Land of Oz

Foreclosures

Big, big news lately. And today, yet another government program to save those in foreclosure has been announced. Now I don't mean to sound cold-hearted, but some of those folks shouldn't get saved. They were greedy and stupid. We recently went through a bout of home looking. It's amazing the kind of house we could've bought. And I don't mean because we could've gotten a much higher mortgage - although we could have. And I also think that getting a mortgage too big is what put a lot of these folks in the hole in the first place.

Because the housing market is so bad in this area, there are a lot of low-cost (relatively) and foreclosed houses on the market. We looked at a couple over 3000 square feet that probably could have been bought for under $200,000. We also looked at some real nice homes near $200,000 that we could have easily purchased.

It's not all price and square feet (or meters) that should be included in the purchase plan. One of the things I thought of when looking at the +3,000 sq. ft. of empty rooms was what I'd have to pay to heat and maintain it. The realtor said $140 a month for utilities - right. My wife thought about how much we'd have to pay to furnish that castle. Let's face it; a 3000 sq. ft. house is going to take about twice as much furnishings as a 1600 sq. ft. house (which is what we ended up with). Cathedral ceilings are nice but why pay to heat those upper ten feet or so where no one is.

So I wonder just what kind of ideas were going on in the minds of the folks who are looking at mortgage payments they can no longer afford. Do that many people get into a mortgage not knowing what they will have to pay in three, or five, or seven years? Or did they just figure, since I can get the mortgage, I must be able to afford the mortgage. To be honest, the house we are now in, a nice 1600 sq. ft. normal house, is definitely cheaper than we could have ultimately bought. But it is also definitely one that we can afford.

Labels: government, gripes, michigan, scams