Stop Paying the Mortgage and Get Bailed Out Too!

[Joshua Dorkin]

Lets see how much thought is going to go into this housing / bank bailout . . . frankly, I'm starting to think that the move to make is to stop paying the mortgage so I can:

a) Get "bailed out"
b) Renegotiate my loan
c) get any or all of the other great perks that some people in politics will bestow on those people who walked from their home.

Why not, right?

What do you think? Isn't this bailout just rewarding bad behavior? Yes, some people got screwed by bad people, but lots of people made bad decisions. Why should they be rewarded and those of us who pay our bills not?

[Karen Hurley]

I am a real estate title examiner in KY and I don't think the consumer needs to be bailed out, but they do need help. I have done so many title searches for Countrywide that were forclosures that I began to think they were in the business to forclose on properties. Many of these people have owned their homes for 30 to 50 years. A lot of people were lied to when they got variable intrest rate loans. No sane person would take out a variable intrest rate loan to purchase a home they intend to live in unless interest rates are very high and will most likely go down, not up. I think the lenders should have to convert the variable interest rate loans to a fixed rate loan, at their expense, and the interest rate should be fixed at the original agreed upon rate on each mortgage. I feel like this would help stabilize the housing prices and help stop the foreclosures and bankruptcies so that when the goverment buys up all these mortgages at least the houses will still be valued at the amount of the mortgage. I am not a financial wiz and would like to know if anyone sees any problems with this idea.