4 ms·

I think another user put it best[0]: > Some people might scoff at the ideas in the article. You took out a loan, only a deadbeat leech would default on that lo

I think another user put it best[0]: > Some people might scoff at the ideas in the article. You took out a loan, only a deadbeat leech would default on that loan and expect to keep their house. Sounds about right, but that assumes we live in the world we all imagine. The "right" world, where business still resembles interpersonal relationships. It doesn't, and we don't live there. We know that at the end of the day, a loan, insurance, utilities, etc. are all business contracts. Each party signs something, and each party expects what they signed for. The problem is that contracts (especially when buying a home) can be absurdly long full of unintelligible language. So we as ordinary people want to believe that we aren't going to get screwed over. We know that these major companies have the manpower and funds to ruin us, but we hope it doesn't come to that. From that same user[0]: > You've paid your insurance bill diligently for years, but as soon as they are needed, they start looking for ways to get out of paying the claim. They will happily screw you over the tiniest technicality. The insurance industry certainly isn't the only offender in that regard. It's a business transaction. Some of the time, we don't even have a choice with who we do business. But as an ordinary person, I don't want to get fucked over by these forced contracts. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17810765 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17810765

scarface74 8y ago
The problem is that contracts (especially when buying a home) can be absurdly long full of unintelligible language. So we as ordinary people want to believe that we aren't going to get screwed over. We know that these major companies have the manpower and funds to ruin us, but we hope it doesn't come to that. From that same user[0]: I know about all of the non conforming and other crazy loans taken out back during the real estate bubble pre-2008. I took advantage of most of them as a real estate investor and did many of the shady things myself that help cause the real estate bust and did a few “strategic defaults”. While there is a lot of paperwork, for the traditional fixed rate mortgage that most people should be doing, it’s not that complicated- you pay your mortgage every month, the escrow amount may fluctuate but besides that it’s fixed, to whoever owns your loan this month, you keep your house. Most people had no business doing the adjustable rate/ negative equity/no doc type of loans. I agree that mortgage lenders, especially those working with builders, pushed people into them.
- noxToken 8y ago
  > Most people had no business doing the adjustable rate/ negative equity/no doc type of loans. I agree that mortgage lenders, especially those working with builders, pushed people into them You're right, but I'm not just talking about the subprime issue. It's bigger than that with numerous companies providing different goods and services. We're beholden to a number of service contracts that are stacked against us. For example, I was stuck with a terrible ISP. Daily outages, constant resets, and times in off-peak ours where my throughput was absurdly low. No matter how much I called and complained, there was nothing I had in my favor, because the speeds "may fluctuate from time-to-time due to the nature of the service". My choices? Pay double for ADSL or put up with it. According to the contract, they're not obligated to give me 100% uptime with 100% of the bandwidth as advertised. That's understandable. But there was clearly an underlying issue with the infrastructure that was not being addressed. So contractually speaking, they can give me hand-wavy answers about why they can't give me complete uptime and throughput with no repercussions, but as the customer, I must pay my bill in full by the due date.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    That’s basically because ISPs are a semi-natural mononpoly without competition there is really no incentive to do better. Heck Comcast acts like a monopoly in my area and they are competing with AT&T who offers better service - 1Gbps up and down [1] vs 1Gbps/35Mbps Comcast, at a lower price and Google Fiber in some parts of town. [1] I’ve got to give a shout out to AT&T and BackBlaze, I just changed my Plex Server over to a new computer and my entire 1.7TB collection was uploaded in less than 3 days. I was getting speeds between 500GB per day and 1Tb+ a day.
- rootusrootus 8y ago
  I've made a couple decisions, both before and after the housing bust, that make me feel a lot more comfortable with my mortgages. First was only ever doing a fixed rate loan. Second was limiting my business to a local bank which basically guaranteed they would hold the mortgage themselves until the end. The only exception to this is my very first mortgage, which is how I learned (thankfully with no real pain) to do it right.

scarface74 8y ago

The problem is that contracts (especially when buying a home) can be absurdly long full of unintelligible language. So we as ordinary people want to believe that we aren't going to get screwed over. We know that these major companies have the manpower and funds to ruin us, but we hope it doesn't come to that. From that same user[0]: I know about all of the non conforming and other crazy loans taken out back during the real estate bubble pre-2008. I took advantage of most of them as a real estate investor and did many of the shady things myself that help cause the real estate bust and did a few “strategic defaults”. While there is a lot of paperwork, for the traditional fixed rate mortgage that most people should be doing, it’s not that complicated- you pay your mortgage every month, the escrow amount may fluctuate but besides that it’s fixed, to whoever owns your loan this month, you keep your house. Most people had no business doing the adjustable rate/ negative equity/no doc type of loans. I agree that mortgage lenders, especially those working with builders, pushed people into them.

noxToken 8y ago
> Most people had no business doing the adjustable rate/ negative equity/no doc type of loans. I agree that mortgage lenders, especially those working with builders, pushed people into them You're right, but I'm not just talking about the subprime issue. It's bigger than that with numerous companies providing different goods and services. We're beholden to a number of service contracts that are stacked against us. For example, I was stuck with a terrible ISP. Daily outages, constant resets, and times in off-peak ours where my throughput was absurdly low. No matter how much I called and complained, there was nothing I had in my favor, because the speeds "may fluctuate from time-to-time due to the nature of the service". My choices? Pay double for ADSL or put up with it. According to the contract, they're not obligated to give me 100% uptime with 100% of the bandwidth as advertised. That's understandable. But there was clearly an underlying issue with the infrastructure that was not being addressed. So contractually speaking, they can give me hand-wavy answers about why they can't give me complete uptime and throughput with no repercussions, but as the customer, I must pay my bill in full by the due date.
- scarface74 8y ago
  That’s basically because ISPs are a semi-natural mononpoly without competition there is really no incentive to do better. Heck Comcast acts like a monopoly in my area and they are competing with AT&T who offers better service - 1Gbps up and down [1] vs 1Gbps/35Mbps Comcast, at a lower price and Google Fiber in some parts of town. [1] I’ve got to give a shout out to AT&T and BackBlaze, I just changed my Plex Server over to a new computer and my entire 1.7TB collection was uploaded in less than 3 days. I was getting speeds between 500GB per day and 1Tb+ a day.
rootusrootus 8y ago
I've made a couple decisions, both before and after the housing bust, that make me feel a lot more comfortable with my mortgages. First was only ever doing a fixed rate loan. Second was limiting my business to a local bank which basically guaranteed they would hold the mortgage themselves until the end. The only exception to this is my very first mortgage, which is how I learned (thankfully with no real pain) to do it right.