“Well, there goes the neighborhood,” thought Sammy (not pictured); another home abandoned after falling behind on the payments on that refinance with the adjustable rate that went sky high. He was still trying to sell his home and move to New York, but another repo would create a drag on the market . . .
Al’s mortgage banker was insisting on flood insurance; after all, he was in a “flood plain.” Al was pretty sure it was just a bank scam to grab some cash . . .
Gilbert (pictured) had weathered the mortgage crisis, though the variable rate mortgage had nearly put him under. Now that the worst seemed to be over, he discovered that he had another problem–“deferred maintenance” inherited from the previous owner.
In spite of all the remodeling and improvement work Mark had done with his home, and in spite of the Government’s assurances that the recession was over, Mark still found himself upside down with his mortgage and just hanging on by a thread . . .
The bank had seen a disturbing trend; before leaving their homes when evicted, the upside-down mortgagees took everything that wasn’t nailed down–and quite a few things that were–and sold them on Craigslist, leaving the bank’s collateral nothing but a shell. Perhaps, they thought in retrospect, they should have been a little more careful whom they had provided mortgages for. Gastropods and mollusks had been particularly troublesome . . . . David, Sf.G.
