>>> "Jordan Hayes"
I think some of this stuff depends on what state you live in, but there
are two big gotchas here:
1) If you default, get foreclosed, and the house is sold, you may owe taxes ... they just passed a law with certain time exclusions to reverse this, but in general, this is true -- debt forgiveness is income
^^^^^ CB: Those dirty dogs.
But is default , debt forgiveness. The real property goes for the debt, no ? ^^^^^
2) You still might be on the hook for some of it; there's a big difference betwen 'non-recourse' loans (where they take the property and you're done) and a 'recourse' loan where you're on the hook for the difference between your loan balance and whaat the house sold for. As
an example, you bought a $400k house with nothing down and a $425k loan. You default, they foreclose, and they sell the house at auction for $325k. You still owe them $100k!
^^^^^ CB: Yes. I agree. The defaulting mortgagor has to enforce a sale for the market value, which is not easy. Need a lawyer to do it often. Of course, the market value has probably gone down in the situation we are discussing.
^^^^^
> There are some people who got sub-prime loans who aren't defautling.
> So, that's one for point to the credit of the US capitalist housing
> marketeers.
Yes, and this is important: the sub-prime market didn't come about as a
way to dupe people with lower credit scores than the primes; it came about because it once you get your risk-management systems in order, you can calculate fairly well what a particular drop in creditworthiness
"costs" and make up for it on the cost end.
^^^^^ CB: Makes sense. The pernicious lending is socalled predatory lending, which is not synonymous with "sub-prime" , as I understand it.
Make up for it on the cost end means require a higher interest rate ?
^^^^^
Also: the loans that are defaulting are typically the teaser-rate ARMs
as they reset, not all sub-prime loans (plenty of which are traditional
30-yr fixed).
/jordan
^^^^ CB: ARM's seem like early , smaller balloon payments.