Bridgett: Mortgage Crisis

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Bridgett Mortgage Crisis Many Americans are feeling the pain of the recession that we are currently experiencing. Among those people, a majority of them are dealing the mortgage crisis due to the Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARM). I can personally vouch for this because I work for a credit union and assist members with all sorts of problems, which many are related to their mortgages. The ARM program is targeted towards people who want a low interest to start out with, but as the years go on the interest rate can increase with the adjustable rate index. An ARM is normally used for a short term and not meant for the people who do not plan on selling their homes. Lately many loan offices have been approving loans for people who cannot…show more content…
I came across a story of a man whose homes’ value had gone down but his rate went up and he could no longer afford it nor could he get out if his ARM loan. He says the loan officer he had worked with helped him when he was getting the house and was very friendly. The bad thing about his experience with the loan officer was that he wasn’t given details or good information about what the ARM loan was and how it worked. The man was just happy to have a lower interest rate and thought it would stay that way for a while. That is not how his story ended up though. He is currently trying to file a lawsuit against the financial institution that had helped him with his mortgage because of the lack of information provided to him as well as a full understanding. (http://en.allexperts.com/q/Real-Estate-Home-1842/2008/2/Disaster-1.htm).This goes to show that this happens a lot when purchasing a new home. Some loan officers are not really worried about your financial needs and are not accurately doing their jobs by getting the person the type of loan that best suits them. It is wrong and the loan officers should get in trouble in some way because letting people get things that the officer most likely knows that they can’t afford is just setting them up for failure or…show more content…
A lot of these foreclosed homes seemed to be linked to ARM loans that people could no longer afford after the index had gone up. (http://mortgagedataweb.blogspot.com/2008/07/adjustable-rate-mortgages-not-popular.html). Typically these types of loans are no longer than seven years and are targeted to people who are going to be moving after a few years. Many people just see the low interest rate and jump into it without really knowing too much about the loan. It gets to be an even bigger problem when the mortgage loan officer doesn’t help you out with your decsion when purchasing a home. When loans are approved for people who are unable to afford them sometimes the officer changes numbers around in the application to make the income to debt ration number smaller to get the loan “workable”, and this has casued many fraud cases. (http://activerain.com/blogsview/791334/Things-The-Loan-Officer-Cannot-Tell-The-Real-Estate-Agent-But-REALLY-Wants-To). Every now and then a few of these careless people are being caught doing this horrible deal with people who are most of the time unknowing. There is some talk that there are going to be new rules applied to the mortgage industry for the loan officers to carry out when helping people decide on a loan that’s rihgt for them. Basicly if the family can not afford the loan, then they cant approve iot simple as that. They are supposed to find ways to help the
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