NAR Issues Bad Credit Mortgage Aid… Pamphlet
CNBC columnist Diana Olick this week received a press release from the National Association of Realtors, the headline of which reads as follows: NAR Partners with Center for Responsible Lending and Neighborworks America to Keep Families in Their Homes.
Her immediate reaction: Come on!
Here are all the Realtors, who made so much money during the housing market boom, partnering with community activist groups to help “save” the same people that they played a part in getting into deep water in the first place.
No, she does not blame realtors for the subprime, or bad credit mortgage lending crisis. They’re certainly not on par with certain shady mortgage broker groups or the worst of the subprime lenders.
But they did help fuel the fire.
They were the ones pushing up the prices by juicing up buyer competition. At the height of the boom, Realtors would put lines in ads like, “Buyer will be accepting offers from noon to 4 p.m. Tuesday.”
Basically saying, this property is so hot, we will decide when and how you can offer us more money than you can possibly pay for with a home loan.
So now the NAR is putting out a “brochure” (sorry, the “fifth mortgage-related brochure in the NAR’s consumer education series”).
The brochure helpfully “illustrates examples of mortgages that might put certain borrowers in danger, cautioning consumers about predatory lending practices, identifying counseling organizations and other helpful resources, and suggests steps homeowners should take if they think they might not be able to make monthly home mortgage payments.”
Where was the brochure 12-18 months ago, though? Was it on the entry hall table, next to the specs on a two-bedroom condo in Las Vegas that was on the market for $200,000 more than it was when the speculator-owner took a Nevada mortgage out for it two months earlier?
Was this brochure part of the scads of marketing paraphernalia the local Realtor gave to the drooling seller in San Francisco?
Was this brochure available at any number of local mortgage brokers that set up shop right outside subprime borrower bastions?
No, no and no.
But it’s here now. Now you can read ALL about the bad credit home loan you are already in, and now the Realtors say they’re doing their part to keep Americans in their homes, because “foreclosures threaten the very communities that realtors work to build.”
Yes. They threaten all those sales and all those commissions.
SOURCE: CNBC