A different foreclosure story

We have for a couple of years now been reading headlines like “A Future Foreclosed” where the reporters interview a family with medical bills and perhaps a layoff. Sometimes they give themselves the leeway to say the house was too expensive to begin with and the family was on the edge right from the start.

And that is the face of a foreclosed home.

Here’s another one. The owner rents it out. To six adults and four children. They’ve brought home two new babies in the last year alone. It is a two-bedroom home with a “family room” in the basement. Code says people can’t sleep down there, but they do.

Five of those six adults go to work every day. Let’s say they earn the ridiculous sum of $5 an hour. Total household income would be over $4,300 a month, clearly enough to make payments on a $193,000 loan with plenty to spare to live on.

And there are two SUVs in the garage. Soon one SUV will be sporting its summer wheels, a $5,000 investment. And the little black Honda will also get its sport wheels.

They have very nice, powerful stereos in three of the cars.

Just the other day more new furniture was brought in.

And yet the house is in foreclosure. A For Sale sign has been in the yard for months.

Someone is earning and not paying. The house has never been empty. It has always been occupied with at least four wage earners.

Code Enforcement has been over there twice in the last year. We’ll see what happens this time.

Just another face on the mortgage bail-out, a story the newspapers don’t want to tell.

Here’s the For Sale sign in the front yard, just in case you want to buy the place.