Hooray - Help for Homeowners is on the way!

[Mac1337]

$tevie wrote:

I think we drifted so far afield that we have lost the actual topic. We are also so deep into arguing minutiae without ever addressing why it is so awful to help people stay in their homes. And I don't want to hear about their fabulous life styles because this program isn't going to keep anyone in McMansions so forget that angle.

They were interviewing someone who bought half a million dollar home in California on $900 a week income. Should he stay in that house and how?

[$tevie]

Since the cap is around $417,000 he won't get assistance whether I think he should or not.

[RgrF]

If the house was in LA, that means a one-bedroom cottage with no excess land. Simple 3-bedroom ranch houses out here (depending on location) were bid up to the $700,000 range. That was then, this is now!

Now they're at about $375K (in better middle class locations) and still haven't reached bottom.

[Gutenberg]

Roger, when my father retired from the Army in 1969 they bought a new house near Escondido for $34,500. They sold it in 1997 for $200,000. It sold a couple of times more after that, the latest in 2005 for $700,698. It is a four bedroom rancher on a third of an acre in a nice neighborhood. There was no extensive renovation done--just paint and new appliances as they broke down.

The prices NEED to go down. They were ridiculous, out of control. People can't afford to house themselves at that level.

[$tevie]

You cannot get assistance if your house is too deep underwater, either. A lot of people aren't going to qualify for this program, I believe because the expense would be just plain too big to justify.

[Mac1337]

Gutenberg wrote:

The prices NEED to go down. They were ridiculous, out of control. People can't afford to house themselves at that level.

By preventing foreclosures the government is in effect placing a floor under housing prices. This is an artificial floor that the government cannot sustain or go broke doing it while keeping millions out of affordable housing.

[RgrF]

Dakota forgets, at it's best we are government. If we throw people on the garbage heap without even an attempt at helping, we then are Republicans. Not all of us identify with the idea that corporate welfare is OK but help for individuals is socialistic.

[swampy]

RgrF wrote:
Dakota forgets, at it's best we are government. If we throw people on the garbage heap without even an attempt at helping, we then are Republicans. Not all of us identify with the idea that corporate welfare is OK but help for individuals is socialistic.

FORCED help of individuals is socialistic.

[Mac1337]

RgrF wrote:
Dakota forgets, at it's best we are government. If we throw people on the garbage heap without even an attempt at helping, we then are Republicans. Not all of us identify with the idea that corporate welfare is OK but help for individuals is socialistic.

In "helping" some you are hurting others, like the younger generation who want affordable housing but can't. Who do we see about that? Who gave you, or the government, the right to decide who lives or dies?

[RgrF]

So GM, Chrysler, Ford, CitiBank and Bank of America should die? Just say so and I'll believe you are sincere.