Why I Don’t Feel Sorry For People Losing Their Homes
Yesterday I drove from L.A. to northern San Diego County and back in just under eight hours, so I had a LOT of time to listen to the radio. I caught an interview on KNX with an angry homeowner who is losing his home.
I’m paraphrasing, but the upshot is this: He paid $610,000 for a home somewhere in the O.C. three years ago. He said he expected to sell it in two or three years and make a lot of money on it. Instead, the home has lost $100,000 in value, and his mortgage payment has ballooned to $4,600 a month.
He told the interviewer, indignantly, that the American dream of owning a home was a lie.
Here’s why I don’t feel sorry for this man, and the many people like him.
He didn’t buy the home to live in. He thought he could make a killing in real estate by putting nothing or next-to-nothing down on a house, then selling it for a profit shortly thereafter. That’s not a homeowner; that’s a speculator.
Many people losing their homes never owned them in the first place. All they owned was an obligation to the bank. They didn’t save for them over months or years, intending to live there for a long time. They probably offered up little of their own money — if they even had any. They got in for as little as possible, and maybe cashed in a little home equity here and there to pay for cars and nice dinners.
Their homes were nothing more than a means to an end, a get-rich-quick scheme gone sour. And now they’re mad. Mad that America didn’t let them get rich, like it promised, I guess. And because of that, the government should bail them out.
People who look upon their home as a place to live first and an investment second, who didn’t take on more than they can afford — those responsible, mature, ungreedy folks are mostly keeping their homes. Unless, that is, the recession brought on by the speculators makes them lose their jobs.
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