Friday, January 11, 2008
Within your Means
These are the kinds of folks that make me wonder just how much of an effort there should be to protect from foreclosure. They bought a $412,000 house. I don't know what kind of down payment they had (5% would be $20,600), but I'm just guessing it wasn't all that much. I just looked at a web page mortgage calculator and plugged in $391,400 at 7% for 30 years with no insurance or tax included. The monthly payment is $2600. The folks in this article are only making $3250 a month - with six kids to boot! That leaves them $650 every month to feed and cloth six kids as well as ouse taxes and utilities, and any other expenses they might have. How did they ever figure on buying a house that expensive ($412,000) on their wages? I make more than them, have no kids, and have been worried about buying a house under $200,000.
Agnes Kallon and Bai Turay, a Staten Island couple, are among the people that Ibrahim is trying to help. Kallon, a nursing assistant at Richmond University Hospital, and Turay, who receives disability allowance, have a combined income of $39,000 and six children to support.
In 2005 they took out a mortgage for a $412,000 house with a low introductory rate, based on their mortgage broker's assurance that they would easily be able to refinance when the rate went up. But when their mortgage payment reset to $3,000 a month, far beyond what they can afford, that assurance didn't hold up.
Labels: government, gripes
