by emersonbiggins » Thu 06 Nov 2008, 12:09:03
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AlexdeLarge', 'J')ust a couple of key points:
First...........open the doors wide to immigration.
Next........let the government buy up all these excess houses around the country and give them away with low interest rate loans and minimum down payment.
So lets see....sneak across the border, get a house!
Booya.........................................
Its a Mad Mad World !!Already happened, at the height of the bubble.
Immigrant vegetable pickers, making $15k/yr ea., take out $720,000 mortgage$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')Impossible loan turns dream home into nightmare
Carol Lloyd
Sunday, April 15, 2007
It's not that they bought a house with walls crawling with toxic mold or inherited an insane neighbor next door or even, God forbid, that they didn't buy at all. They bought, and they love their slice of the American Dream.
"It's all very nice and beautiful," Rosa tells me through a translator. "The neighborhood is very peaceful. The problem is not with the house at all. It's the price of the house."
Indeed, in a different era (when housing prices were lower), their story might have been one of those bootstrap tales about homeownership transforming immigrant lives. The husband and wife work as strawberry pickers in the fields around Watsonville, and each earns about $300 a week. They have three children. Not only did they dream the impossible dream, they managed to finance it.
It all began when they were talking to another family about escaping their subsidized apartments and getting a real house. The other couple -- Jesus Martinez and his wife, who also have three children -- work as mushroom farmers, earning about $500 a week each when there is work. The two couples decided to pool their resources and begin house hunting.
Given their total income, they estimated that they could afford payments of $3,000 a month. They spotted an ad in the local magazine La Ganga for Maria Avila of Rancho Grande Real Estate and called her.
"We wanted to live in Watsonville," says Rosa. "But (the real estate agent) said the houses there were older and more expensive." One of the first homes they were shown was a four-bedroom, two-bath house in Hollister (San Benito County) for $720,000. When the Ramirezes heard the price, they worried that they couldn't afford it. But the couple say they were assured it was possible.
"The monthly payment was supposed to be $4,800, but then, after we bought it, it went up to $5,378," says Rosa, speaking of their zero-down mortgage with a one-month "teaser rate." "Our agent told us that once we refinanced, we could get the payments down to $3,000 or less."
...
Of course, for this to work, it would take 8-12 people (not necessarily family, either) willing to live together in one house. Good luck with that!