Most of the REOs and short sales I have profiled are homeowners or speculators who bought during the bubble. These people either did not live in the house long enough to have a storehouse of memories and attachments, or they did not care about the house at all because it was just a stucco box to trade. When these people lose their houses, they are not necessarily losing their homes. The children's rooms don't have a wall where their child's height has been measured over the years, they don't have a sidewalk with their children's name etched in it, and they did not plant a shade tree in the back yard to enjoy in the future. Some of these stories are sad because many of these families intended to make the house their home, but they did not get a chance. However, today's featured property is something different. It belonged to an owner that got caught up in the fantasies of the bubble, took out all their equity, and lost the family home. A home they had for 17 years...
Time is running out. Congress is working to pass a massive banking bailout before our economy completely implodes (which it might anyway). They have taken the steaming pile of manure they rejected earlier this week, candy coated it, and resold it to the American people. Of course, a major selloff on Wall Street probably helped sway public opinion as well. After they pass the bill, there will probably be a relief rally on Wall Street celebrating the massive government intervention, and this rally will be touted by all as confirmation that Congress did the right thing.
In the meantime, house price are still falling, and some of our speculators are trying to sell before they go underwater. Today's featured property found some motivation recently, and he lowered his asking price about 30% to try to move the property. Of course, the original asking price was totally WTF, so he isn't getting multiple bids over the ask.
"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto
the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto
dust shalt thou return." Genesis 3:19
You can't take it with you. This is a rational argument justifying HELOC abuse. If you spend your whole life hoarding your money, you will die with a big pile of unspent money. Your heirs will undoubtedly be pleased, but if you didn't live a little while you had the chance, what was all the money for? How much HELOC abuse does this justify? All of it? If your house made you $800,000 over the course of 10 years, would it be OK to spend it all?
Today's featured property spent it all. This isn't the record for HELOC abuse, but it is pretty close.
Today's featured property demonstrates the living-off-your-house mindset in action. Apparently, all you had to do was buy a house, any house, and start extracting money from it. It didn't require any money of your own to invest, and if things go bad, well... it's not your problem. This house was purchased on 2/10/2006 for $705,000. The owner used a $564,000 first mortgage, a $141,000 second mortgage, and a $0 downpayment. On 9/29/2006, a mere 7 months later, the property was refinanced using a $632,000 first mortgage and a $158,000 second. This netted the owners $85,000 in mortgage equity withdrawal. That is the median income in Irvine, and these people got it simply for owning a house for 7 months! Actually, it is better than that because if you earned $85,000, you would have to pay taxes and have withholdings. To net $85,000, you would need to be making more like $120,000. Further, to get this in 7 months, you would need to be making $205,000 per year. That is one hard working house!
I profile these day after day. Are you starting to get a sense how common this was? Look at how much money these people got to spend for doing absolutely nothing. Is it any wonder houses were such a popular investment? Was it logical to think this could go on forever?
As a society during the real estate bubble, we put enormous sums of money into assets that produce nothing. This isn't like investing in a factory or machinery or infrastructure of some other sort of productive use. These are houses. They only have consumptive value. There is no production here. Is this where society's resources should be diverted?
How can a society thrive when it ties up all its resources in non-productive assets? I joke about hard-working houses because the whole idea is so absurd. Imagine if we took every resource in our economy and put it into house production. For a time, everything would be OK because everyone would be working in construction, they would be making money, and we would all have houses, but what happens once we were done? Houses can't produce anything else. Once the boom was over, the entire economy would collapse because there are no productive assets.
This is basically what we did since the collapse of the NASDAQ stock market bubble. Our manufacturing base never did recover from the recession of 2001. When liquidity was added to the financial system, this money poured into mortgage loans rather than business infrastructure. It is a misappropriation of resources that will likely haunt us for quite some time.
A few Fridays ago, I profiled some homeowners who conservatively paid off their mortgage, and now they will have a great equity nest egg for retirement. This is how it should be done. Today's featured property owners did the opposite. They bought ages ago for very little money, they HELOCed themselves into a massive debt, and now they will probably sell and end up with nothing.
Living life well is about balance, and the argument can be made that HELOC spending to "live for today" has its place. How much is too much? Is any amount OK? Many of the properties that I have profiled had evidence of HELOC abuse by previous owners. Many people pulled out $200,000 while their houses went up $500,000. They lived on their HELOCs and still sold for a hefty profit. Were these people foolish and irresponsible? It certainly appears now that the foolish ones were the ones who didn't refi and HELOC themselves to the max in 2006. Those people got the full benefit of the appreciation turned to income. Of course, those people now have bad credit, but few, if any, of them are paying it back. I know what I believe to be right, but I am interested in hearing your opinion: How much is too much HELOC use?
