by emersonbiggins » Fri 13 Apr 2007, 14:40:35
Quote of the year (from the article below):
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')ow did a strawberry picker earning $15,000 a year qualify for a loan of $720,000? The answer, say the experts, lies in a lending industry that got too innovative for its own good.
Now that's what I call
creative financing!
(emphasis mine below)
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'M')inorities are the emerging face of the subprime crisis
By Carol Lloyd, Special to SF Gate
When Alberto and Rosa Ramirez began looking for a home, they never imagined that 18 months later they would personify a national real estate crisis. 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. ...
"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 "new" four-bedroom, two-bath house in Hollister for $720,000. When the Ramirez's heard the price, they worried that they couldn't afford it.But the couple says that their real estate agent and broker reassured them 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." For a number of months Avila, who arranged for the loan with New Century Mortgage, paid the difference between what the buyers had said they could afford -- $3,000 -- and the actual loan payment. According to the buyers, this arrangement was supposed to carry them over until the group refinanced. ...
More at SF Chronicle article