The Persons Behind the Foreclosures
The persons behind the foreclosures make an interesting study that bring home the reality of the crisis – something personal and beyond mere numbers. Jeff Wagoner was formerly a navy aviator. Today in Kansas City he is an attorney dealing with bankruptcy cases. From the high perch of his office in a tower sitting on a hill he has a rolling view of a sea of hurt. Today he has many clients. Some have no excuse for having bought a house at all. Others have been evicted from executive suites. He predicts from his experience that even the slightest wrong calculation could result in another impending foreclosure – or another client rushing through his door. The people out there hardly get a second chance.
The age is that of a one-strike hit – one ball and the house is gone; another ball and the job has vanished. One medical crisis and then all the bails are knocked off at a blow. Wagoner has seen more people lose their homes in one year of 2008 than all nine years put together.
The irony is that the more one earns the more vulnerable one is. If one is earning $350,000 annually it will be all the more difficult to adjust to a life without that kind of earning. Jobs are scarce. Meanwhile the house hands like a stone around one’s neck job or not, illness or not. Divorces and broken marriage make matters worse.
With the entire economy in shambles it is not just the sub-prime takers that are drowning. The trouble rolls beyond the difficult terrain of liar loans, flipping, securitized mortgages and all that jargon very few really understand. The rain from the sky falls on all – good or bad. Consumers are not spending, factories are creaking to a halt, employers are refusing to hire and all the while the value of houses continue to tumble. For many it is just plain trouble – without analyzing the reasons and hunting for solutions.
At present the number of foreclosures is rising so rapidly that counting has become difficult and predictions a mockery. Ten years ago the picture was about 400,000 foreclosures in a year in the entire country said, Lindley Higgins of Neighbor Works America. Today 2009 will most probably see 2.5 million foreclosures.
Wagoner recalls the visit of an executive from the corporate sector who had shifted to Kansas and purchased a house. But the main problem was that he had left behind in Florida an unsold house. With each passing day it was getting difficult to sell that house considering the foreclosure climate in that state.
