11 ms·

My job is to watch dreams die (2011)

361 points by eezurr 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
(2011) Some discussion then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2959137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2959137
- zzzbra 2y ago
  we've been online for so long now...
analyte123 2y ago
During this same time period I had a project at a part-time gig which involved updating document templates and adding a few fields here and there for a legal application. The application was used by a law firm which specialized in mortgages. So I saw the details of various documents one is served in these situations: notice of default, acceleration notices, notice to vacate, and ultimately evictions and foreclosure auctions. And of course you could see thousands of these documents being generated and mailed out. For a guy like the one in the post to show up, you probably would have had to completely ignore probably a dozen of these documents for at least 6 months, not paying your mortgage all along. Sometimes I feel like this experience, especially the idea that the entire principal balance can be accelerated if you don't make your payments regardless of the value of the house, left a bit of a scar on me that caused me to miss out on the ZIRP real estate boom II. But I am still happy with the way things are turning out overall.
- DaiPlusPlus 2y ago
  > you probably would have had to completely ignore probably a dozen of these documents for at least 6 months, not paying your mortgage all along. Fun-fact: thems the benefits of being a mortgage holder. If you're a tenant that's renting, you get no such legal protections - let alone discretion from whichever faceless entity actually owns the property: where I am in King County WA, I think, at most you can get 30 days' notice tops (and that's if nonpayment is the only thing they allege; it's trivially straightforward to make it a 3-day nuisance eviction, honestly). The whole thing doesn't feel right (I don't want to say "class warfare", but I haven't heard a better explanation for this double-standard).
  - BobbyTables2 2y ago
    Indeed. When I lived in an apparent, got a very angry knock at the door. Before I even got up, manager already was unlocking the door without asking, with a formal eviction notice in hand. Every month I faithfully put my rent check in an envelope, deposited the slot at the office. That month they accidentally threw away the check after opening the envelope. They really didn’t believe I had paid, despite being a good tenant for years, always on time. Never caused any trouble. Marched me to the office and they discovered they had photocopied my check but didn’t deposit it (threw it away). That all happened in one month — no prior notice/warning/call about being late on rent. I’m still shocked at this treatment many many years later. Can’t even chalk it up to any type of prejudice… just utter stupidity.
    - jopsen 2y ago
      No amount of laws can protect renters from a stupid landlord :) I could certainly see places where using a master key without authorization is a stupid move.
      - Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
        Some landlords have a HUGE superiority complex which makes them look down upon or even despise their tenants for no reason at all.
        jopsen 2y ago
        Logically thinking: if you are a landlord, most of your interactions with tenants aren't with easy tenants who pay on time and don't make unreasonable demands. A stupid landlord might not realize that easy tenants are worth gathering.
        Aeolun 2y ago
        Yeah, I’m more inclined to think they hear ‘I paid my bill!’ from every single person that’ll then stop paying going forward.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
  There was a Planet Money story about Zombie Mortgages. Home owners thought a second mortgage had been annulled, sometimes even being explicitly told that. Years of no statements being sent and suddenly collections was asking for money on what the home owner thought was a done deal. Even the bank was claiming it was some weird fraud attempt. So of course you could feel safe ignoring that paperwork. Until they came and sold her house out from under her. https://www.npr.org/2024/05/10/1197959049/zombie-second-mortgages-homeowners-foreclosure https://www.npr.org/2024/05/10/1197959049/zombie-second-mort...
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  > For a guy like the one in the post to show up, you probably would have had to completely ignore probably a dozen of these documents for at least 6 months, not paying your mortgage all along. I find it interesting that in all of these discussions it's treated as known that the person at hand is ignoring the notices and just pretending they aren't in danger of losing their home, just like in issues of evictions for rent, it's treated that for some reason the tenant has decided they don't need to pay. When IMO, in both of these, it's much more reasonable to assume they can't pay. Maybe it's just a reflexive self-protection thing in people. It's easier to watch/envision a family being forced out of their home via state violence if you assume they were just stupid/inept in some way, that they did something wrong. That the very same thing couldn't happen to you because you would never just not pay your mortgage. And I mean, same. I would never not pay my mortgage. But I can easily conjure all kinds of nightmares that would render me unable to pay my mortgage. Maybe people just don't like thinking about that.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - yieldcrv 2y ago
    the reddit post doesn't assume that.
  - analyte123 2y ago
    I'm aware that many of these people couldn't pay, mostly for lamentable reasons outside of their control, but pretending nothing is wrong usually doesn't help a bad situation. Ignoring letters from the IRS doesn't make you not owe them taxes. Ignoring letters from your lender or their lawyer doesn't make you owe less money. You still owe the money and it costs you interest and time that you could use to negotiate a settlement or forbearance. Perhaps if you make your situation bad enough, it's easier to file for bankruptcy and start over, but I doubt that people are thinking that far. In any case, it's a big stretch to call eviction "state violence". When they're even involved, the sheriff is mostly helping to enforce a private contract between the homeowner and their lender. The only conceivable alternative to this situation that still allows lending or private property to exist at all is for the police to not exist and everyone enforces their own contracts with their own violence.
howard941 2y ago
I worked the other side of this thing, as a debtors' bankruptcy attorney. Sometimes I could save the house but usually it wasn't in the cards: The income wasn't there and the bankruptcy laws were skewed by GWB. Fortunately there were many times when - if a house wasn't an issue - the debtor was much better off without an albatross around his neck. Overall it was a rewarding occupation - not monetarily, the rules kept debtor's attorneys on a very short leash - but morally.
- throwaway2037 2y ago
  Thank you to share your first hand experience. > bankruptcy laws were skewed by GWB Can you explain this more, including "GWB"?
  - jaggederest 2y ago
    GWB is George W. Bush, president from 2000 to 2008. Relevant wiki article about the act he signed that changed bankruptcy laws: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy_Abuse_Prevention_and_Consumer_Protection_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy_Abuse_Prevention_an...
coding123 2y ago
There needs to be some standard addendum attached to homes as an option that anyone selling a home can attach to the sale. Something like: This house cannot be used as an investment vehicle. It cannot be sold by a real-estate agent with a contract of more than 1%. It cannot be used as a rental. It cannot be sold for more than inflation would allow. Anyone found violating this addendum may be sued. All proceeds from the lawsuit (after fair lawyer fee of 40%) shall be used to build new homes (as in it can only be used to fund actual building materials, not generic non-profit companies). This might not be the best approach, but we need a home renaissance that redefines home ownership across the world so that no one has to be homeless anymore.
- crooked-v 2y ago
  Or, you know, just actually build enough houses for people to live in. I feel like that would be a better start than suing people into bankruptcy because they made 5% off a house sale instead of of 4.5%. Houses are only an attractive investment vehicle in the first place because there is a massive shortage of housing.
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    YIMBY. Preach.
    - Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
      Some local residents were fighting against some new apartment building being built, claiming that the area wouldn't be able to handle the extra traffic, it wouldn't have enough parking, etc... Meanwhile, not only was there going to be 1.5 parking spots per unit, but the main entrance is literally 500 feet from the metro line. Many residents there were likely to not even have cars. And it was just one building with 40 units placed next to a major throughfare. Plenty of traffic handling capability. I imagine everyone fighting it was a homeowner worried about increased housing availability lowering the home's value. I own a house, and there's a new complex being built about half a mile from me. Judging by the size of the plot of land and the poster showing what it's going to look like, I imagine it's probably gonna have ~200 units. I'm all for it being built. My house has gone up in value by ~62% in 9 years and that's ridiculous.
santoshalper 2y ago
I have spent about 20 years in the mortgage and housing industry, a decent amount of that in servicing and default. I have seen some shady shit including borrowers who committed mortgage fraud and lenders who made loans they knew would ultimately blow up in someone's face (not theirs!). That said, 99% of defaults are very simple: At the time of the loan, the borrower could afford to make the mortgage payment. Later down the road, something changes in their circumstance, and they can no longer afford to make the monthly payment (or anything close enough to work out a deal). The most common reasons are a loss of income or severe medical issues. Mortgage servicers and investors almost never want to foreclose on a home. An extended default leading to a foreclosure is very costly, and the servicer is usually fronting the money to the investor the entire time. Everyone loses when a foreclosure happens (though only one party doesn't have a home anymore). I am profoundly sympathetic to anyone who gets evicted, but lenders only make mortgage loans because the property is collateral. How else would someone front a normal borrower hundreds of thousands of dollars?
- Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
  Maybe you have some insight over something that's always confused me. During the 2008 crash, I heard of a lot of people seeing their home value plummet, end up underwater on their mortgage, and decide to just abandon it. I've never understood why someone would do that, rather than ride it out and keep paying while the value recovers? I could MAYBE understand going "Nope, I'm out" if you had an adjustable-rate mortgage and your rate skyrocketed and now you can't afford the payments, but every housing bubble pop is temporary. But like...I see my mortgage payment as more than just a payment on a loan, it's simply the cost of having a roof over my head. Whether I'm paying $2,000 to the bank, or $2,000 to some landlord (Really, I'd be looking at $2,800/month for a house like what I have now), I'm paying $2k/month. So why not just keep paying my mortgage, even if the value is less than what I paid?
  - dredmorbius 2y ago
    Balloon mortgages and an inability to refinance on attractive terms. It wasn't a matter of holding the property. Most simply couldn't make payments. Walkaways worked because real estate debt (in most of the US) is non-recourse debt. You leave the mortgage, the bank (or present mortgage holder) gets the property. Debt is settled. (Lender in this case, or the present mortage holder, itself a rather complex question given mortgage-backed securities and fast-and-loose assignments of title, gets stuck holding the bag. Eventually values climbed again, at least outside economically-blighted zones.)
commandlinefan 2y ago
[flagged]
- tomrod 2y ago
  Yep, the robbers just shoot you or wait for you to be asleep. Or smile at you through the kitchen window while they disconnect the running air conditioner. Despite our bravado and ammosexuality, it turns out Texans are people like everywhere else.
- istjohn 2y ago
  After Uvalde, that Texan braggadocio looks sillier than ever.
  - optimalsolver 2y ago
    Don't mess with Texas (unless you have a gun).
    - ThunderSizzle 2y ago
      Don't mess with Texan citizens. Feel free to make a fool out of Texan police officers.
  - Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
    It's exceptionally rare for me to watch sports, but when I do (usually just because it's on a TV at a restaurant), I always root against Texas if they're playing, no matter who they're playing against, just because I think people from Texas need to be taken down a couple notches. Texas has the best BBQ in the country, I'll give them that, but everything else about their state pride is just weird to me. Especially their ridiculously stupid power grid that I don't understand why the voters haven't done something about.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
- 2y ago
RGamma 2y ago
So this must be (one of the undoubtably many reasons) why our transatlantic friends are trying to push the self-destruct button since 2016. Reads like dystopian fiction. Canis canem possidet.
- mminer237 2y ago
  Where do you live that you don't have foreclosure sales?
  - RGamma 2y ago
    It's not about foreclosure sales. It's about the desperation, the ruthlessness, the intense pressure, the instant legal armament. Some other commenter here mentioned 3 day eviction notices (when renting) are a thing. Come on...
    - Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
      You obviously read other comments, so you'd know that people talk about foreclosures taking 6 months. That's far from "instant legal armament". I wouldn't even call it ruthless. The 3-day eviction notices on renting are a red herring. We're not talking about renting from an owner, we're talking about foreclosures.
sandspar 2y ago
I've seen a few sides of money. Raised upper class, lost it all and became underclass, then made it back. I'm always amazed at how limited rich people's worldview is. The average software developer, coastal liberal etc. They've never felt terror, the visceral feeling of being terrified. They've never been predated upon. They've never been used and discarded. The underclass lives with this stuff every day, 24/7, and rich people never experience it even once in their whole lives. And the rich people presume to talk down to and lecture the poor. I have a great deal of contempt for people of my class, the rich.
- silisili 2y ago
  I was just discussing this with a friend last week. In my case at least, it was too easy to forget. I grew up low end of middle class at best, and after high school was dirt poor. Getting overdrafts weekly, in that era where they reorder transactions to really turn the screws. Sleeping early because it's cheaper than eating. Working two jobs and still not getting ahead. The shame of having to ask to borrow a few bucks, but trying to hide it so you didn't seem ingenuous. Having better off people talk to you like a child, giving you unsolicited one liner advice that they probably read on a motivational poster at work that morning, like they're doing me a life favor. The thing is, I got a lucky break in my mid 20s and haven't struggled a day since. Now it's been almost 20 years, and I find myself acting like the rich person you describe. I guess like all things, appreciation wears off with age and becomes the new normal. I don't ever want to struggle like that again, but I'd love to experience the feeling and appreciation I had for the first couple years after climbing out of it. It's easy to forget.
  - Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
    > in that era where they reorder transactions to really turn the screws I cannot come up with the words about how absolutely evil someone had to be to make transactions work that way. How utterly fucked up and sociopathic do you have to be to steal money from the poor?
    - klyrs 2y ago
UberFly 2y ago
Many of the comments in that Reddit thread are heartbreaking. Ouch.
hunter-gatherer 2y ago
I've had a handful of lemons thrown at me during my life. One of the most impactful ones as far as I can tell is that through a weird chain of coincidences I ended up first in line to purchase a foreclosed home. From what I understood, the couple was going through a nasty divorce and couldn't agree on who would get the house and ultimately didn't pay anything for a while, so I picked it up for 80k, which back then was probably 50% of what the market value was. This was hige for kme because as a kid my family was actually evicted from the house we were renting (not for financial-related reasons) but it was sudden so home security has always been important to me. Having been able to pay off my house has had the most tremendous postive impact on my mental health I think. Sure, it's a small house, and it's old, and the kitchen is small, and so on... but man, I'm so glad I never have to worry about making a house payment.
- dmd 2y ago
  > a handful of lemons I'm having trouble parsing this. A lemon is a bad thing that happens to you, but this seems like it was a good thing for you?
  - mcphage 2y ago
    > A lemon is a bad thing that happens to you, but this seems like it was a good thing for you? Probably referencing "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade", not like a car is a lemon.
    - dmd 2y ago
      Yes, thus my question. In that phrase, a "lemon" is a bad thing that is happening to you, which you turn somehow into something good (lemonade).
      - hunter-gatherer 2y ago
        Lol. Maybe I've misunderstood this idiom my entire life. I've always taken the lemon to be a sort of neutral player since it isn't always trivial to make something better out of a neutral (ie to see the opportunity) and is even less trivial to make a positive spin on a negative thing.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
dhosek 2y ago
When my ex-wife and I were first house shopping in Chicago, we looked at a handful of short sales¹ and I am still haunted by the site of one defeated homeowner sitting on the sofa of his home as we looked around his home deciding if we wanted to buy it.² ⸻ 1. For those who don’t know, a short sale is one step up from foreclosure: The homeowner and lender agree to a sale for less than the outstanding balance on the mortgage. The buyer must not be related to the seller and the seller does receive a few thousand dollars of the sale proceeds. On the flipside, the amount of the mortgage that is not paid off is considered income and the seller must pay taxes on that. 2. We ended up not buying any of the short sale homes in the community where we were looking, but instead purchased a home that was a traditional sale.
- firesteelrain 2y ago
  During the mortgage crisis, taxes were waived. Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act of 2007 allowed for the exclusion of taxes on forgiven mortgage debt. Many people used that law in conjunction with HAFA or HAMP. Myself in particular conducted a short sale during this time and did not pay taxes on the difference.
  - dhosek 2y ago
    I went through a short sale in 1996 and as it turned out, the taxes that I ended up owing were identical to how much I was behind on my mortgage. One of the things that I had been told over and over back then was that I didn’t want to declare bankruptcy, but in retrospect, it turns out that declaring bankruptcy would have been exactly what I wanted to do. I remember thinking during the mortgage crisis when folks were often underwater by $100K or more that the taxes would end up killing them on short sales. I wasn’t paying enough attention to know about the 2007 debt relief act since I was a renter at that point.
    - firesteelrain 2y ago
      That period of time was very rough. We bought our first home in 2006 for $134k and by 2007 it was worth about $59k. Even after adding on to it by converting our porch to another room, we ran out of room fast with the birth of our second child. I had one bedroom for one child who was about 5 or 6 and the second shared it with us. Since we couldn’t sell it with that much difference - we simply didn’t have the money to make up that difference - we ended up conducting a short sale in 2012. I rented until 2014 then used the VA Home Loan to buy my home which I have lived in for the past 10 years. It took 7 years to clear my credit report. But VA was very forgiving and the banks were OK to provide a mortgage at that time with VA backing. So it was less of a risk.
honkycat 2y ago
My parents build a big ass house in the middle of nowhere around the year 2000 It was a nice place! rooms for the kids, a pool, etc. Then 2008 hit. WOW. We went from a prosperous family to NOTHING incredibly fast. This asset was so toxic the bank wouldn't even fucking take it. It was an albatross for YEARS and my parents had to liquidate their 100 year old family business, and all other assets before they could wiggle out from under it in 2014. For little podunk rust belt towns, there was no "recovery." The car parts plant was gone. The tire plant was gone. The steel casting plant was gone. EVERYTHING went to Mexico. Why buy a nice place if there is no job to support it? That house now sits empty out on a lot next to a closed down golf course. So it goes
- pram 2y ago
  Oof, that sucks. My parents managed the exact opposite. We had a house in the middle of nowhere. Their business was slowly going under so they decided to sell and move in with my mothers father (lol) and did this at the absolute top of the market (2006) The person who bought it is still holding the bag if Zillow is any indication, it’s still about $30k under what he bought it for. I often think about how many people are still screwed from that time.
  - ThunderSizzle 2y ago
    Its an interesting tale, because we might be in a very similar bubble. Or not. It's hard to tell, because the dollar has been so devalued, while housing is over-inflated, and money is expensive. It's a cruel joke when money is worthless and expensive at the same time.
    - throwaway2037 2y ago
      > because the dollar has been so devalued Can you explain? The USD vs EUR FX rate has barely changed in 10 years. If you believe the US dollar has been "so devalued", then you must believe the same for Euro.
      - 2y ago
joko42 2y ago
He reminds me of Death from Discworld. He is the Dream Reaper.
locallost 2y ago
Terrific writing even if difficult to read. This hits close to home, my family and relatives left our homes because of a war, we were on the wrong side of the fence. The experiences of these people are not much different. Maybe we can do better in the 21st century.
yonran 2y ago
The tragedy is even sadder when you find out that the foreclosure crisis and Great Recession were self-inflicted by the Federal Reserve and CFPB after 2007, not the inevitable result of reckless borrowers. Kevin Erdmann has been studying this for about a decade and gives examples of cities such as Atlanta that had no housing boom at all but were forced into foreclosure crisis. Here is his most recent op-ed: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/09/05/housing-crisis-mortgages-kamala-harris-plan/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/09/05/housing-c...
- jalapenos 2y ago
  Actually they were inflicted by the Fed dropping rates to zero following the tech bubble bursting (2000), blowing up a real estate bubble. You'd think the USSR would've been enough to stop people believing in central planning. But this is unlikely, since the desire for central planning is actually an innate instinct - a child wanting parents to handle everything for them.
  - yonran 2y ago
    There wasn’t much of a bubble. The price bubble that people cited is mostly explained by exclusionary zoning driving up rents in Closed Access cities (e.g. New York, San Francisco, Boston) and migration from those cities to Contagion cities (e.g. Phoenix, Las Vegas, Seattle). There was no reason for the government to destroy home values nationwide in cities that had no boom at all (e.g. Atlanta). And given that since the Great Recession, rents and prices have risen even higher than the peak of the “bubble” in Closed Access cities, we now can see that the entire Recession was pointless since the Fed killed the homebuilding industry in Contagion cities but didn’t address the root of the problem in Closed Access cities.
fisherjeff 2y ago
“And so I listen. I feign dispassion but I'm not fooling anybody. Somehow they can tell that I care and thank me even as they admit that it isn't my fault, that it isn't my responsibility to listen. I've stood inside another's dream for an hour as they spoke, not really to be heard but to say goodbye - to leave the ghosts behind.” A nice reminder that, in literally every possible situation, even just a little bit of kindness and humanity can go a long way.
csours 2y ago
I helped a co-worker evict a guy who had been missing and short rent payments on and off for over a year. Less than a year later the evictee passed away living rough on the street and unsheltered. His wife had divorced him a while earlier, and by the time he was evicted the carpet was filled with dog poop and pee, some partially cleaned up, some not. The guy was an accountant. One would assume that a professional like that would be able to get access to help; would be able to figure out what's going on and change course. I don't know or remember enough of his story to really make a point. It sucks that he died. It sucks that I'm part of a chain of events that accelerated that. It sucks that people get drawn into things like gambling and drugs. It sucks that people are unhoused in a country with access to a surplus of resources. By the time someone gets to intensive care in a hospital, a nurse can 'save their life' 5 times in a night, just for them to die the next day. This guy could have lived more years, but it's really hard to know what those years would have been.
firesteelrain 2y ago
I have become cynical on Reddit to the point that I don’t know if these stories are real or just really good creative writing
- lnsru 2y ago
  It might be good creative writing. But a businessman who I knew got stroke and died around the time. His real estate projects became worthless basically in one week. So from the timing I would say, that the writing might be real.
- nunez 2y ago
  Fake stories were way less common on Reddit back then, IMO. It wasn't a super popular site back then.
christkv 2y ago
Reminded me of this story that makes me chuckle when i first read it where the tables were turned. https://abcnews.go.com/Business/bank-america-florida-foreclosed-angry-homeowner-bofa/story?id=13775638 https://abcnews.go.com/Business/bank-america-florida-foreclo...
DrNosferatu 2y ago
In Portugal, you can take a mortgage with an optional insurance to exempt you from payments if unemployed up to 6 months.
- positr0n 2y ago
  Every time I get a new mortgage (in the US) I get a bunch of spam physical mail hawking this type of insurance. So it's a thing here too.
nunez 2y ago
Man, Reddit used to be amazing before it got TikTok-ified. Super high quality content (like this); a lot of which was real. Why can't we have nice things?
- mrguyorama 2y ago
  Nice things are fundamentally less profitable than trash. Everything that makes a thing "nice" costs money, eats into your profit margins, takes more work, while making more profit on something with a fixed "nice"ness is much much easier.
nothercastle 2y ago
This reads like way before 2011. Just the mention of phone books puts the time frame into the late 90s early 2000s. I haven’t seen a phone book for at least 20 years.
- albrewer 2y ago
  I grew up in a poor "rural" area (it was a 5 min drive to a 300k pop. city). Most technology is about 10-15 years behind "the times" when you leave the city. Most people I knew didn't have cellphones until ~2007-08. Home broadband was an extravagance until ~2009 when landline DSL prices came down enough.
- BehindBlueEyes 2y ago
  Still using phone books today in rural canada.
karaterobot 2y ago
That was an unexpectedly well-written post.
michaelcampbell 2y ago
The subject is heartbreaking, but the writing is superb.

361 points by eezurr 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

(2011) Some discussion then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2959137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2959137

zzzbra 2y ago
we've been online for so long now...

analyte123 2y ago

During this same time period I had a project at a part-time gig which involved updating document templates and adding a few fields here and there for a legal application. The application was used by a law firm which specialized in mortgages. So I saw the details of various documents one is served in these situations: notice of default, acceleration notices, notice to vacate, and ultimately evictions and foreclosure auctions. And of course you could see thousands of these documents being generated and mailed out. For a guy like the one in the post to show up, you probably would have had to completely ignore probably a dozen of these documents for at least 6 months, not paying your mortgage all along. Sometimes I feel like this experience, especially the idea that the entire principal balance can be accelerated if you don't make your payments regardless of the value of the house, left a bit of a scar on me that caused me to miss out on the ZIRP real estate boom II. But I am still happy with the way things are turning out overall.

DaiPlusPlus 2y ago
> you probably would have had to completely ignore probably a dozen of these documents for at least 6 months, not paying your mortgage all along. Fun-fact: thems the benefits of being a mortgage holder. If you're a tenant that's renting, you get no such legal protections - let alone discretion from whichever faceless entity actually owns the property: where I am in King County WA, I think, at most you can get 30 days' notice tops (and that's if nonpayment is the only thing they allege; it's trivially straightforward to make it a 3-day nuisance eviction, honestly). The whole thing doesn't feel right (I don't want to say "class warfare", but I haven't heard a better explanation for this double-standard).
- BobbyTables2 2y ago
  Indeed. When I lived in an apparent, got a very angry knock at the door. Before I even got up, manager already was unlocking the door without asking, with a formal eviction notice in hand. Every month I faithfully put my rent check in an envelope, deposited the slot at the office. That month they accidentally threw away the check after opening the envelope. They really didn’t believe I had paid, despite being a good tenant for years, always on time. Never caused any trouble. Marched me to the office and they discovered they had photocopied my check but didn’t deposit it (threw it away). That all happened in one month — no prior notice/warning/call about being late on rent. I’m still shocked at this treatment many many years later. Can’t even chalk it up to any type of prejudice… just utter stupidity.
  - jopsen 2y ago
    No amount of laws can protect renters from a stupid landlord :) I could certainly see places where using a master key without authorization is a stupid move.
    - Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
      Some landlords have a HUGE superiority complex which makes them look down upon or even despise their tenants for no reason at all.
      - jopsen 2y ago
        Logically thinking: if you are a landlord, most of your interactions with tenants aren't with easy tenants who pay on time and don't make unreasonable demands. A stupid landlord might not realize that easy tenants are worth gathering.
        Aeolun 2y ago
        Yeah, I’m more inclined to think they hear ‘I paid my bill!’ from every single person that’ll then stop paying going forward.
0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
There was a Planet Money story about Zombie Mortgages. Home owners thought a second mortgage had been annulled, sometimes even being explicitly told that. Years of no statements being sent and suddenly collections was asking for money on what the home owner thought was a done deal. Even the bank was claiming it was some weird fraud attempt. So of course you could feel safe ignoring that paperwork. Until they came and sold her house out from under her. https://www.npr.org/2024/05/10/1197959049/zombie-second-mortgages-homeowners-foreclosure https://www.npr.org/2024/05/10/1197959049/zombie-second-mort...
ToucanLoucan 2y ago
> For a guy like the one in the post to show up, you probably would have had to completely ignore probably a dozen of these documents for at least 6 months, not paying your mortgage all along. I find it interesting that in all of these discussions it's treated as known that the person at hand is ignoring the notices and just pretending they aren't in danger of losing their home, just like in issues of evictions for rent, it's treated that for some reason the tenant has decided they don't need to pay. When IMO, in both of these, it's much more reasonable to assume they can't pay. Maybe it's just a reflexive self-protection thing in people. It's easier to watch/envision a family being forced out of their home via state violence if you assume they were just stupid/inept in some way, that they did something wrong. That the very same thing couldn't happen to you because you would never just not pay your mortgage. And I mean, same. I would never not pay my mortgage. But I can easily conjure all kinds of nightmares that would render me unable to pay my mortgage. Maybe people just don't like thinking about that.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- yieldcrv 2y ago
  the reddit post doesn't assume that.
- analyte123 2y ago
  I'm aware that many of these people couldn't pay, mostly for lamentable reasons outside of their control, but pretending nothing is wrong usually doesn't help a bad situation. Ignoring letters from the IRS doesn't make you not owe them taxes. Ignoring letters from your lender or their lawyer doesn't make you owe less money. You still owe the money and it costs you interest and time that you could use to negotiate a settlement or forbearance. Perhaps if you make your situation bad enough, it's easier to file for bankruptcy and start over, but I doubt that people are thinking that far. In any case, it's a big stretch to call eviction "state violence". When they're even involved, the sheriff is mostly helping to enforce a private contract between the homeowner and their lender. The only conceivable alternative to this situation that still allows lending or private property to exist at all is for the police to not exist and everyone enforces their own contracts with their own violence.

howard941 2y ago

I worked the other side of this thing, as a debtors' bankruptcy attorney. Sometimes I could save the house but usually it wasn't in the cards: The income wasn't there and the bankruptcy laws were skewed by GWB. Fortunately there were many times when - if a house wasn't an issue - the debtor was much better off without an albatross around his neck. Overall it was a rewarding occupation - not monetarily, the rules kept debtor's attorneys on a very short leash - but morally.

throwaway2037 2y ago
Thank you to share your first hand experience. > bankruptcy laws were skewed by GWB Can you explain this more, including "GWB"?
- jaggederest 2y ago
  GWB is George W. Bush, president from 2000 to 2008. Relevant wiki article about the act he signed that changed bankruptcy laws: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy_Abuse_Prevention_and_Consumer_Protection_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy_Abuse_Prevention_an...

coding123 2y ago

There needs to be some standard addendum attached to homes as an option that anyone selling a home can attach to the sale. Something like: This house cannot be used as an investment vehicle. It cannot be sold by a real-estate agent with a contract of more than 1%. It cannot be used as a rental. It cannot be sold for more than inflation would allow. Anyone found violating this addendum may be sued. All proceeds from the lawsuit (after fair lawyer fee of 40%) shall be used to build new homes (as in it can only be used to fund actual building materials, not generic non-profit companies). This might not be the best approach, but we need a home renaissance that redefines home ownership across the world so that no one has to be homeless anymore.

crooked-v 2y ago
Or, you know, just actually build enough houses for people to live in. I feel like that would be a better start than suing people into bankruptcy because they made 5% off a house sale instead of of 4.5%. Houses are only an attractive investment vehicle in the first place because there is a massive shortage of housing.
- pfdietz 2y ago
  YIMBY. Preach.
  - Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
    Some local residents were fighting against some new apartment building being built, claiming that the area wouldn't be able to handle the extra traffic, it wouldn't have enough parking, etc... Meanwhile, not only was there going to be 1.5 parking spots per unit, but the main entrance is literally 500 feet from the metro line. Many residents there were likely to not even have cars. And it was just one building with 40 units placed next to a major throughfare. Plenty of traffic handling capability. I imagine everyone fighting it was a homeowner worried about increased housing availability lowering the home's value. I own a house, and there's a new complex being built about half a mile from me. Judging by the size of the plot of land and the poster showing what it's going to look like, I imagine it's probably gonna have ~200 units. I'm all for it being built. My house has gone up in value by ~62% in 9 years and that's ridiculous.

santoshalper 2y ago

I have spent about 20 years in the mortgage and housing industry, a decent amount of that in servicing and default. I have seen some shady shit including borrowers who committed mortgage fraud and lenders who made loans they knew would ultimately blow up in someone's face (not theirs!). That said, 99% of defaults are very simple: At the time of the loan, the borrower could afford to make the mortgage payment. Later down the road, something changes in their circumstance, and they can no longer afford to make the monthly payment (or anything close enough to work out a deal). The most common reasons are a loss of income or severe medical issues. Mortgage servicers and investors almost never want to foreclose on a home. An extended default leading to a foreclosure is very costly, and the servicer is usually fronting the money to the investor the entire time. Everyone loses when a foreclosure happens (though only one party doesn't have a home anymore). I am profoundly sympathetic to anyone who gets evicted, but lenders only make mortgage loans because the property is collateral. How else would someone front a normal borrower hundreds of thousands of dollars?

Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
Maybe you have some insight over something that's always confused me. During the 2008 crash, I heard of a lot of people seeing their home value plummet, end up underwater on their mortgage, and decide to just abandon it. I've never understood why someone would do that, rather than ride it out and keep paying while the value recovers? I could MAYBE understand going "Nope, I'm out" if you had an adjustable-rate mortgage and your rate skyrocketed and now you can't afford the payments, but every housing bubble pop is temporary. But like...I see my mortgage payment as more than just a payment on a loan, it's simply the cost of having a roof over my head. Whether I'm paying $2,000 to the bank, or $2,000 to some landlord (Really, I'd be looking at $2,800/month for a house like what I have now), I'm paying $2k/month. So why not just keep paying my mortgage, even if the value is less than what I paid?
- dredmorbius 2y ago
  Balloon mortgages and an inability to refinance on attractive terms. It wasn't a matter of holding the property. Most simply couldn't make payments. Walkaways worked because real estate debt (in most of the US) is non-recourse debt. You leave the mortgage, the bank (or present mortgage holder) gets the property. Debt is settled. (Lender in this case, or the present mortage holder, itself a rather complex question given mortgage-backed securities and fast-and-loose assignments of title, gets stuck holding the bag. Eventually values climbed again, at least outside economically-blighted zones.)

commandlinefan 2y ago

[flagged]

tomrod 2y ago
Yep, the robbers just shoot you or wait for you to be asleep. Or smile at you through the kitchen window while they disconnect the running air conditioner. Despite our bravado and ammosexuality, it turns out Texans are people like everywhere else.
istjohn 2y ago
After Uvalde, that Texan braggadocio looks sillier than ever.
- optimalsolver 2y ago
  Don't mess with Texas (unless you have a gun).
  - ThunderSizzle 2y ago
    Don't mess with Texan citizens. Feel free to make a fool out of Texan police officers.
- Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
  It's exceptionally rare for me to watch sports, but when I do (usually just because it's on a TV at a restaurant), I always root against Texas if they're playing, no matter who they're playing against, just because I think people from Texas need to be taken down a couple notches. Texas has the best BBQ in the country, I'll give them that, but everything else about their state pride is just weird to me. Especially their ridiculously stupid power grid that I don't understand why the voters haven't done something about.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
2y ago

RGamma 2y ago

So this must be (one of the undoubtably many reasons) why our transatlantic friends are trying to push the self-destruct button since 2016. Reads like dystopian fiction. Canis canem possidet.

mminer237 2y ago
Where do you live that you don't have foreclosure sales?
- RGamma 2y ago
  It's not about foreclosure sales. It's about the desperation, the ruthlessness, the intense pressure, the instant legal armament. Some other commenter here mentioned 3 day eviction notices (when renting) are a thing. Come on...
  - Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
    You obviously read other comments, so you'd know that people talk about foreclosures taking 6 months. That's far from "instant legal armament". I wouldn't even call it ruthless. The 3-day eviction notices on renting are a red herring. We're not talking about renting from an owner, we're talking about foreclosures.

sandspar 2y ago

I've seen a few sides of money. Raised upper class, lost it all and became underclass, then made it back. I'm always amazed at how limited rich people's worldview is. The average software developer, coastal liberal etc. They've never felt terror, the visceral feeling of being terrified. They've never been predated upon. They've never been used and discarded. The underclass lives with this stuff every day, 24/7, and rich people never experience it even once in their whole lives. And the rich people presume to talk down to and lecture the poor. I have a great deal of contempt for people of my class, the rich.

silisili 2y ago
I was just discussing this with a friend last week. In my case at least, it was too easy to forget. I grew up low end of middle class at best, and after high school was dirt poor. Getting overdrafts weekly, in that era where they reorder transactions to really turn the screws. Sleeping early because it's cheaper than eating. Working two jobs and still not getting ahead. The shame of having to ask to borrow a few bucks, but trying to hide it so you didn't seem ingenuous. Having better off people talk to you like a child, giving you unsolicited one liner advice that they probably read on a motivational poster at work that morning, like they're doing me a life favor. The thing is, I got a lucky break in my mid 20s and haven't struggled a day since. Now it's been almost 20 years, and I find myself acting like the rich person you describe. I guess like all things, appreciation wears off with age and becomes the new normal. I don't ever want to struggle like that again, but I'd love to experience the feeling and appreciation I had for the first couple years after climbing out of it. It's easy to forget.
- Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
  > in that era where they reorder transactions to really turn the screws I cannot come up with the words about how absolutely evil someone had to be to make transactions work that way. How utterly fucked up and sociopathic do you have to be to steal money from the poor?
  - klyrs 2y ago

UberFly 2y ago

Many of the comments in that Reddit thread are heartbreaking. Ouch.

hunter-gatherer 2y ago

I've had a handful of lemons thrown at me during my life. One of the most impactful ones as far as I can tell is that through a weird chain of coincidences I ended up first in line to purchase a foreclosed home. From what I understood, the couple was going through a nasty divorce and couldn't agree on who would get the house and ultimately didn't pay anything for a while, so I picked it up for 80k, which back then was probably 50% of what the market value was. This was hige for kme because as a kid my family was actually evicted from the house we were renting (not for financial-related reasons) but it was sudden so home security has always been important to me. Having been able to pay off my house has had the most tremendous postive impact on my mental health I think. Sure, it's a small house, and it's old, and the kitchen is small, and so on... but man, I'm so glad I never have to worry about making a house payment.

dmd 2y ago
> a handful of lemons I'm having trouble parsing this. A lemon is a bad thing that happens to you, but this seems like it was a good thing for you?
- mcphage 2y ago
  > A lemon is a bad thing that happens to you, but this seems like it was a good thing for you? Probably referencing "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade", not like a car is a lemon.
  - dmd 2y ago
    Yes, thus my question. In that phrase, a "lemon" is a bad thing that is happening to you, which you turn somehow into something good (lemonade).
    - hunter-gatherer 2y ago
      Lol. Maybe I've misunderstood this idiom my entire life. I've always taken the lemon to be a sort of neutral player since it isn't always trivial to make something better out of a neutral (ie to see the opportunity) and is even less trivial to make a positive spin on a negative thing.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

dhosek 2y ago

When my ex-wife and I were first house shopping in Chicago, we looked at a handful of short sales¹ and I am still haunted by the site of one defeated homeowner sitting on the sofa of his home as we looked around his home deciding if we wanted to buy it.² ⸻ 1. For those who don’t know, a short sale is one step up from foreclosure: The homeowner and lender agree to a sale for less than the outstanding balance on the mortgage. The buyer must not be related to the seller and the seller does receive a few thousand dollars of the sale proceeds. On the flipside, the amount of the mortgage that is not paid off is considered income and the seller must pay taxes on that. 2. We ended up not buying any of the short sale homes in the community where we were looking, but instead purchased a home that was a traditional sale.

firesteelrain 2y ago
During the mortgage crisis, taxes were waived. Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act of 2007 allowed for the exclusion of taxes on forgiven mortgage debt. Many people used that law in conjunction with HAFA or HAMP. Myself in particular conducted a short sale during this time and did not pay taxes on the difference.
- dhosek 2y ago
  I went through a short sale in 1996 and as it turned out, the taxes that I ended up owing were identical to how much I was behind on my mortgage. One of the things that I had been told over and over back then was that I didn’t want to declare bankruptcy, but in retrospect, it turns out that declaring bankruptcy would have been exactly what I wanted to do. I remember thinking during the mortgage crisis when folks were often underwater by $100K or more that the taxes would end up killing them on short sales. I wasn’t paying enough attention to know about the 2007 debt relief act since I was a renter at that point.
  - firesteelrain 2y ago
    That period of time was very rough. We bought our first home in 2006 for $134k and by 2007 it was worth about $59k. Even after adding on to it by converting our porch to another room, we ran out of room fast with the birth of our second child. I had one bedroom for one child who was about 5 or 6 and the second shared it with us. Since we couldn’t sell it with that much difference - we simply didn’t have the money to make up that difference - we ended up conducting a short sale in 2012. I rented until 2014 then used the VA Home Loan to buy my home which I have lived in for the past 10 years. It took 7 years to clear my credit report. But VA was very forgiving and the banks were OK to provide a mortgage at that time with VA backing. So it was less of a risk.

honkycat 2y ago

My parents build a big ass house in the middle of nowhere around the year 2000 It was a nice place! rooms for the kids, a pool, etc. Then 2008 hit. WOW. We went from a prosperous family to NOTHING incredibly fast. This asset was so toxic the bank wouldn't even fucking take it. It was an albatross for YEARS and my parents had to liquidate their 100 year old family business, and all other assets before they could wiggle out from under it in 2014. For little podunk rust belt towns, there was no "recovery." The car parts plant was gone. The tire plant was gone. The steel casting plant was gone. EVERYTHING went to Mexico. Why buy a nice place if there is no job to support it? That house now sits empty out on a lot next to a closed down golf course. So it goes

pram 2y ago
Oof, that sucks. My parents managed the exact opposite. We had a house in the middle of nowhere. Their business was slowly going under so they decided to sell and move in with my mothers father (lol) and did this at the absolute top of the market (2006) The person who bought it is still holding the bag if Zillow is any indication, it’s still about $30k under what he bought it for. I often think about how many people are still screwed from that time.
- ThunderSizzle 2y ago
  Its an interesting tale, because we might be in a very similar bubble. Or not. It's hard to tell, because the dollar has been so devalued, while housing is over-inflated, and money is expensive. It's a cruel joke when money is worthless and expensive at the same time.
  - throwaway2037 2y ago
    > because the dollar has been so devalued Can you explain? The USD vs EUR FX rate has barely changed in 10 years. If you believe the US dollar has been "so devalued", then you must believe the same for Euro.
    - 2y ago

joko42 2y ago

He reminds me of Death from Discworld. He is the Dream Reaper.

locallost 2y ago

Terrific writing even if difficult to read. This hits close to home, my family and relatives left our homes because of a war, we were on the wrong side of the fence. The experiences of these people are not much different. Maybe we can do better in the 21st century.

yonran 2y ago

The tragedy is even sadder when you find out that the foreclosure crisis and Great Recession were self-inflicted by the Federal Reserve and CFPB after 2007, not the inevitable result of reckless borrowers. Kevin Erdmann has been studying this for about a decade and gives examples of cities such as Atlanta that had no housing boom at all but were forced into foreclosure crisis. Here is his most recent op-ed: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/09/05/housing-crisis-mortgages-kamala-harris-plan/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/09/05/housing-c...

jalapenos 2y ago
Actually they were inflicted by the Fed dropping rates to zero following the tech bubble bursting (2000), blowing up a real estate bubble. You'd think the USSR would've been enough to stop people believing in central planning. But this is unlikely, since the desire for central planning is actually an innate instinct - a child wanting parents to handle everything for them.
- yonran 2y ago
  There wasn’t much of a bubble. The price bubble that people cited is mostly explained by exclusionary zoning driving up rents in Closed Access cities (e.g. New York, San Francisco, Boston) and migration from those cities to Contagion cities (e.g. Phoenix, Las Vegas, Seattle). There was no reason for the government to destroy home values nationwide in cities that had no boom at all (e.g. Atlanta). And given that since the Great Recession, rents and prices have risen even higher than the peak of the “bubble” in Closed Access cities, we now can see that the entire Recession was pointless since the Fed killed the homebuilding industry in Contagion cities but didn’t address the root of the problem in Closed Access cities.

fisherjeff 2y ago

“And so I listen. I feign dispassion but I'm not fooling anybody. Somehow they can tell that I care and thank me even as they admit that it isn't my fault, that it isn't my responsibility to listen. I've stood inside another's dream for an hour as they spoke, not really to be heard but to say goodbye - to leave the ghosts behind.” A nice reminder that, in literally every possible situation, even just a little bit of kindness and humanity can go a long way.

csours 2y ago

I helped a co-worker evict a guy who had been missing and short rent payments on and off for over a year. Less than a year later the evictee passed away living rough on the street and unsheltered. His wife had divorced him a while earlier, and by the time he was evicted the carpet was filled with dog poop and pee, some partially cleaned up, some not. The guy was an accountant. One would assume that a professional like that would be able to get access to help; would be able to figure out what's going on and change course. I don't know or remember enough of his story to really make a point. It sucks that he died. It sucks that I'm part of a chain of events that accelerated that. It sucks that people get drawn into things like gambling and drugs. It sucks that people are unhoused in a country with access to a surplus of resources. By the time someone gets to intensive care in a hospital, a nurse can 'save their life' 5 times in a night, just for them to die the next day. This guy could have lived more years, but it's really hard to know what those years would have been.

firesteelrain 2y ago

I have become cynical on Reddit to the point that I don’t know if these stories are real or just really good creative writing

lnsru 2y ago
It might be good creative writing. But a businessman who I knew got stroke and died around the time. His real estate projects became worthless basically in one week. So from the timing I would say, that the writing might be real.
nunez 2y ago
Fake stories were way less common on Reddit back then, IMO. It wasn't a super popular site back then.

christkv 2y ago

Reminded me of this story that makes me chuckle when i first read it where the tables were turned. https://abcnews.go.com/Business/bank-america-florida-foreclosed-angry-homeowner-bofa/story?id=13775638 https://abcnews.go.com/Business/bank-america-florida-foreclo...

DrNosferatu 2y ago

In Portugal, you can take a mortgage with an optional insurance to exempt you from payments if unemployed up to 6 months.

positr0n 2y ago
Every time I get a new mortgage (in the US) I get a bunch of spam physical mail hawking this type of insurance. So it's a thing here too.

nunez 2y ago

Man, Reddit used to be amazing before it got TikTok-ified. Super high quality content (like this); a lot of which was real. Why can't we have nice things?

mrguyorama 2y ago
Nice things are fundamentally less profitable than trash. Everything that makes a thing "nice" costs money, eats into your profit margins, takes more work, while making more profit on something with a fixed "nice"ness is much much easier.

nothercastle 2y ago

This reads like way before 2011. Just the mention of phone books puts the time frame into the late 90s early 2000s. I haven’t seen a phone book for at least 20 years.

albrewer 2y ago
I grew up in a poor "rural" area (it was a 5 min drive to a 300k pop. city). Most technology is about 10-15 years behind "the times" when you leave the city. Most people I knew didn't have cellphones until ~2007-08. Home broadband was an extravagance until ~2009 when landline DSL prices came down enough.
BehindBlueEyes 2y ago
Still using phone books today in rural canada.

karaterobot 2y ago

That was an unexpectedly well-written post.

michaelcampbell 2y ago

The subject is heartbreaking, but the writing is superb.