The Plain Dealer published a series of articles on the home foreclosure debacle in Cleveland this past week, and today the ABJ follows with two stories of local foreclosures.In a short summary of the crisis, Foreign, National Banks Top Summit Foreclosures, ABJ writer Rick Armon names Deutsche Bank as the top filer of foreclosures in Summit county. That name figures prominently in the region due north of us, as Callahan's Cleveland Diary points out every week in his listing of Cleveland area foreclosures. (Bill Callahan has been on top of this story for months now, and his blog is the best place to keep up with the ongoing crisis.)
In Summit County, we've seen over 19,000 foreclosures in the past five years. Last year alone, according the ABJ report, Deutsche Bank filed 559 foreclosures. The banks involved are generally out of state or out of country banks. Local banks actually care about keeping people in their homes, while the giant behemoth banks only care about selling as many mortgages as possible so they can turn around and sell them off at a profit.
Someone said that we have become a nation that bases its economy on selling our homes to each other. No more manufacturing jobs, no more tech jobs -- let's just buy homes in order to flip them. But the homes up for foreclosure sales in NE Ohio are not going to go for higher prices. Hell, the people who signed up for variable rate mortgages couldn't afford them to begin with. So who can? These sad homes fall into disrepair, are broken into, and stay boarded up as urban neighborhoods fall into rapid decline.
In Armon's main story today, Losing Our Homes, the reader follows along the journey of a family who moved out of public housing and into a modest North Hill home by signing a variable interest mortgage. They thought they were signing a fixed interest loan, but didn't read the fine print. First time buyers who were taken for the long ride that ends in foreclosure.
Nine years ago, I bought my little working class home in Akron. A first time buyer, I knew nothing about mortgages or the differences between variable and fixed rates. Fortunately, I ended up with a real estate agent who gave me good advice and steered me toward an honest broker. 19,000 families in the past five years were not so lucky.
What I'd really like to see is another feature story, one that follows a day in the life of the mortgage broker who gets people to sign one of these predatory loans. I'd like the article to also give us the day in the life of the out of state or country bank managers who process and profit off of the loans. It could be called "Lifestyles of the Rich and Ruthless."
