People vs The Banks

[lancasterlad]

http://youtu.be/FPKOa-5GPPg - about 20 minutes long.

[UndercoverElephant]

Property prices have got to come back down somehow. I think the banks should have been allowed to go under, but people are going to default and houses are going to be repossessed.

I'm currently negotiating for a property in Hastings. Sales record for this property:

28/4/2000: £45,000
3/4/2002: £88,000
12/8/2004: £130,000

All the houses on its street are much alike. The lowest sale I could find was for £31,000 in 1995. The highest was £150,000 in February 2008, just before the banking system imploded.

How can one house go from £45K to £130K in four years? It's absolutely insane.

I won't tempt fate by telling you what it's on for now or what I've offered. Joint owners are recently divorced, and desperate to sell. And I mean desperate.

[RenewableCandy]

Did they extend it or something?

Sometimes I wonder how much Chateau Renewable would ever go for.

[PS_RalphW]

I bought my first house (2 bed victorian terrace ) for 45k in about 1990 and sold 6 years later fo 30k...

I'm looking to buy a property in a local village where my kids will be
going to school. A similar property would set me back about 250k.

My total post-tax income last year was about 22k.

[UndercoverElephant]

Did they extend it or something?

Nope.

[emordnilap]

http://youtu.be/FPKOa-5GPPg - about 20 minutes long.

Whoo hoo! Brilliant! Standing up to ugly specimens like that Paul Higgs and his thug lickspittles is simply...awesome. What is the name of the hero?

[Little John]

http://youtu.be/FPKOa-5GPPg - about 20 minutes long.

That video just made a grown man cry

[kenneal - lagger]

Great video and advice.

The US banks have been unlawfully evicting people from houses because they can't show that they have title to most of the houses they repossess. The loans have been sold on as dodgy financial instruments by the original mortgagors and the loan paperwork has not followed in most cases so the current mortgagor can't prove title. The US courts are colluding with the banks by giving warrants for repossession without proof of title.

[lancasterlad]

http://youtu.be/FPKOa-5GPPg - about 20 minutes long.

What is the name of the hero?

I think his name is Loz but I don't know any more than that. It seems he and his pals are from an organised group who assist homeowners with repossession issues.

[biffvernon]

For a film with repetitive dialogue, leaden acting, only a single plot line, small cast with few characters deeply developed, naive camera-work and poor sound, that was fascinating viewing. And I always like stories with happy endings.

[UndercoverElephant]

The US banks have been unlawfully evicting people from houses because they can't show that they have title to most of the houses they repossess. The loans have been sold on as dodgy financial instruments by the original mortgagors and the loan paperwork has not followed in most cases so the current mortgagor can't prove title. The US courts are colluding with the banks by giving warrants for repossession without proof of title.

I don't think this is happening in the UK though.

I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. The banks may be guilty of irresponsible lending on an epic scale, and while I do feel sympathy for people currently saddled with a huge mortgage and houses that aren't going up in price any more (or worse), they did choose to get themselves into that situation. And their choices, collectively, drove up the cost of housing for everybody else. There was a certain amount of greed involved, and a lot of naivety.

But house prices do have to come back down again relative to wages, and that is not going to happen without people defaulting on their mortgages and losing their homes. And that's always going to be horrible, even if it doesn't have to be quite as horrible as it sometimes is.

[vtsnowedin]

Great video and advice.

The US banks have been unlawfully evicting people from houses because they can't show that they have title to most of the houses they repossess. The loans have been sold on as dodgy financial instruments by the original mortgagors and the loan paperwork has not followed in most cases so the current mortgagor can't prove title. The US courts are colluding with the banks by giving warrants for repossession without proof of title.

Yes but they do have the title, just not the paperwork to prove it. They did loan the money and the money was not payed back so it is just a matter of straightening out the paper trail from original lender to the current holder of the loan. Let no one think they might get out of paying back a mortgage including all the interest and end up with a clear title to their house due to a paperwork error. All this robo signing scandal has accomplished is to keep a lot of foreclosed houses off the market for a while thereby artificially reducing supply and holding up prices.

[clv101]

...and that is not going to happen without people defaulting on their mortgages and losing their homes.

I agree with you if we're talking about tens of thousands per year (33,900 in 2012). But, I think, the game changes when it's hundreds of thousands or more. Then some mechanism will be put in place to allow folk to stay in their homes - even though they've defaulted on the loan.

Here's an interesting chart:

What was it like in '91? Where did the 75,000 evicted households go?

[Tarrel]

What was it like in '91? Where did the 75,000 evicted households go?

Into private rented, mostly. Some of them will still be paying off the mortgages. The big problem in 91 was negative equity. Even after being evicted and the house repossessed, people still owed the banks a big chunk of money.

[RenewableCandy]

Great video and advice.

The US banks have been unlawfully evicting people from houses because they can't show that they have title to most of the houses they repossess. The loans have been sold on as dodgy financial instruments by the original mortgagors and the loan paperwork has not followed in most cases so the current mortgagor can't prove title. The US courts are colluding with the banks by giving warrants for repossession without proof of title.

Yes but they do have the title, just not the paperwork to prove it. They did loan the money and the money was not payed back so it is just a matter of straightening out the paper trail from original lender to the current holder of the loan...

I can see the logic there but left out from this explanation is that loans often get sold on to third parties for less than their theoretical value, sometimes they're bought for "cents on the dollar", the reduction in value representing the probability that they'll never be repaid. Under those circumstances, all a mortgagor (person who owes) can morally be said to owe the 3rd company, once they decide or become able to repay, is that fraction.

And, getting back to the paper trail, if someone wants to go about making somebody else homeless (which is effectively what repossession of a house amounts to) you can't go around letting them do so without an audit trail of who owns what. To do so would amount, in the end, to allowing homes to be grabbed by force virtually at random.