Which do you think toxic mortgage homedebtors would choose to keep first - their MasterCard or their house? Welcome to crazy land folks

Those zero-down liar's loan failed housing gamblers sure are a funny bunch. Too bad for the bag-holders and too bad for anyone who thought 2005 home values were anywhere near reality.

Debt-Laden Homeowners Save the Credit Card Before the House
NEW YORK (AP) -- Conventional wisdom has it that people will do everything to keep their homes. Not any more.

The proliferation of no-money-down home loans over the past few years, coupled with the current housing downturn, is giving rise to a new mentality: People will risk losing their homes while doing everything to keep their credit cards.

"This is the biggest surprise we're seeing," said Elizabeth Schomburg, senior vice president of the Family Credit Counseling Service in Chicago. "People are actually coming to us with situations where they are current on their credit cards but are in foreclosure."

Jim Cramer told Desperate Homedebtors to turn in the keys, walk away, screw the lenders...

So let's see Cramer's wager and raise him.

If you were a Desperate Homedebtor who listened to a realtor on commission, and were really going to stick it to the man, screw the bankers and the hedge funds, F-over the REIC, and tell our corrupt Congress and Bush Administration to kiss your capitalist butt, what could you do?

Victims?

The mainstream media and our blow-hard congressmen are portraying people losing their homes to foreclosure as "victims" of "predatory lenders".

I'm sorry, who was it that signed the paperwork?

Should we consider any consenting adult who freely enters into a contractual agreement a "victim" if things don't turn out how they planned?

Iamfacingforeclosure.com's Casey Serin loses another one to foreclosure. Where's the cash?

I just don't get the whole cash-back at close thing. What would stop me today (besides ethics and morals) from going out and buying ten homes, getting $100,000 cash back on all of them, taking all that tax-free cash and putting it into a Swiss banking account, then never making a payment on any of the homes, getting foreclosed on, and turning in the keys, $1,000,000 richer?

Seriously, what, if anything, would stop someone from doing that today?

Casey lost another one to foreclosure this week. And still no call from the Feds. And you know there are thousands, THOUSANDS, of Caseys out there.

Larchmont property no more. This is my second foreclosure, after the Dallas house got foreclosed several months ago by the hard money lender. This was my first experienced visiting a foreclosure auction.

I feel a slight sense of relief. One less house to worry about. Now just memories. This was my biggest cash-back at close and the worst deal as far as numbers go. I’m going to have to write the full background story on this deal soon, including why I bought it, and what my plan was (or the lack thereof).

Poor people should not live in big houses and drive nice cars. Debt is not wealth. A lesson will be learned.

It absolutely amazes me to read some of the comments from trolls on this blog - mocking people for saving, for being frugal, for clipping coupons, for driving 5-year-old cars, for living within their means, for buying things with cash versus credit.

What's happened to our world where 20 year olds live in McMansions and drive Mercedes cars, while making $50,000 a year? How screwed up are we when people rack up insane amounts of debt in order to look successful, when it's so obvious that the only thing they've been successful with is acquiring debt?

The Great Unwinding is also going to be The Great Smack Your Ass and Wake You Up for Generations X and Y. You work your way up in this life, you don't magically just get there without work and without making a decent living (unless your parents are rich of course).

A generation of spend spend spend, me me me, fake fake fake will now learn learn learn. And the credit crunch will be the catalyst.

Just ask any senior about how their grandkids are carrying on with their big houses, big cars, big TVs, and big debt loads - you're likely to get the same answer, "I don't know how they pay for all of that".

Well, they don't pay for a lot of it.

Never before has credit flowed so freely and never before has so much debt accumulated. Never before has it been easier to buy a house. That is, if you don't mind non-traditional mortgage products where no money down is needed and not only can you avoid paying down the principle (interest-only), but you don't even have to pay all the interest due (pay-option).

Of course, as a long-term plan, this looks like it may not work out so well now that housing prices are falling and subprime lenders are falling even faster.

The younger set has been fearless when it comes to taking on new debt over the last ten years. This is likely to change in the next ten years - all part of the Alan Greenspan legacy.

It's too bad that Lemming suicide is a myth - it would have provided a fine analogy for the headlong rush by youngsters toward the dream of homeownership and sure riches. The trouble is that nontraditional mortgage products, subprime lending, short sales, and foreclosures are no myths.

LA real estate clerk on his office: "The rest are looking for side jobs at McDonald's - It happened overnight."

I think dumpster diving comes next for our realtor friends. If you see a realtor picking through the trash, someone give the poor guy a quarter, OK? Or some ramen noodles.

Here's a sign-of-the-times article from LA. Troubling, disgusting, predictable and real. The housing crash is here. And watch realtors move from screwing homedebtors into a house to screwing foreclosed homedebtors out of a house.

Picking jewels off of the dead. Yup, that's the next step for realtors.

Some analysts contend the shakeout is already over. Others maintain it hasn't even begun.

Hennigan and the company he works for, Home Center Realty, don't have the luxury of waiting to see how the story will play out. They need to make a living now, and they're betting that things are going to get worse. Maybe much worse.

During the four-year boom that ended last summer, Home Center expanded from 15 agents to 80 in three offices. The roster of agents has since sunk to 52, only about half of whom are active.

"The rest are looking for side jobs at McDonald's," said Home Center President Jason Bosch. "It happened overnight."

Hennigan works in the Norco office, a small building set on a hill off Interstate 15. He's been full-time since August 2005, when he quit his job as a route salesman for Peet's coffee. He gets a salary to help run the place, but to pay his own mortgage he still needs to earn commissions buying and selling houses.

An agent's best prospect for a sale is someone who must act now — a homeowner told by a lender to pay up or get out.These owners are in crisis. They need to refinance if they can or sell and move into something affordable. If they had an easier option, they wouldn't be behind in their payments in the first place.

Bosch, on the other hand, thinks the residential real estate market will soon revisit the horrible days of the mid-'90s — and then get worse."I have no doubt that we are entering the next phase of an unprecedented market," he says. "One that Southern California has never seen.

Your house has fallen in value from $500,000 to $400,000, while your monthly payment goes from $1000 to $4000. Yup, this is going to end badly.

I'm not surprised that people are this stupid. The lure (and lie) of "homeownership" was just too great, there was just too much pressure to buy, and not just buy any old home, nope, buy that awesome new McMansion your wife wanted so badly.

Then that nice realtor and her friend the mortgage broker, who was also so nice and caring, were able to get you that no-down, option-arm something kind of loan, and your payment was only $1000 a month! Less than you were paying in rent! See, "owning" IS cheaper than renting! No matter what HousingPANIC and those stupid bubble blogs were saying.

Plus it's always a great time to buy, and real estate can only go up and up and up! Man, are you smart or what.

Then why is my payment $4000 this month, and why did my neighbor just sell for $400,000, not $500,000?

Oh, crap.

Defaults up as home prices fall in Placer County

Default notices have risen 262.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2006, prompting some people to put their homes on the market, even though the median home prices in Placer County continued on a downward trend. Photo

There you are, living in the house of your dreams. It cost you $500,000, but you're only paying $1,100 a month after you 100-percent financed your home with an interest-only pay-option adjustable rate mortgage, known as an ARM.

Then the market changes.Your completely financed home, after the market has cooled, is now going to cost you almost $4,000 a month for your mortgage. Welcome to the world of some of Placer County's residents.

Even though figures showed an upward trend in some areas, the overall Placer County real estate prices has continued to go down, making those who jumped in at the height of the boom feel the pinch.

"The reason for the increase is because interest rates were low for a long period of time and consumers were getting loans that normally would be out of their reach, King said.

Consumers who got 100 percent financing on negative amortization loans and other adjustable-rate mortgages are starting to feel some discomfort, and more could be on the way."

1.5 trillion in loans will be adjusting this year (nationwide). They're going to adjust a lot, some will adjust two percent," King said. "It's going to be an interesting year to see what happens with foreclosures, that's for sure."

"It's got to be tough and be scary, but if they can make that payment they should try and make it," Maki said. "Because I think the property values will come back up, they always do."

Fannie Mae video: Suckering people into the worst financial mistake of their lives by playing to the nesting instincts of women

Check out this REIC propagada from Fannie Mae (yes, the same Fannie Mae who'll end up costing the US taxpayers trillions)

Watch them pull at your heartstrings, and try to sell you the American Dream.

The Dream is dead (for now) folks. Buying no longer makes financial sense. And for millions of families who got suckered to buy at the peak, they'll now lose everything.

Thank you Fannie Mae!