My Home is Gone, but I would never dream of asking the Taxpayer to give it back.

I certainly understand your story. As soon as a home became 'a stock fund' through the use of derivatives. Homes went from shelter that you grew old in to something you 'leveraged a bit" to acquire more wealth.

Because of the rapid run up in property values we were concerned about the lack of adaquate insurance so I asked our bank where we have our mortgage to recomend an appraiser. Our nicely restored 1915 craftsman home in a great downtown neighborhood in a major midwestern city that was realisticaly worth maybe 325K at the time appraised at 475,000.00! We upped our insurance some but not anywhere near the appraisal.

We watched in amazement as our neighbors were selling their home for ridiculous amounts in 04-05 and people were 'congratulating' themselves on the "great deal' they got. Meantime we kept our low fixed rate mortage and life went on.

I remember our neighbors across the street who moved in in 04 they had won the bidding war' on that house. 4 people all bidding the price up on that house which sold for 252K, the house needed a ton of work but it didnt matter. They were nice enough people and they through another 100K in the home. they had just "flipped' their last home and made some "major bucks'. Oh we were contacted almost daily by realtors wanting us to list our house and banks wanting to loan us money. We had just finished restoring our home and wanted to enjoy it for a few years. Sure we thought about selling but would have had to pay so mmuch for the 'next house' that it just didnt make sense.

So we watched the crazyness go on around us. Our neighbors across the street had a job transfer come up in late 05, but all of a sudden the market wasnt "normal" things werent selling in 2 days, the "buyers' werent lining up. Their house sat for two months , finally in desperation they leased it out and moved.

After two years it just sold last month for 215,000.00 they had over 370,000.00 invested in it. They went to the closing table with a 32,000.00 check in hand just to get out from under it. Our new neighbors are a family who plan "on staying a while".

As for us, we would like to 'eventually' sell, we bought a nice Brick 1895 home in another town. We spend our weekends working on it. A foreclosure, it is a grand house, in an 'emerging' neighborhood, the kind of house we never could have afforded in 04-05. We paid cash for it. It sold for pennies on the dollar. "Literally" we bought a 4 bedroom home for 5000.00. It has been on the market in late 05 for 75K down from 125K (midwestern prices). We understand the bank loaned 100K on it in 04. The upkeep cost was killing the bank that owned it. It needed a lot of work. It has pocket doors and nice woodwork. It will take a couple of years, working on the weekends to redo it. But it will make a great home "to grow old in".

As for our house? worth maybe 225K in today's market, We lost about 100K in "real" equity. Fortunately for us we have small mortgage and we dont NEED to sell, not for a couple of years and by then maybe the world will be back to normal. Do I sometimes think about what we 'could have" got in 2004-5 ? Sure we do but things ultimately are working out well for us.

I totally understand what happened to you and I understand about that "little voice", I am glad I listened to mine. Unfortunately a lot of people didnt.

This is a 'correction" in real estate, it has happened before and it will happen again, there will be big winners and losers. Ultimately though we ALL lose, neighborhood go through upheavals, our 401K's get hit, but we are supposed to be adults, we are supposed to "take our lumps', let's hope Wall street takes some "lumps' too. Let us hope some meaningful regulation comes out of this.

I would hate to think we have to carry ALL the burden.

Emergency Legislation Immunity to the Mortgage holder

Your a bit hard on yourself, You seem to be taking all the blame and there is a lot of blame to go around. Starting with your inflated realestate value which just didn't happen. The whole market was on fire an inflation caused by arson begun by realestate professionals the appraiser and there co conspirators the Mortgage broker. They wanted that value high it promoted additional sales and much higher commissions for both. Then the banks provided no doc loans example "no proof of income". That was not there attempt to help you into a better little bit of paradise. It was a marketing ploy to get a larger number of loans with specific conditions with the thought that the laws of large numbers would protect the lending institution against the bad loan. This helped the bank accumulate wealth from the interest and more importantly the closing cost which pay everyone up front . In your case $6000.00 This is party day at the closing table. Wait there's more

Your loan is then counted and processed making sure all the stipulations for the loan are there and put in a storage box . The storage box is then shipped out to either a different lender or it gos to The Fannies. The fannies then put a number on the box I really don't know if the box at this point is even opened. A sub prime credit score is then placed on the box . At this point there is a potential for additional risk. Since no one in Banking wants any risk A derivative insurance policy contract is place on the value of the whole box or maybe ten boxes valued at 500,000,000 in a competitive world the cost of that Insurance policy is negotiated. Lets say 2 million gos to the broker and 10 million gos to the insurance companies to provide loss protection. If someone gos to foreclose the insurance policy pays to its limit. Everybody wins the box is then thrown out done deal. Total losses 700 Billion plus the 75 Billion to AIG. Think about those numbers our Gross National Product is about 11.5 Billion . What is all that money for?

In closing there are 1241 state and fed regulations and laws protecting us from this type of disaster. Laws at every level, there are training classes to teach people the laws. Everything failed so please Leah pass the blame around. I two praise the men and women in congress who said NO. I would much rather work with thousands of individual home buyers that one massive lending institution. How about this for a solution Everyone that was foreclosed on gets %.%% and forty years . They ether pay the Mortgage or sell there house normally.

your story is truley sad but i have to say that most of the blame should be with the banks on this one. they got greedy and it is not the taxpayers who should bail out wall street .i dont have the answers but, i know that i do not want to be responiable for fixing it and if this economy fails which it will then it reaaly will not affect me i am already so poor i depend on ssd every month for my income and it is hard .so it is hard for me to be sympathetic to these greedy bankers who thought that they could scam people is a little hard to swollow.and now that they are in the tank they want me and you to bail them out i say let them fall maybe next time they will be a little bit more responsiable. once the rich ceo,s start losing their shirts and their homes they will know how the rest of the usa has been living for the last 4 years. instead of giving 700 billion dollars to wall street they should give the money to the american people to payoff their houses and credit cards ect i mean isnt that the problem the banks have mad such bad judgements that they are going bankrupt because their cunsumers are losing their homes if that is the case then let them pay off their houses or credit cards and then the banks would not have all of this bad debt let wall street suffer like we have suffered

Response to Leah from Senator Bill Nelson D-FL

Dear James,

The importance of Congress taking timely action on a plan to give more than $700 billion to the Treasury to stabilize our financial and housing markets cannot be overstated.

However, any legislation authorizing such a deal must provide real relief to the many homeowners facing foreclosure.  It cannot just be a bailout of those who got us into this mess in the first place.

There's no way I'm going vote to bail out the banks that caused the problem, unless we can guarantee homeowners don't get the short end of the stick.

In a nutshell, I'm going to fight to make sure any plan has tough oversight, equity-or profit-sharing for taxpayers, fair refinancing for homeowners facing foreclosure, and that none of this money ends up in the pockets of the CEOs.

I'm also calling for a special investigation to probe the business practices of major credit ratings agencies.

What do I mean?  Well, investors relied on the ratings to make purchases and the public deserves to know how these consultants concluded that such risky investments should receive high credit ratings.  Remember, prosecutors in the Enron case first went after the accounting consultants - and that led them to Ken Lay and other company executives.

Finally, I am going to insist that the Treasury pay no more than fair-market value for any mortgage-related securities.  To do otherwise would be unfair and only would serve to provide a windfall for the banks.

I know everybody is uneasy or feeling economic pain.  Please be assured I'm doing everything I can to make sure your interests are protected.

Senator Bill Nelson D-FL