Stacey Maxwell

• Classic Investment Community

• Manage |RSSForeclosure Real Estate Investor

I am offended by the blanket assumption that people who are working to help others through a most trying time in their lives are all being lumped together as sharks preying on people in distress. There are many of us who are honored to have the knowledge and expertise to assist homeowners in their hour of need. To expect to be reasonably compensated for our professional abilities is not an unreasonable expectation. I don't hear anyone complaining about attorney's fees for assisting with bankruptcy, divorce, P&I or other times when an individual might find themselves in distress. Why is it that when a licensed real estate or mortgage professional chooses to assist a homeowner in distress their integrity and compensation questioned. Perhaps the answer here is that rather than compensate further the lenders who have been so financially irresponsible themselves, that the government compensate licensed professionals to represent the interests of the homeowners in distress. Now let's take a look at the psychological and emotional state of the distressed homeowner. Here is a person who's whole entire life has been turned upside down. Their family is in a state of turmoil and the phone is ringing off the hook with creditors. More often than not this individual has little to no knowledge or understanding of real estate, the real estate market, mortgages, financing options, or the options available for them to resolve their problems. When the homeowner contacts the lender it is the sole purpose of the lender to work out an agreement that is most advantageous to the note holder, not to the borrower. Anyone who has ever attempted to work out a "deal" with a creditor knows how stressful those conversations are. The lender is not being paid to counsel the borrower nor to negotiate in the borrowers best interest. The results of this scenario can be seen in the high number of foreclosures that still resulted from the previous attempts of loan modification programs. The resulting emotional burden placed on the homeowner as a result of a second personal failure when they can not meet the new loan terms, can be down right devastating. I think it is highly unfair that we keep telling homeowners who don't know where to turn, to turn to those who created the loan products that led to their precarious situation in the first place. Hello fox, here is your second shot at the hen house, and we are going to pay you to enter! We need to be far more aware that not every person has the knowledge base or competancies to be able to negotiate and make complex financial decisions for themselves and that they deserve to be served by competant, licensed professionals.

As any good investor knows, if you are holding more than 4 properties, your best bet is going to be with a blanket loan through a local lending institution. These commercial instruments are dependant on the ability of the investment to make money and make sense. In addition, as the credit market has tightened investors who have had multiple mortgages showing on their credit reports have had their credit scores "dinged". Word on the street is that although Fannie and Freddie are upping the limit once again, most lenders are not going to be jumping on this bandwagon. The best alternative would be government funds to community banks that allow them to be able to up the size of thier portfolios and lend in their communities.

Thanks Tom, You are so right about who is in foreclosure. It truly is a broad cross section of people, many of whom are inadvertantly paying a price they would not have to if the we had not exprienced an aberrant market. I used to get so mad when they would unilaterally discuss the sub-prime market. Some of the loans were bad, but no more so than in the regular mortgage arena. The loss of Alt A loans, those that didn't require a person to be a wage earner and have W2 earnings, have hurt so many in real estate. If you are a real estate investor, or just a real estate agent, it is next to impossible to access a mortgage today unless you have a realtionship with a local bank. The unfortunate truth is that there always have been and always will be foreclosures that result from life's challenges. Thankfully in stable economic times these occurrances are few and far between. Prior to the previous administrations assault on debt relief for the "little guy", many of these circumstantial occurrences were addressed through the bankruptcy courts and allowed for a person to keep their home. Ya, just gotta love how during the boom years there was an assault on the average person's abilty to protect what they had worked for through the courts with "Bankruptcy reform". How ironic that those same interests who sought to keep you or I from having the protections of the court system are now going to the government asking for our dollars to keep them a float. What's wrong with that picture? Yes one property at a time, one family at a time, we can rebuild the communities that have been ravaged. Each small real estate investor is hiring locally, purchasing locally, and providing housing locally. So, where is our share of TARP money?