(Submitted to NorthIowaToday.com by Cheryl Weitzel)
As a real estate professional who has worked in the Mason City and surrounding areas market for over 25 years, I am upset. You should also be upset.
According to Tom Miller, our State Attorney:
“There appears to be an emerging pattern of careless and perhaps cavalier attitudes by a growing number of lenders when it came to taking peoples’ homes.”
He has spearheaded an investigation into the practices of how the foreclosure actions were handled.
A quote from Tom Miller’s Web Page: “affidavits the company submitted to Iowa courts were apparently not based on personal knowledge, as required by Iowa law. Several additional lenders have since publicly disclosed that they routinely submitted unverified foreclosure affidavits in Iowa and elsewhere.”
I am assuming that the term “personal knowledge” is where Miller has an issue.
Maybe if the local banks were required to hold these loans, there would be personal knowledge. You cannot expect a secondary market to have personal knowledge.
While I have the deepest sympathy for a home owner who has by no fault of his own, lost his home due to a job loss or medical expenses or anything out of his control, I have no sympathy for irresponsible people who used their homes equity to buy a car, a boat or go on a well deserved vacation:
There appears to be an emerging pattern of careless and perhaps cavalier attitudes by a growing number of homeowners who are just walking away from their homes. Not only walking away, but before they are walking away, they are totally destroying the property. Leaving the homes with the water left on, and no heat in the winter, they are causing a great deal of destruction to the property.
There are 3 basic things that every human needs: food, shelter and water. This is taught to us as children.
I do believe that in the past few years lending practices were too lax, there were purchasers who bought homes that should never have qualified for a loan, but they got the loan. If someone that was lucky enough to get one of these loans, please realize that this maybe the only time that opportunity would be available to them. If you lose a home to foreclosure you may never be able to purchase a home again.
Tom Miller’s investigation will only cause delays in the inevitable, the rules are simple. If you pay, you stay… if you don’t you won’t. In the meantime it will cost everyone more to delay these foreclosures. Write Tom Miller’s office and push him to get on with the program.
