Letters to Congress Opposing the Bail Out

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waitingtill08_IHB

New member
Hi, Everyone,





I hope everyone is doing well. My family moved back to Maryland, so I haven't been reading or posting lately as I've been familiarizing myself with the housing market here. But, I thought that many of you might appreciate this link to Congress.org where you can send a letter to President Bush, Secretary Jackson, and your Senators and Representatives opposing the bailout. On the front page of the website, they are asking for comments in favor of and opposed to the bail out legislation that they are considering this week. Here is the link to the page to send letters opposing the bail out:





<strong>http://tinyurl.com/3dk59d





</strong>I sent the following letter, and, I ask and encourage you to send letters as well:





<p class="MsoNormal">As a voter, taxpayer, and financially responsible citizen, I am dismayed and disgusted by your proposals to bail out both irresponsible home-debtors (I refuse to call them homeowners because they do not own, they rent from the bank) and the irresponsible institutions that lent to them. These are contracts with which you do not have the Constitutional authority to interfere. What you are doing is privatizing the profits and socializing the losses. You are redistributing wealth, and it is wrong! </p>

<p class="MsoNormal">Many people saw this financial disaster approaching for years. Prices of houses doubled or tripled in five years, but salaries did not keep pace. The savings rate went negative for the first time since the Great Depression. We became a service economy that sent our manufacturing jobs overseas; and, instead of producing things, we relied on consumer spending for our economy. It was not that hard to see this coming. Yet, Congress did nothing to prevent it when it would have mattered. </p>

<p class="MsoNormal">Those of us who did our due diligence and realized that house prices should not have escalated 200-300 percent in 5 years and that a mortgage should not cost us 5-10 times our income, did not buy houses. Those who already owned did not take out unmanageable lines of credit. Those who bought despite the ridiculous prices took out 30-year fixed mortgages that they could afford. Your legislation is an affront to us all. </p>

<p class="MsoNormal">Those of us who rented sacrificed settling our families in our own homes because we knew that taking out one of these suicide loans would have been irresponsible. We were pressured to buy by those in the real estate industry by being told ridiculous things like," Real estate always goes up!", and "They aren't making any more land, you know." We were ridiculed by home-debtors who called us "bitter renters" and "chicken littles" because we questioned home prices and the loans that were being made to finance them. Through all of this, we stuck to our principles and held our ground. We did what we knew to be best for our families. </p>

<p class="MsoNormal">Now, you are forcing us to pay for this lending/borrowing fiasco by bailing out those same irresponsible lenders and debtors who pressured and ridiculed us. You are stealing from us, our children, and our futures. </p>

<p class="MsoNormal">You cannot stop prices from falling. They need to correct. They must come back into a reasonable relationship to incomes. The irresponsible people who lose the homes that they never should have bought in the first place will simply have to rent. The irresponsible banks who lent to them will have to eat the losses. Those of us who sacrificed, saved our money, and acted responsibly will then be able to buy homes for our families at reasonable prices. </p>

<p class="MsoNormal">I hope you will consider what I have said and make the right decision. When you took office, you swore to uphold the Constitution. If you pass this legislation and, in so doing, break that oath, I will not vote for you and I will do everything in my power to prevent your reelection. I will send letters to newspaper and television media. I will post on blogs. I will vociferously and unrelentingly communicate your malfeasance to everyone I know. And, in so doing, I will encourage others to spread the message and vote you out of office.</p>







It is very easy to send a letter using this form. The website puts in the names and e-mail addresses for your recipients. All you have to do is compose the text of your letter, put in your personal information, and click send. I hope you will all join me in sending letters and standing up for the responsible.





Take care,





waitingtill08 (I guess I should change my name. We are about to sign another year lease, so from now on I'll be "waitingtill09")
 
so how is the housing market in Maryland going? Used to live in Baltimore and have considered jobs in the Rockville area before - and might again sometime...
 
fromluotian,





Thanks for writing! We need to stick together and make our voices heard.





movingaround,





Housing prices doubled to tripled here. Housing prices had just recovered from the prior bust when we bought in '98. We had a townhouse in Rockville that we bought for $160K and sold in '06 for $389,900 (about a year after the peak) . We moved to CA for a year, but then decided to come back.





We are now living in Howard County. Prices still have a long way to fall. Anecdotally -- when we moved bacl last summer, there was a house around the corner from our rental that was asking $950K. It is still on the market asking $750K. My guess is that these places will probably sell in the low to mid $400's when all is said and done.





The nice thing about Maryland is that there is easy access to land records so that you can do your due diligence. You can check a particular property or recent sales on the tax assessor's website. Then, there is another site you can use with password access that allows you to see what kind of financing the "owners" have. It is useful to look up rentals to make sure you aren't renting from someone that might go into foreclosure. It will also be useful when we are finally negotiating to buy since we will know whether or not the seller is in trouble.






 
<p>Interesting! I am surprised to hear that prices went up that much but I guess with DC being so close everything in the whole entire area was bubblelicious!</p>

<p>I actually lived in Catonsville and from where I was living could walk the trolly path down to downtown Ellicott City - I loved having coffee down there. </p>

<p>who knows - maybe we will end up there sometime - I would love to live off that road (can't remember the number) that heads north from Rockville into western maryland - it was so beautiful there! Only thing I didn't like about that area much was the heat - way too hot for my so. california coastal blood!</p>

<p>Good luck!!!</p>

<p> </p>

<p> </p>
 
I send these letters every other week to our congressional officials including others who may be VP nominees. Thanks for getting everyone on board as well.
 
Not to worry about subsidizing homeowners. The current Senate proposal has nothing for homeowners but counseling. Most of the expense - about 15 billion - is a tax giveback to unprofitable *homebuilders*. The rest is effectively a subsidy to banks for foreclosures. (Via tax breaks and grants for buying foreclosed properties). So the proposal subsidizes builders to keep building and increase the oversupply, encourages foreclosures (which increases losses to society) and the props up house prices *after* foreclosure. Measures that would reduce the cost to taxpayers, like cramdowns, got cut. You could hardly produce a worse plan.
 
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