Mortgage mission impossible

I'm a big believer in possibility. In fact, I often sign off my correspondence with the Emily Dickinson quote, "Dwell in possibility." In life in general, I think too many people limit themselves and what they can accomplish by virtue of what's possible.

So, it's counterintuitive for me to have to say, as I so often do these days, "That's not possible. It can't be done."

The world of real estate, generally, is a world of possibility. The normal home sale or purchase is truly the tip of the iceberg in terms of the property types, uses and transaction structures that live in the realm of what is possible.

However, when you're a regular homeowner with credit, property value or financial "issues" in today's market, major shrinkage occurs in the universe of what's possible for you in terms of what a mortgage lender will and won't extend in the way of financing.

But no one wants to acknowledge this truth. Denial of this reality combined with an insistence on the ubiquitous "workarounds" that were in steady supply during the era of subprime lending seems to be a very common consumer mindset these days.

It seems that the entire history of what it took to obtain mortgage financing for the first 40 or 50 years of the mortgage industry has been overshadowed in the collective consumer memory by the anomalous few "anything goes" years prior to the crash.

How do I know? Because people with no jobs, bad credit, recent foreclosures and bankruptcies, etc., are still asking me about loans. And they're still surprised, and even indignant, when they hear that they don't qualify.

Now, funny enough, it's generally the folks who have the most condemning, scorching commentary on the role of subprime lending in the housing and economic crisis that also turn out to be looking for impossible mortgage solutions in their own lives -- the exact sort of thing that used to be provided by the subprime market.

It usually goes like this: At a dinner or party or funeral (seriously), someone learns that I'm in real estate and walks over to chew the fat about the market. They go on and on about "all those 'slime bag' subprime borrowers and deadbeats who walked away from their houses," the resulting crash in the value of their own home, and the fact that they have either applied for or been refused a loan modification.

Then they ask for my card. ...CONTINUED

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