Please vote in this poll using the sidebar.
What do you think of the Hope Now "mortgage freeze" (website)?
- Great idea: helps homeowners in need. (2%, 4 Votes)
- Terrible idea: rewards irresponsible decisions. (41%, 79 Votes)
- Empty grandstanding unlikely to achieve much. (57%, 109 Votes)
Total Voters: 192
This poll will be active and displayed on the sidebar through 12.29.2007.
David McManus » Dec 23, 2007 at 6:55 am
First!
Peckhammer » Dec 23, 2007 at 8:37 am
I am interested to see what effect Amazon’s move to SLU has on Beacon Hill property values. With a softening market, I would hate to have to sell a place to move closer to work. I suspect that we won’t see a mass exodus, but we may see 5000 more cars choking the Mercer Street entrance to I-5.
softwarengineer » Dec 23, 2007 at 11:15 am
ITS LIKE A PARACHUTE WITH A BIG HOLE IN IT
You’ll still splat 50 mph on the ground anyway, it may take a bit longer.
Most of the borrowers on subprime ARMs won’t get the holey parachute anyway, they won’t qualify.
Rhonda Porter » Dec 23, 2007 at 12:08 pm
I hope home owners don’t wait to be saved by any of the government backed plans. By the time you weedle out all of requirements (credit score below this and loan to value at that with an ARM at this term)…hardly anyone will qualify.
Lenders will cherry pick those who somehow meet the criteria and politicians will proudly pat themselves on their backs with big cheesy grins while many will see their mortgage payment dramatically increase.
Can you guess how I voted in the poll?
ducky » Dec 23, 2007 at 4:49 pm
What about a fourth option:
Okay idea – helps investors bleed irresponsible people for a few extra years.
I’m taking the point of view that this is just a way of reducing lawsuits and tax issues for MBS investors by defining a freebee modification for the servicers.
Ira Sacharoff » Dec 23, 2007 at 6:45 pm
Re: Amazon’s move and Beacon Hill home prices: It won’t hurt. Beacon Hill is still one of the nearest neighborhoods to downtown where house prices are not catastrophic.
Moe Ronn - Realitor » Dec 24, 2007 at 8:13 am
There should be NO BAILOUTS OF ANY KIND. The financial institutions that allowed themselves to be caught up in the frenzy should suffer even more miserably than that greedy home buyers that purchased what the could not afford. They money should not have been lended in the first place. Let the banks sell of the houses that THEY BOUGHT for a fraction.
Deran » Dec 24, 2007 at 2:10 pm
I agree with the fellow proposing a fourth option – this whole real estate speculation bubble is not some sort of “accidenbt of nature” that just involves a minor tweak to governmental policies or atitudes of lenders and borrowers. This is a direct result of 25 plus years of Reaganomics, that the Democrats have endorsed as much as the Republicans.
And for Seattle this had been compunded by our long history as a boom and bust town. The wave of housing speculation around here is only the most recent Northwest economic bubble.
And the state, city and county are always so very eager to pretty much allow the speculators and developers to have their will with things.
chuck » Dec 30, 2007 at 8:46 am
If anybody thinks this effort to help prevent forclosures has the best interests of troubled homeowners in mind he is a Pollyanna. This is all about saving banks, investment companies, and other big businesses from the logical consequences of their irresponsibility. The irresponsibility of the 100% liar loans, the AAA rating of dubious tranches of the MBS of all types, the $100 million bonuses of Wall Street “investment house” executives, and all the rest of the mess are what is being protected. Wait until the law suits get into full-swing. The bond rating shysters, the managers of state and municipal retirement funds who “invested” in this toxic waste to gain another couple percent return, and all the other fools and cheats will have their blood running in the streets. Ultimately you and I will pay the price for this mess brought on by Greenspan and all the other fools blinded by idiotic “the market will regulate itself responsibly” ideology.