WTF, Why are people leaving all this stuff behind?

[Greenguy]

All I can say is that I'm glad my bank & I stayed away from that crap when we refinanced the mortgages a couple years ago.

[Useless]

It's really amazing how paralyzed people become when losing their homes. All of us who watch that video are stunned by the amazing amount of valuable and useful stuff those people leave behind, and that's how we know that those poor people are not in a clear state of mind.

My parents majorally fucked up when they refinanced their home about two years ago. They lost their fixed rate mortgage and put themselves in a variable rate instead. The bank quickly began jacking up their payments, which doubled within a year. My mother lost her job and a few months later, silly her, got breast cancer for the second time. (Yes, I realize that I deal with this shit in a weird, rather callous way. (She's recovering just fine.)) They haven't made a payment in more than six months and their house, which is shit, isn't selling. But this is what troubles me the most: they act as if everything is normal, as if they weren't served foreclosure papers two months ago. They haven't packed anything or sold anything. They don't act like people who very well could be booted from their home any day. It's really quite disturbing.

My wife and I, my brother and their realtor have tried to impress upon them the importance of preparing to move, but they have an odd waiting for a miracle attitude about it all. Honestly, it scares the shit out of me, especially when I read about people like Addie Polk. I keep telling them that we have room for them and that they could just relax and not worry about bills anymore, but their reaction to my invitation is always, well, worrisome.

[SirMoby]

Originally Posted by Greenie

All I can say is that I'm glad my bank & I stayed away from that crap when we refinanced the mortgages a couple years ago.

You got that right. When I was shopping many lenders wouldn't even talk to me about fixed rate loans and the ones that would spent a lot of time pitching balloons and ARMs. Everyone thought I was nuts but now all my neighbors are complaining about how their mortgages went up but mine stayed the same.

[Cleo]

Originally Posted by SirMoby

You got that right. When I was shopping many lenders wouldn't even talk to me about fixed rate loans and the ones that would spent a lot of time pitching balloons and ARMs.

Same thing here. My house was paid off but then I used a home equity line of credit to remodel and then got a small fixed rate loan to pay that off. Every place that I went was trying to give me an ARM for much more then I needed to pay off the home equity line of credit. I ended up with a 15 loan fixed at 4.5% for exactly what was needed to pay off the home equity line of credit. Then a few months later my bank gave me a new huge home equity line of credit that I have never used.