Record 12% Behind on Mortgage Payments
 

So what are they gonna do, kick 12% of the population out of their houses?

By population, you mean 12% of those holding mortgages, which is substantially smaller in scope than 12% of the total population.

I hope so; I pay mine every month, they should pay theirs.

Yep.

You play to pay. You don't pay, you don't play.

Nice to see the simple answer crowd around as usual. Putting aside any compassion-based reasons to find a better solution than foreclosure and eviction, what do you think putting that many bad loans onto the banks' books will do to the banking system and economy? What do you think putting that many houses on the market will do to home values (YOUR home values)? What do you think having that many people displaced from neighborhoods will do to school systems and your taxes? What do you think having that many abandoned and boarded-up houses will do for petty crime and vandalism? Do you not think there is another way to salvage this situation without eliciting too many crybaby squeals of "It's not FAIR!!!"

No question that they SHOULD pay theirs. I'll bet all but a very tiny fraction wishes they COULD pay theirs.

1) Much of the "value" in real estate was artificially driven up by allowing unqualified buyers to enter the market, so those equity boost were as natural as Barry Bond's HR record.

2) The displaced owners, are they jobless too? If not, then the rental market will absorb as much as it can. Meanwhile, if the lenders don't want to become landlords, they will create the opportunities for those that want to.

You want to send your money their way, good for you. What is the difference between evicting them or letting them stay on if they cannot pay? I don't see it.

I have no sympathy for those who live above their means. I live in a very nice house because I pay my bills and I am frugal with my money. My house is a 3400 sq. ft. 2 story brick on an acre lot. I owe 49,000 on it and it's worth $250,000 not bad for a Drunk. I have made a lot of money in the last 25 years and speny MOST of it wisely. I guess what i'm saying is that WTF were these people thinking? A manager at McDonalds or whatever place think they could afford a $300,000 mortgage. I think the lenders should be put on the street as well as the bumbass borrowers. :(

There might be other alternatives. Some thoughts come to mind... Give them a few months with no payments, payments tacked on the back end with appropriate interest and penalties. Give them a few months with reduced payments, same deal... stick the difference on the back end. Renegotiate the loan with a 50 year term instead of 30 or whatever to reduce the payments. I'm sure there are many other ways.

I'll make some simple statements of my own now:
People living in homes are better for all of us than having more homeless people.
Foreclosed and vacant homes are bad for the economy, bad for neighborhoods, bad for neighbors, bad for the banks.
Things are not likely to improve quickly. Keeping families in their homes during this economic turmoil adds stability that is sorely needed.

Well stated man. I think that would work. :)

First of all, it's not about sympathy. It's about the economy. Let's say lot's of these homes are foreclosed. The people will have to live somewhere. They'll be living somewhere cheaper, and possibly with some kind of public assistance (you don't want that). Meanwhile, the banks will be taking a huge hit and there will be less money available to lend responsible people like you who need money for their businesses or to buy a car or for the new family to buy a house. Meanwhile, the glut of houses on the market will keep home prices in a tailspin, further feeding the foreclosure rate and hurting all you responsible homeowners who like having some equity in your homes. The glut of boarded up houses in some neighborhoods will devastate those communities with blight, crime, falling values, etc. I agree that there was tremendous excess in many areas of our society in recent years, and we are going through a correction. The correction should (IMO) be managed to reduce the pain and collateral damage. In my area, there were mortgage brokers on every corner convincing everyone to refinance, refinance, refinance... take money out, etc. Those people were a big part of the problem and have disappeared like phantoms. The other parts of the problem were the banks who approved the loans, and the homeowners who were duped and wrongly figured, "Everyone else is doing it, it must be OK. And the house IS worth 3 times what I paid for it... it'll keep going up!"

Now, neither you nor I know much about the people behind this 12% figure. Many of them, in fact possibly most of them, were probably responsible people with good jobs who paid their bills on time, lived within their means, and may have even had some money socked away for retirement. But the retirement money's gone, one or both of the earners got laid off, perhaps someone got sick and there's no more health insurance... I heard on the news that most of this wave of delinquencies is on "PRIME" mortgages, not the sub-primes we all heard about a while ago.

Job losses, health care bills, and adjustable interest rates that went up are the main causes of the high foreclosure rate. One pretty good idea that I heard about on PBS and that one community organizer in Massachusetts is helping people fight for is letting the banks foreclose and sell the house at current market value back to the original borrower, which they are reluctant to do because it rewards bad behavior they say. True, but that's rather hypocritical coming from the banks. And it would be a good solution to the foreclosure crisis. That and having govt-funded health care, which would stabilize everything.

Great! More handouts! Let's pay the banks not to fail! Let's pay the auto makers not to fail! Let's pay the mortgages of those who can't so they don't fail! Let's pay for everything! This is America; we're the richest country in the world and the government should pay for my health care, my credit card bills, my car notes, my house note, my business note, my payroll, my electric bill, everything!

Gov't funded health care - that's brilliant. They can't do Medicare, they can't do Medicaid, they can't do Social Security, they can't balance a budget, they can't do a defense or construction contract without going horrifically overbudget. Why in the world should they be given the chance to run health care?????????????

It's getting closer and closer to the day when I finally move away.