we build our industries on wrong kinds of lending practices, people will take advantage of them, and we'll all pay for it, as we have doing so for the past few years.

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