Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My job is to watch dreams die (2011)

old.reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 185 posts

Re: My job is to watch dreams die (2011)

#91

Post by [deleted] »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #79
dredmorbius wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Balloon mortgages and an inability to refinance on attractive terms. It wasn't a matter of holding the property. Most simply couldn't make payments. Walkaways worked because real estate debt (in most of the US) is non-recourse debt. You leave the mortgage, the bank (or present mortgage holder) gets the property. Debt is settled. (Lender in this case, or the present mortage holder, itself a rather complex question giv…

> Balloon mortgages I remember seeing those. As far as I was concerned, I thought they were an absolute scam and I can't believe anybody chose one. > It wasn't a matter of holding the property. Most simply couldn't make payments. I know that was the case for most people, but I certainly heard about people that still could, but chose not to, simply because they were underwater. I was trying to understand those people.…

[deleted]

Re: My job is to watch dreams die (2011)

#92

Post by frmersdog »

naming_the_user wrote: post #54
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For a guy like the one in the post to show up, you probably would have had to completely ignore probably a dozen of these documents for at least 6 months, not paying your mortgage all along. I find it interesting that in all of these discussions it's treated as known that the person at hand is ignoring the notices and just pretending they aren't in danger of losing their home, just like in issues of evictions for r…

I think it's a bit less dramatic than that really - most people accept that the world we live in has both rights and responsibilities. One of those responsibilities is that by paying for the loans you take out, in exchange you get to keep the things that you've bought using them, permanently once you've paid it off. I might, one day, be unable to pay my mortgage. That's a risk I'm taking. People tend to get super emo…

This is an incredibly heartless take, and also one not aligned with the nuances lurking beneath the surface of what "most people accept" (banality of evil and all that). The rent you "agreed" to pay may have been set or raised under circumstances ranging from ethically-fraught to soon-to-be-illegal-but-not-yet-litigated. Your income stream, likewise, might have been disrupted by someone else's malfeasance. Neither the law nor landlords care that you fully intend to - in fact, will have the means to, when everything comes out in the wash - live up to your responsibilities. If the eviction proceedings are carried out before the others, you will lose the home you, by all means except a dysfunctional system that has mistimed just order, have the rights to.

Access to a stable domicile is what defines modern civilization. Philosophically, and ironically, that we have a standardized and systematized method for depriving large numbers of our population of that stability suggests a breakdown in civil order. It's reasonable to have an issue with this system without being "super emotional", but let me be clear in stating that it's also a perfectly reasonable subject to be "super emotional" over. Circumstances outside your control depriving you of a home, even temporarily, is not "just business", it's massive disruption families and communities with material ramifications for their well-being, and in a better-organized society would not happen as often as it does here.

Your flippancy also isn't without its own consequences. It turns what could be a problem with a collaborative, mutually-agreeable solution into one where it's accepted that one party is going to get thrown under the bus. The circumstances currently favor landlords. This can be changed. Careful not to let that cannonball hit you.

Re: My job is to watch dreams die (2011)

#93

Post by dmd »

hunter-gatherer wrote: post #33

I've had a handful of lemons thrown at me during my life. One of the most impactful ones as far as I can tell is that through a weird chain of coincidences I ended up first in line to purchase a foreclosed home. From what I understood, the couple was going through a nasty divorce and couldn't agree on who would get the house and ultimately didn't pay anything for a while, so I picked it up for 80k, which back then wa…

> a handful of lemons

I'm having trouble parsing this. A lemon is a bad thing that happens to you, but this seems like it was a good thing for you?

Re: My job is to watch dreams die (2011)

#94

Post by mcphage »

dmd wrote: post #93
hunter-gatherer wrote: post #33

I've had a handful of lemons thrown at me during my life. One of the most impactful ones as far as I can tell is that through a weird chain of coincidences I ended up first in line to purchase a foreclosed home. From what I understood, the couple was going through a nasty divorce and couldn't agree on who would get the house and ultimately didn't pay anything for a while, so I picked it up for 80k, which back then wa…

> a handful of lemons I'm having trouble parsing this. A lemon is a bad thing that happens to you, but this seems like it was a good thing for you?

> A lemon is a bad thing that happens to you, but this seems like it was a good thing for you?

Probably referencing "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade", not like a car is a lemon.

Re: My job is to watch dreams die (2011)

#95

Post by naming_the_user »

frmersdog wrote: post #92
naming_the_user wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a bit less dramatic than that really - most people accept that the world we live in has both rights and responsibilities. One of those responsibilities is that by paying for the loans you take out, in exchange you get to keep the things that you've bought using them, permanently once you've paid it off. I might, one day, be unable to pay my mortgage. That's a risk I'm taking. People tend to get super emo…

This is an incredibly heartless take, and also one not aligned with the nuances lurking beneath the surface of what "most people accept" (banality of evil and all that). The rent you "agreed" to pay may have been set or raised under circumstances ranging from ethically-fraught to soon-to-be-illegal-but-not-yet-litigated. Your income stream, likewise, might have been disrupted by someone else's malfeasance. Neither th…

Who’s talking about rent here? The article is about mortgages.

When you buy a house you know what you’re getting into.

Sorry, I don’t subscribe to the pessimistic “landlords bad, capitalism bad” viewpoint of the world, not that this has anything to do with that anyway.

Re: My job is to watch dreams die (2011)

#96

Post by fisherjeff »

“And so I listen. I feign dispassion but I'm not fooling anybody. Somehow they can tell that I care and thank me even as they admit that it isn't my fault, that it isn't my responsibility to listen. I've stood inside another's dream for an hour as they spoke, not really to be heard but to say goodbye - to leave the ghosts behind.”

A nice reminder that, in literally every possible situation, even just a little bit of kindness and humanity can go a long way.

Re: My job is to watch dreams die (2011)

#97

Post by frmersdog »

ryandrake wrote: post #88
silisili wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just discussing this with a friend last week. In my case at least, it was too easy to forget. I grew up low end of middle class at best, and after high school was dirt poor. Getting overdrafts weekly, in that era where they reorder transactions to really turn the screws. Sleeping early because it's cheaper than eating. Working two jobs and still not getting ahead. The shame of having to ask to borrow a few buck…

Unfortunately the Cruelty Industry is huge and there is a lot of money to be made putting the screws to the most financially vulnerable people. Banks, the lending industry (including credit card companies, mortgage and student loans), debt collectors, repo men, payday loan stores and check cashers, not to mention the entire legal system, ugh... To me it's sick that they can upend someone's life just because they didn…

It is really a problem that so many people in America make a living - what they consider a decent, respectable, fulfilling living - in positions where it's their job to make someone else's life worse. I don't think we've fully considered the deleterious social effects this has. It's not just rent-seeking, with all the perverse incentives that entails. It's rent-seeking on widespread suffering, with all the perverse incentives that THAT entails.

Re: My job is to watch dreams die (2011)

#98

Post by frmersdog »

coding123 wrote: post #9

There needs to be some standard addendum attached to homes as an option that anyone selling a home can attach to the sale. Something like: This house cannot be used as an investment vehicle. It cannot be sold by a real-estate agent with a contract of more than 1%. It cannot be used as a rental. It cannot be sold for more than inflation would allow. Anyone found violating this addendum may be sued. All proceeds from t…

I think that would be a restrictive covenant.

Re: My job is to watch dreams die (2011)

#99

Post by krisoft »

coding123 wrote: post #9

There needs to be some standard addendum attached to homes as an option that anyone selling a home can attach to the sale. Something like: This house cannot be used as an investment vehicle. It cannot be sold by a real-estate agent with a contract of more than 1%. It cannot be used as a rental. It cannot be sold for more than inflation would allow. Anyone found violating this addendum may be sued. All proceeds from t…

> that anyone selling a home can attach to the sale

Why would anyone attach that to a sale? I bet that such terms would reduce the money you can get for the house to at least a tenth of the unencumbered value. Simply because it will make all future sales so much more complicated and risky. It would reduce flexibility for the person who now owns the home. (Especially the no-renting rule.) Banks would not touch such transaction with a 20 feet pole so the buyer better has the whole sale price in cash. Which means only wealthy people can buy your house.

You might be grinning about all of these consequences and thinking “yes, this is exactly what i want to achieve”. But what is the incentive here for the home owner? From their perspective choosing this option loses them a lot of money, so who would do this? And why?

Sounds like the home owner could just douse their home with gasoline and light it on fire. From a value perspective it has about the same effect. I predict it would be similarly popular too (that is not popular at all). Which means very few happless people would be stuck with this weird situation, while at the same time the option would have about 0 effect on the wider market. (Maybe it would add some extra legal checks to buying normal unencumbered property increasing the legal costs for everyone. Just to verify that nobody had added such an agreement to that particular property in any point in the past.)

Re: My job is to watch dreams die (2011)

#100

Post by krisoft »

photonthug wrote: post #61
peterldowns wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Ignoring the obvious problems of how such an addendum could be written and enforced.) Why? When would it make sense for someone to attach this addendum to a sale? All these penalties and restrictions would only mean getting paid less for the same property. On the buyer side, why would anyone want an asset like you've described? I live in a home that I enjoy in part because it is a fantastic investment that is highly…

Buyers might want an asset like that because they could afford it and because they don’t have to gamble about whether the smoke and mirrors keep going for the 30 year duration of their mortgage. Congrats on your fantastic investment and other high octane adulting, but even if you’re winning, look around, a huge chunk of the “wealth” of nations is tied up in real estate nonsense that represents a vast and willful coll…

> Buyers might want an asset like that because they could afford it

Sure! As a buyer i’m happy to buy your house for tenth or twentieth of its value. I can afford that! You can add any silly stipulations to the contract for that price. When are we signing?

Post reply on HN