Foreclosures dogging the middle class

Filed in archive mortgage news on August 14, 2009

Remember when the number of housing foreclosures first started to boom? We liked to say it was because of all those greedy homeowners who took out high-risk subprime mortgages to get into homes they couldn't really afford.

Well, today's foreclosure victim is likely to be solidly middle class, and someone who's never had trouble making mortgage payments in the past.

I knew this because I cover the real estate and mortgage industries for several newspapers and magazines. But I also heard it on National Public Radio this afternoon. It was an excellent story, one that profiled the bad fortunes of the owner of a small restaurant.

For about 13 years, this restaurant owner had diligently made his monthly mortgage payments. Then the economy went sour. People stopped eating out, and the restaurant owner's business plummeted. He began taking home about $1,000 less every month. At the same time, his wife, a registered nurse, suffered a back injury. She know has to work fewer hours.

This combination means that the couple is struggling mightily to pay their mortgage on time. They're hoping to get a loan modification from their mortgage lender. But so far — like many other struggling homeowners — they've had little luck getting their mortgage lender to respond.

I appreciated this story because it paints a different picture of foreclosure. We often hear critics railing on about how the government is helping greedy or lazy homeowners save their homes, while hard-working, tax-paying citizens get nothing.

Well, this isn't really true. Many middle-class, hard-working people stand to benefit from mortgage loan modifications, if the Obama administration's loan-modification program ever actually begins to achieve its goals.

Take a close look at your own finances. What if your work hours were cut in half? What if your job disappeared? Would you be able to make your mortgage payments?