Home-Equity Loans May Be Next Round in Credit Crisis
 

Experts say it is in everyone’s interest to settle these loans, but doing so is not always easy. Consider Randy and Dawn McLain of Phoenix. The couple decided to sell their home after falling behind on their first mortgage from Chase and a home equity line of credit from CitiFinancial last year, after Randy McLain retired because of a back injury. The couple owed $370,000 in total.

After three months, the couple found a buyer willing to pay about $300,000 for their home — a figure representing an 18 percent decline in the value of their home since January 2007, when they took out their home equity credit line. (Single-family home prices in Phoenix have fallen about 18 percent since the summer of 2006, according to the Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller index.)

CitiFinancial, which was owed $95,500, rejected the offer because it would have paid off the first mortgage in full but would have left it with a mere $1,000, after fees and closing costs, on the credit line. The real estate agents who worked on the sale say that deal is still better than the one the lender would get if the home was foreclosed on and sold at an auction in a few months.

“If it goes into foreclosure, which it is very likely to do anyway, you wouldn’t get anything,” said J. D. Dougherty, a real estate agent who represented the buyer on the transaction.

Mark Rodgers, a spokesman for CitiFinancial, declined to comment on the McLains’ situation, citing privacy considerations.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/2382...

Professor Realist , Maggiepoo University says

* By 2009 prices have come down 20%.

* At this point you start seeing some neighbors moving in paying 4/5 of what you did. It's a little annoying, but not terribly.

* By 2012 real prices have come down a total of 35% and now are flat, matching inflation with maybe very tiny gains here and there.

* So you're 7 years into your ownership. The average time spent by most Americans in a home. You only put 20% down, so you're at best just around break even or a small loss if you sell today. You decide, "hey we can afford our mortgage payments, so we're not losing anything".

* But then you start realizing something. You have a lot less money than your neighbors all do, even though you make the same or even a bit more than them. Your kids go to school with the children of parents who are just like you except one thing: they don't pay as much of their monthly nut to their house. Instead, they buy their kids nicer clothes, safer cars, better educations, more culturally stimulating vacations, nicer colleges, and better futures. Meanwhile, you paid your bank a lot of extra interest, and you paid the previous owners a lot of extra gains. All those people are busy buying nice college educations for their kids too.

* You retire, owning your home, preaching to your kids how somehow your life's decisions were more "righteous" and "moral" than all these other terrible people who looked out for their own well being. It never dawns on you that perhaps you were the selfish one, putting your own impatient emotional need for a house above the future betterment of your family.

 Geez.. Where did Cal State get this guy? ARM resets haven`t even begun to bleed into the market full force yet, Housing turn around mid 2010, until then only investment properties being bought for future, Why buy a property when it will lose 20-50% in first 2-5 years with 5-7 years just to get even...

".I feel sorry for him, like a lot of university economic professors he is beholden to his donors who will run away from funding him and his useless propaganda if tells anything that will reflect badly on their ability to push debt on minorities and the undereducated"...good one BB

uneducated... does that mean not being able to read the fine print or is that a optical problem?

 Thanks!

Hi BakersfieldBubble,

Please try the PDF again. Click on the blue bar. I checked it on another computer and it appears to be working just fine.

If it's still not working for you, click on the link to Vanessa Gregory's story. From there, you can also see the PDF.

— Christine Peterson

 pdf does not work.

This guy will be wrong again, if he stepped outside once and a while and opened his eyes he might see what is going on.

I would tear his theories apart like I did last year, but why. I feel sorry for him, like a lot of university economic professors he is beholden to his donors who will run away from funding him and his useless propaganda if tells anything that will reflect badly on their ability to push debt on minorities and the undereducated.