If for some reason you find an in to purchase directly, expect to pay more because all the bank will have to go by is the fcl sale bid, or unpaid balance.

I used to think foreclosure was better and that it wasn't fair for the lender to modify the balance or interest rate for some homeowners and not others.

:wowie: If, in Australia, I default on a mortgage and the bank sells the property for less than the outstanding balance, the bank could (and generally would) pursue me for the remainder for years to come. eg If I default and my mortgage is $250K, but they sell my home for only $200K, I have to keep paying the bank until they get their $50K back.

Not the balance sheet.

Therefore, the Fed and the Treasury did the only thing they knew and utilized the taxpayers' balance sheet to be the lender of last resort for banks (Keynesian economics).

Once the banks balance sheets have the right values for the "assets", send Sheila Bair out to take the bad ones down.

For example, Jane has a property worth $400K with a $200K loan balance.

Instead of providing liquidity to private and corporate borrowers as the central banks would like to see, banks have taken the opportunity to repair their balance sheets.

Hedge funds handle a lot of a Bank's derivatives, which are supposed to be equally balanced as short/long bets on the same issues/indexes, leaving some room to swing in favorable directions as the pendulum merits.

How many Lemmings have 20K in available mastercard balance to buy their "product".