Foreclosure in Orange County: ‘Like a death’
Behind the numbers lie stories of family struggle, pain and endurance.
By GREG HARDESTY and RASHI KESARWANI
The Orange County Register
Where we love is home,
Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes
In January 2008, Kevin Palmer was told he would have to vacate his Laguna Niguel home in 30 days.
In reluctantly doing so, Palmer became one of the first homeowners in Orange County to be swept up in the recent wave of foreclosures that has drowned out the dreams of thousands.
“What do you do in 30 days to undo 10 years of your life?” Palmer says.
As foreclosures continue to stack up, vulnerable homeowners are coping with the reality — or prospect — of losing a huge part of their identity and starting over.
Some mental health experts liken the experience to grieving over a loved one’s death.
“Being foreclosed upon can sometimes be more than like a death in the family,” said Sharon Gerstenzang, Ph.D., a psychologist in Fountain Valley who specializes in high conflict, trauma and crisis.
“It’s like a repeated death. Every day the homeowner wakes up and thinks, ‘I just lost my house.’ They can feel mind-bending, soul-searing humiliation and shame.”
The number of people experiencing such wrenching feelings continues to grow in a county almost mockingly full of beautiful places, beautiful people, big cars, big homes – and a persistent promise of the good life even during tough times.
According to the latest numbers, lenders filed 2,946 notices of default in April in Orange County, down 15 percent from March but up 13 percent from a year ago, according to DataQuick. The total in March was the highest in at least 17 years.
A decline in foreclosures in April, when banks took 482 houses and condos in Orange County away from delinquent borrowers, the lowest total in 17 months and down 46 percent from a year ago, could be temporary, experts say.
A new state law in October has mostly delayed foreclosures, not prevented them, some experts believe.
The foreclosure fiasco continues to unspool stories of dread, anxiety and resolve.
BURNING SAVINGS
It took 10 years for Kevin Palmer to save $30,000 for his dream house, and less than a year to burn through that much as he fought to keep it.
Palmer, 49, still is struggling to pick up the pieces, looking for work and living at Mercy House, a transitional housing shelter in Santa Ana
He survives on weekly $235 unemployment checks and drives a 1991 Toyota Tercel with a shattered window. His Mercy House room costs $225 a month.
Less than a year and a half ago, Palmer was making $70,000 as a property manager and living in the condo he bought in 2000 for $198,000.
For years, he had handily made his $1,275 mortgage payment at a fixed rate of 12.75 percent.
A health issue he declined to discuss forced him to take out an adjustable-rate home-equity loan to pay for drugs that weren’t covered by insurance.
In January 2007, Palmer got a letter from his lender telling him his mortgage was going up to $2,850 per month. The higher payments started depleting his savings.
Then, in June 2007, his mortgage payment was adjusted upward again, to $3,550.
Palmer couldn’t afford it.
After burning through most of his savings, he defaulted on the loan and was told to leave his home by late January 2008.
“You never want to believe that you may lose your house,” says Palmer, who was laid off that same month
He moved into a windowless, 8-by-12-foot office suite in Lake Forest and showered at a gym until he landed the room at Mercy House.
He continues to look for work and has filed for Chapter 7 personal liquidation bankruptcy.
Palmer has a new attitude about people he sees on the street asking for handouts.
“I used to walk past them,’’ Palmer says. “Not anymore.”
ENDURING HOMELESSNESS
The Brixeys never saw it coming.
Since a bank repossessed their Ladera Ranch house in March 2008, the family — Jaxsen, 9, Mia, 7, Ashtynn, 5, Brielle, 3, Peyten, 2, and Cyrus, 11 months, along with mom Sunny, 33, and dad Jereme, 34 — remains adrift and uncertain about where they’ll eventually end up.
Their financial slide was gradual.
Jereme graduated from UC Irvine’s MBA program in 2004. He and his wife were hopeful that the degree would lead to a bump in his salary in his field of wireless consulting.
That didn’t happen.
Because of volatility in the business, Jereme was unable to maintain stable work for more than a year.
He eventually began working as a real estate agent — a common line of work in Ladera, where home prices ballooned until 2006.
The family also dipped into savings from selling their Ladera Ranch home in June 2005.
Sunny admits she had dollar signs in her eyes after the value of the house reached $890,000 in 2005 — $440,000 more than the purchase price four years earlier.
They reasoned they could capitalize on the hot real estate market by using the cash to pay off Jereme’s $70,000 in student loans, lease a second car and pay off medical bills.
At the time, friends in the red-hot mortgage industry suggested that the couple do 100-percent financing for a $700,000 house just a couple blocks away from the one they just sold. They ended up buying that house in 2005.
“We desperately looked for a rental and nothing seemed to work out,” Sunny said.
With Sunny nine-months pregnant with Peyten, their fifth child, the Brixeys admit that they got sucked into making quick decisions out of desperation.
“It was almost like we had lit a fire under ourselves,” said Sunny, who went into panic mode when they couldn’t find a suitably sized home to rent in Ladera Ranch.
“Everything was going so fast and not in our favor,” Jereme said.
Sunny said the monthly payments on the $700,000 home they wound up purchasing increased as Jereme’s income as a Realtor dried up.
By early 2007, the family of seven — soon to be eight — had depleted its savings. Jereme and Sunny began to make hard choices about which bills they could afford to pay.
In September ‘07, one of their cars was repossessed. The second car was taken a month later.
The slide continued until the Brixey family was homeless.
And yet, the couple sees their financial demise as incidental to the miracle they say they’ve experienced with the healthy recovery of their baby.
Eleven-month old Cyrus was born last summer with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, considered to be a death sentence by cardiologists. Against all odds, he made it.
The family has bounced from one place to the next, staying for as little as a week and as long as a few months, with friends and relatives.
They currently are staying with a relative in Newport Beach but need to find a new place soon.
Using cars given to them by friends, they take their children to school in Ladera Ranch.
Attitude helps.
“We have hope and joy and we’re making a choice to believe that we will come out better than where we started,” Sunny said.
HANGING ON
Because of an unexpected job loss, Melissa and Bryan Tiffin of Trabuco Canyon haven’t been able to make their $2,900 monthly payment on their first mortgage since March 2008.
They’ve been paying $1,000 a month on their second mortgage since then as they continue to negotiate with their lender to lower the $2,900 payment.
So far, the bank has been willing to try to hammer out an agreement and not send them the Tiffins a notice of default.
“We’re sort of in a holding pattern, waiting to see what will happen,” says Melissa Tiffin, 37, a former public relations specialist who is looking for a job while raising three young daughters with her husband, Bryan, 40.
Bryan Tiffin makes a solid salary as a construction executive for Broadcom, but not enough to handily cover all the family expenses.
The value of stock options he holds have dried up, erasing a potential source of emergency funds.
He and his wife have been forced to sell off some possessions, such as a motorcycle.
Once a month, the Tiffins get free groceries from South County Outreach, a Lake Forest non-profit that helps individuals and families in crisis.
In August 2005, they bought their home for $545,000. It was a not a subprime loan; they got the loan based on two incomes. They wanted a backyard for their children, Ashley, 8, Krista, 7 and Allison, 3.
They bought their 1,250-square-foot home when the market was near its peak.
Flash forward to March 2009.
The Tiffins’ home is valued in the $290,000 to $320,000 range. They now owe more than it’s worth.
They can downsize, but desperately want to stay.
But when it comes to home, who doesn’t?
Contact the writer: (949) 454-7356 or ghardesty@ocregister.com
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My note:
I find the “homeless” meme rather annoying. These people are not homeless; they are not living in a box under a bridge somewhere.
