Posted by Tina
If numbers and economic terms just make your head spin this is the story for you:
Would You Pay $103,000 for This Arizona Fixer-Upper? by Michael M. Philips
** The little blue house rests on a few pieces of wood and concrete block. The exterior walls, ravaged by dry rot, bend to the touch. At some point, someone jabbed a kitchen knife into the siding. The condemnation notice stapled to the wall says: “Unfit for human occupancy.” *** The story of the two-bedroom, one-bath shack on West Hopi Street, is the story of this year’s financial panic, told in 576 square feet. It helps explain how a series of bad decisions can add up to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. *** Less than two years ago,
Integrity Funding LLC, a local lender, gave a $103,000 mortgage to the owner, Marvene Halterman, an unemployed woman with a long list of creditors and, by her own account, a long history of drug and alcohol abuse. By the time the house went into foreclosure in August, Integrity had sold that loan to Wells Fargo & Co., which had sold it to a U.S. unit of HSBC Holdings PLC, which had packaged it with thousands of other risky mortgages and sold it in pieces to scores of investors. *** Today, those investors will be lucky to get $15,000 back. That’s only because the neighbors bought the house a few days ago, just to tear it down. **
Follow the link to see the photos and read the entire quirky saga.