This is a post that I listed on Mr. Bedard's website only after I was informed that my name was posted without my consent. I posted my rebuttal on 8/5/09 and it was removed on the sameday by Mr. Bedard. <br />
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Mr. Alex Arriaga, A.K.A. saint 3600, <br />
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Since you seemed moved to use my name within your post and not identify yourself then I will identify you. You gambled with your American Dream, your house. The fact that it has turned into a “nightmare” is only because of your inability to manage your finance coupled with the unique ability to make poor choices. Lets begin with a time line that is relevant to this case shall we? So that anyone who reads this understands that is it not the responsibility of the American tax paying citizens to bail you out from your poor financial choices that you were clearly aware of making. You purchased the house in June of 2003 and as per your hardship letter that you prepared you “ refinanced into a sub prime loan since our credit scores were very low in 2006 to pay our debts but the proceeds were not enough to completely pay all of our debts. The original loan was for $270, 000.00; the new loan was for $332, 000.00. The refinance caused the principal balance to increase because of the cost of the loan and cash we pulled to pay our debts.” Just a side bar – this is what happens when a person refinances and utilizes the equity within the property to pay off high interest rate debt. “We refinanced again in 2007 into a 40-year loan with a balloon payment to pay the remainder of our bills. We also took out a second mortgage to pay off the notes on our cars and to pay the annual taxes for 2007. Since our monthly obligations were more than our pay and left over money was used to pay our monthly bills.” Your post also makes mention that you took “advice from a loan officer that assured you that you could refinance before the rate would adjust.” Who in their right mind would take advice from a loan officer that was most likely selling cell phones at a kiosk in the mall two months before your application landed on his desk? <br />
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So lets recap, your credit scores were low in 2006 I have to assume because you and your wife can not pay your bills on time and/or you both have other derogatory reporting information that would obviously cause you both to be less than “A” paper borrowers. Second, you both refinanced yet again (or should I phrase it; you both gambled again) in 2007 to pull out the year’s worth of additional equity your property gained. That refinance resulted in an additional poor financial choice because it placed you both in a high-risk sub-prime adjustable rate mortgage and it extended the term from the previous 360 months to 480 months. If this wasn’t enough for you both to gain a hold of your finances you took out a second mortgage (a HELOC) with HFC at $19, 000.00 with an APR of 14.890%. You stated in your hardship that you gambled with this second mortgage to pay off the notes on your cars, however you now have a new installment debt obligation (that would be a new car loan in case you didn’t know what an installment debt was) at $736.00 per month. Way to manage your finances. What is clear regarding this mortgage is that since your wife is named first on this note, you Mr. Arriaga had at the time too much debt and/or your fico score was low enough to render you inadequate for that loan, so you wife was placed as the primary borrower (she had a higher fico score) in order to qualify and you were placed as co-borrower.<br />
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Your post, Mr. Arriaga, states that part of your new hardship is that because your wife works for the school district it “restructured its staff due to budget cuts she was going to be out of work for the summer with no pay.” Your wife has worked for the same school district for seven years, that is six years long enough for you both to realize that you would need to budget your combined income in order to prepare for the summer months in which your household was going to have a decrease in income for that time frame. Correct? I hope your wife is not a teacher of arithmetic or finance for the school district. <br />
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Based upon the above listed information, both you and your wife have been unable to manage any of your finances and your past habits concerning money keep repeating themselves which results as poor financial choices on both your parts. It is not my responsibility as a tax-paying citizen to bail you out because you abused the privilege of owning a home in this country. Mr. Arriaga you cannot afford this house and you should not be given a loan modification. You gambled with the biggest investment of your life and you lost. This is not my responsibility or anyone else’s. You must accept the consequences of your poor actions. Congratulations.