Foreclosures contain actual people - on both ends
Recently I came across this story on Reddit and I thought it perfectly captured the pain and loss our country is suffering every day. It is from someone who brings the settlement offer to people in the process of being evicted.
When I make first contact and explain that the lender is offering them money to leave sometimes they tell me that they haven't slept for months, knowing that something was going to happen but never knowing if tomorrow was the day when somebody kicked in their door and threw their kids out on the lawn. Their lenders won't tell them anything, they have nothing to go on but horror stories from other people that they never knew. It never occurred to them that they should call an attorney and ask what was going on. I can be the first people to discuss their situation who isn't a debt collector: you can hear the release of a massive weight in their voice. It isn't much, but at least it is something.
This is happening every day all across the country, why aren't there more people like this person - one who has compassion for those so troubled? Link and another excerpt over the squiggle.
Here is the full version http://www.reddit.com/...
Bad things happen to good people and bad alike, why does it seem that most of the enforcers are making it as bad as possible? Maybe it is a defensive mechanism to avoid the massive mental pain they must see every day, and maybe it is mostly bullies who go into that line of work.
You may have to take the house away, but you don't have to be mean about it.
When the lender forecloses - or is thinking of foreclosing - on a property one of the first things that happens is they send somebody out to see if there is actually a house there and if there is anybody living there who needs to be evicted. Lawyers are expensive so they send a real estate agent or a property preservation company out to check. There is the occasional discovery of fraud where there was never a house on the parcel to begin with, but such instances are rare. Sometimes this initial visit results in discovering a house that has burned down or demolished, is abandoned or occupied by somebody who has absolutely no connection with the homeowner. Sometimes the houses are discovered to be crack dens or meth labs, sometimes the sites of cock or dog fighting operations, or you might even find a back yard filled with a pot cultivation that can't be traced back to anybody because it was planted in yet another vacant house in a blighted neighborhood. The house could be worth less than zero - blighted to the point where you can't even give it away (this is a literal statement, I have tried to give away many houses or even vacant lots with no takers over the years) or it could be a waterfront mansion in a gated golf community worth well over seven figures that does not include the number "one". Sometimes they are found to have been seized by the IRS, the local tax authority, the DEA or the US Marshal. Variety is the rule. The end results are the law.