Seriously, Al, I like your post, but I think you need to tac on some greed to the Wall Street Investors.

Realestate
1) Convinced (tricked) people into an overpriced market (greedy)
2) Convinced people that realestate always goes up (immoral)

Borrowers
1) Bought too much house (greedy)
2) Didn’t analyze their financial situation, give themselves a safety net (foolish)
3) Didn’t perform due diligence chosing a mortgage (foolish)
4) Falsified documents to qualify (illegal)

Brokers
1) Committed fraud in falsifying criteria (illegal)
2) Guided borrowers in to high cost loans (greedy)

Appraisers
1) Providing inflated appraisals on demand (greedy)

Lenders
1) Didn’t maintain reasonable lending standards, and thus gave loans to people that shouldn’t have had them (foolish/greedy)
2) Turned a blind eye to fraud (foolish/greedy)

Wall Street
1) Turned a blind eye to the detachment of risk of owning mortgage debt from underwriting it – CDOs (foolish)

Government
1) Couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to what is going on (more of the same)

I agree with your comments. A lot of gray areas are in this industry. Walking away sometimes is the best solution in business. But most of the foreclosures from the consumer aren’t going into a deal as “this is business.” It’s a double edge sword of sorts. When the L.O. is originating a bad deal and the consumer, loses then is it just business? Maybe yes and maybe no, but none the less it\’e2\’80\’99s bad. Fortunately, natural mechanism will correct the bad business overall. However, when the borrower for negligent reasons just walk away because the deal wasn’t all they thought it could be then is that just “business?” Yes, but that’s bad business too and other pay the price. The natural mechanism in place will correct that as well. The big problem is no one person or group is fully to blame. It trickles down from Wall Street to the consumer but it also trickles up from the consumer to Wall Street.

Cut out everyone else except these two entities and you can see it more clearly. The consumer wants something. Wall Street is providing it. The intricacies are semantics, i.e., loan debacles, theft, fraud, greed, you name it. It is in those intricacies you find the Consumer and Wall Street floating around. The problem is Wall Street has a product that the consumer has convinced themselves they need and Wall Street is exploiting that need to no end. Does the consumer know this? Yes they do, but they roll the dice anyway.

Now, add the agent, the title attorney, the broker, the insurance agent, the appraiser into it and look at the confusion and frustration you get. This is why I constantly say education is the way out of this thing.

JacMac said it very succinctly. Education. I want to add Accountability. The industry is all business, no play, and no emotion.

Ann- I left out Real Estate Agents, Title Companies, Insurance Agents and Appraiser. My bad. And yes, you too need to go to jail. It begins with the borrower who wants whatever. No crime has been committed yet, but because of greed, praise, inner satisfaction, whatever; most agents are trained to execute the theory of “I do whatever it takes for my client to get a home.\’e2\’80\’9d

Most Agents- leave out in that speech, \’e2\’80\’9ccommission.\’e2\’80\’9d You need the client so you will do whatever to make your money. That\’e2\’80\’99s cool. Remember, its business.

Brokers- we look to agents for business. If I don’t satisfy the agent\’e2\’80\’99s needs, they go somewhere else. Commission gone. \’ef\’81\’8c

Appraisers-They look to brokers and banks for business. If they don’t give us the results we need, then we go somewhere else. \’ef\’81\’8c

Insurance agents- same as the appraiser \’ef\’81\’8c

Title company- if they explain toooooo much and the borrower backs out the deal then we (meaning the agent and the mortgage broker) go somewhere else. \’ef\’81\’8c For the title company

The bigger the sale, the bigger the check everyone gets. Everyone. The borrower gets the big house, the seller gets the big proceeds check, everyone\’e2\’80\’99s commission is “fat” and when the borrower is homeless, looking for some answers we all direct them to someone else. Ann, save you “g” for someone else. YSP hasn’t been a topic here for some weeks and since you brought it up, let me ask you a question.

Can you explain to everyone, on a million dollar deal, what in the hell type of performance you would do to get 6% or 60k?

What do you add to a pre-printed contract that yields that amount of money?

What kind of walk thru do you do for that amount of money?

What are you saying at the closing before you get that check?

What inspection are you performing?

What policies are you binding?

What are you doing? Exactly, nothing. However, agents like you get on everyone\’e2\’80\’99s nerves and disrupt the flow of a deal “doing everything to help you client\’e2\’80\’9d And you know what, it\’e2\’80\’99s cool. Because, no one, even myself sometimes can justify the income I make on a deal like that. So sometimes I have to remain quite because any response will sound stupid. So move along with that or accept your role in this mess and offer some solutions.