Foreclosure story

I listen to KPCC all of the time. (I should have included this disclosure in the guilt post, but I am not a member and really should be.) One night I heard a story about a couple who lost their house to foreclosure and it gave a life to the families who have lost their lives as they lost their houses. Luckily for Stephanie and Bob (the couple in the story), life has gotten much better and they are apparently happy.

This story shook my world, so I wrote the following email to the producer of the story:

"I listened to Stephanie and Bob's story with a guilty heart. I moved my family from New Mexico to the LA area (Inland Empire, Riverside to be precise) in 2008. I took a position at Cal State Fullerton as a professor and we didn't have a lot of money for a house (I had been unemployed for 6 months and we had to 'eat' our down payment). We found an 'affordable' foreclosure in August 2008 for $190,000 and bought it immediately. The really sad part is that it had sold for $435,000 in 2006, and for $385,000 in January of 2008. The house had lost $245,000 since the peak. We invested another $15,000 in remodeling materials (I did the labor) the house over the next year. We didn't particularly like the neighborhood but the house was now only worth about $165,000 and we didn't want to take the loss in a sale, so we decided to rent it out and look for another house in a better neighborhood. We found another repossessed house in a much better neighborhood that sold for $588,000 in 2007 and was now going for $345,000. It lost $243,000 in three years. After some financial wrangling, we will close on this new house sometime next week.

I am sad to hear about Stephanie and Bob's loss - I even feel guilt for taking advantage of these 'deals.' Each house had a family. Whether or not they made bad financial decisions or were the victims of a fraudulent system - they were first and foremost families. So many dreams have been shattered, and so many lives impacted. I hate to feel like 'the bad guy' but my family needs a home to love. If it were not for these crises, I would not have been able to house my family in Southern California on a single assistant professor salary.

I don't know what it all means, but I do feel for those previous owners of my houses. Hopefully something as good will come to them as it did to Stephanie and Bob.

Best,
The BowTie Professor"

They wrote back with a nice comment about my "thoughtful note" - whatever.
I stand by what I said, it is difficult to hear the stories of the families losing their houses and see these 'deals' in purely economic terms.

My mother always talks about how when my dad died, she felt like the mother superior in 'the Sound of Music' saying "when God closes a door, somewhere he opens a window." Whether their fault or not, hopefully those windows are big enough for the familes that had the doors to their houses closed to them.