One Mans' Dynamite Keg is Another Mans' Castle

Here's one for the fraud files, in remembering the super hot hot hot RE market over in Sacto in the very recent past. I ran across this story in the Bee today.


"James and Beth Fullenwider are living inside a bad dream growing ever more familiar across the Sacramento region: Their 2,400-square-foot house in Elk Grove is slowly slipping away from them.

They can't afford their $3,300 monthly payment.

"If the credit people had really looked at our situation, they would have laughed and said, 'You can't come close to qualifying for this,' " says James Fullenwider, who runs a video production business at home. "We're in a house we have no business being in."

He says the couple didn't read the home loan's fine print. Only after moving into the $500,000 home last August did they learn the loan agent inflated their income to qualify them for the financing. "But we were stupid to do it," Fullenwider says."
Rest of the story here

How many others are finding themselves in the same situation alll over the state, and who will investigate all this fraud, and how many can really plead ingnorance? Are we just living in a state of Idiocracy?

Nearly $1.3 trillion in adjustable rate mortgages -- ARMs -- will reset to higher payments this year, according to mortgage giant Freddie Mac and other financial institutions.
That will cause some payments to rise $200 a month. Others will double or triple.
And once again, who are they asking for comments? Our old friends at DataQuick.
Last week, La Jolla-based DataQuick Information Systems reported 865 foreclosures in Amador, El Dorado, Nevada, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba counties during the fourth quarter of 2006, nearly doubling from the previous quarter.

DataQuick also reported 3,071 notices of late mortgage payments -- known as notices of defaults -- during the same period. While that was a 16 percent increase over the previous quarter, the rate of growth had slowed somewhat from earlier in 2006.
But, but, I thought those were sales?!!