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A horrible precedent has been set

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    dough boy | Male | 46 years old | Kansas City

"Why do today what you can put off 'til tomorrow"

Programmer by day, comic nerd by night. My official job title is "Director of Janitorial Engineering"

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A horrible precedent has been set

3502 views • Oct 7, '08 • (8) Comments

Here is a news story that came out last week (I like to let things "stew" for a while before going off half cocked).

(CNN) -- Fannie Mae said it will set aside the loan of a woman who shot herself as sheriff's deputies tried to evict her from her foreclosed home.

Addie Polk, 90, of Akron, Ohio, became a symbol of the nation's home mortgage crisis when she was hospitalized after shooting herself at least twice in the upper body Wednesday afternoon.

On Friday, Fannie Mae spokesman Brian Faith said the mortgage association had decided to halt action against Polk and sign the property "outright" to her.

"We're going to forgive whatever outstanding balance she had on the loan and give her the house," Faith said. "Given the circumstances, we think it's appropriate."

Are you serious?  Someone tries to take their own life because they got in upside down on a house and you are going to forgive them their debts?  How many gun toting people are going to "attempt" to kill themselves now to get their homes free?

Well...surely then she must have been a victim of predatory lending and had one of those exotic mortgages right?

In 2004, Polk took out a 30-year, 6.375 percent mortgage for $45,620 with a Countrywide Home Loan office in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. The same day, she also took out an $11,380 line of credit.

Over the next couple of years, Polk missed payments on the 101-year-old home that she and her late husband purchased in 1970. In 2007, Fannie Mae assumed the mortgage and later filed for foreclosure.

Ummm....what?  She has a 30 year fixed rate mortgage with a rate that was .125 higher than my first rate (I refinanced earlier this year) and I have excellent credit. She doesn't appear to have been scammed.

If anyone should have been forgiven of their loan it should have been the mom back in July that killed herself and told her husband and son to use the money to pay off the house.

I whole heartedly disagree with the precedent set.  Just wait until the flood gates open.

Here are links to the sources:

Fannie Mae forgives loan for woman who shot herself
Massachusetts Woman Commits Suicide Before Home Foreclosure

  • Oct 7, '08 by evlthecat's avatar evlthecat
  • Are you kidding the only reason Fannie Mae did this was to keep their already frying balls from falling further into the fire.. They could care less that the women shot herself.. They just don't want anymore bad publicity..

    I bet the police won't even charge her for firing a weapon within city limits.. Just think if she missed herself she could have shot a neighbor kid..
  • Oct 7, '08 by Rocket2600's avatar Rocket2600
  • All of this mess it crazy. People are just not using their heads and want to play the "blame game" for their own stupid rush decisions. "I didn't read that part" or "I didn't know the rate would change". Blah blah blah. You signed the papers bub, you deal with this sh!t when you default.

    There is no thing as a free lunch.
    If it's too good to be true....

    Sound sage advice they should have been thinking when the mortgage companies were dangling the carrot.

    If I was the old woman, I would have lit a match to it and walked away. =P
    • Oct 8, '08 by dough boy's avatar dough boy
    • Yeah but the thing with the old woman was that she had a 30 year mortgage at market rates. She did not have an exotic interest only, negative amortization, or teaser intro rate.

      How anyone can say she needed a bailout is beyond me. I am opposed to helping people that got in over their heads. I pay my bills, and I read the fine print. I am fine if a bank wants to redo a loan for people in this situation...but they should not get a lower rate than me, and they should not have part of their loan forgiven because the value of their house went down.
  • Oct 9, '08 by evlthecat's avatar evlthecat
  • Well watch out because people in this situation are going to get lower lone rates than you.. The people actually paying their bills are the ones going to get screwed..
  • Oct 13, '08 by Iceman69's avatar Iceman69
  • Sounds like she should have aimed higher and done the world a favor or better yet she should have missed and hit one of the a**holes on Wall Street!
  • Oct 16, '08 by Ms Marvel's avatar Ms Marvel
  • Just wish I would have read this before I posted one of my posts. I can only imagine what you guys think of me. I will not make excuses for my own situation, but please remember in this incident that you are only getting the info that the media prints. No one knows why she did what she did or why she missed payments. Unexpected medical bills, even something as simple as a change of medication that costs more. Just consider yourself lucky...blessed ....that you do understand your own finances, that you do pay your bills and can read the fine print and understand it. This is a situation that could have very well been played out in my own home, my Mother and I both admited that to eachother just a matter of a few weeks ago, but Thank God we no longer own a gun and Thank God we know to Thank God and where to turn. If only someone could have reached this woman when maybe all she needed was someone to listen. These situations are not always as clear cut as they might look thru the media's eyes.

    • Oct 17, '08 by dough boy's avatar dough boy
    • We are not "bashing" this lady or anyone in her situation. I was upset at how Fannie Mae chose to handle the situation.

      This lady was not like a lot of Americans that got into exotic mortgages with rates that reset. She was on a 30 year fixed mortgage with a very decent (less than market now) rate.

      Congress chose to single her out as a casualty of the current situation when she is in fact far from it. She likely had a problem/unexpected expense etc that set her back (as anyone of us could).
  • Oct 18, '08 by Iceman69's avatar Iceman69
  • Everyone is in a bad situation, but we all don't want to shoot ourselfs. Understanding fine print or not, it sounds like she was looking for a way out, one way or another. I do agree that we only know what the media tell us, but we all make our own choices and if she wants to kill her self, let her, one less weak minded person to worrie about. If some one is going to use a gun on there self, it's prob. for the best, then they can't use it on someone else, unless it's on a Wall Street A$$hole, then it's ok. So I'm not "bashing" the lady's situation, but I am "bashing" her choice as well as Fannie Mae's choice. My heart does go out to any family that is in a bad situation.
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