Housing & Mortgage Help on the Way Thanks to Rep. Brad Miller
Submitted by Betsy Muse on Thu, 02/26/2009 - 9:26am
Congressman Brad Miller, NC-13, has been working for years to protect homeowners caught up in the mortgage lending frenzy. A frenzy that was fed by greed and implemented in many cases through fraudulent means.
Miller's hard work is finally paying off, though there is still a battle ahead. Via The Hill:
Centrist Democrats want to limit the number of people who can get their home loans shrunk by bankruptcy judges.:::snip:::
The bankruptcy legislation is the most contentious part of a broader bill to reinvigorate the housing market. House liberals and the original sponsors of the provision, known as “cramdown” in the financial industry, say there is no reason for the centrists’ concerns, but said they can live with some proposed changes.
“The changes under discussion would still be an effective bill,” said Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.), who authored the bankruptcy provision, “and would give homeowners more options than they currently have.” Limiting the bill too much, said Rep. Jim Marshall (D-Ga.), could cause problems passing the bill.
“You’ll start losing votes when you too drastically affect the availability of the remedy for no good reason,” said Marshall, a bankruptcy attorney who originally opposed the bill until he and Miller crafted language they could both live with.
Most of us here probably aren't as concerned about homeowners who may have bought more house than they can afford as we are the lending institutions and real estate companies that assured first-time home buyers they could afford the unaffordable.
Rep. Miller has taken the lead on securing this protection for homeowners and his persistence is about to pay off. The bill should come to the House floor for a vote today. Stay tuned.
- Betsy Muse's blog
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Good job, Congressman Miller
I'm sure there are plenty of instances where "blaming the borrower" makes sense, but there are many, many more where consumers simply got scammed by the free market.
Sub Prime Mortgages
I have seen the results of this...almost entire neighborhoods going into foreclosure. The homes that didn't go into foreclosure couldn't be sold unless somebody paid cash. They couldn't get a loan, because the appraisals were thousands of dollars less than the asking price because of all the foreclosures. People who were involved lost their licenses, but that didn't help the home owners. There was no way out for them. This was in 2007 and it almost gave me ulcers. I have heard the stories. Some people really didn't know.. They preyed on people who couldn't have gotten a home any other way. Some of them were in foreclosure in just a few months. After a while I felt like I was selling my soul.
Lovex7
PS..Your book
James, your book just came today from Amazon. I hope I can get it autographed some day.
Lovex7
Bring it to the Blogger Bash
Yet to be scheduled ... but hopefully in the next two months.
Thanks so much for buying the book. Much appreciated.
Greensboro is the #4 market in the USA right now regarding
inventory of empty homes and apartments. If you remove the apartments from the equation, it is the #2 in inventory of empty homes (per capita). My wife was a Real Estate agent in Greensboro prior to our move to Wake County last July, and she has told me many times that the credit scores of people that were getting 100% loans on homes in GSO was astounding to her. Since she worked closely with the mortgage people internal to her company, she saw a lot and spent a lot of time shaking her head.
Yes, some people bit off more than they could chew and they knew it. Mostly, from what I've heard though, it was more the mortgage company dying to give out loans at a higher percentage to people with less than stellar credit who actually expected to be able to pay their mortgages.
Brad Miller is doing a great job on this issue and I'm hoping his legislation gets a smooth ride through the House and then on to the Senate.
North Carolina. Turning the South Blue!
I saw it on the list of the most empty towns.
Very Sad.
Anthony D. Hall,
Fighting for Truth, Justice, Freedom and the American Way!
Larry Kissell
Betsy and all of you...Larry is not supporting the bill.
Lovex7
Betsy, do you know anything about this one?
nt
Am requesting information
for a post that is in the works. Will let you know as soon as I get it.
***************************
Vote Democratic, the ass you save may be your own.
More help
I think we really need to help people out, there are just too many in trouble to play the blame game. I love Dean Baker's idea (heard him on a great podcast as talking about his part in the book Thinking Big.) to give homeowners facing foreclosure the option to rent their home at the market rate for a substantial period of time (10 years). This encourages banks to be serious in renegotiations, and I think it's time we followed the president's lead and demanded accountability from the banks.
What really pisses me off
is that for 8 years the Bush mis-administration allowed this to go on so they could babble on about how robust the economy was...."More homeowners than ever!...smirk..."