I am interested to see the stats and hear the foreclosure stories from the Mountain West. Were risky loans really less prevalent here? I guess we will find out.

"We’re doing our best to cut through the rhetoric, the rosy projections from the real estate organizations and the rest of the hard-spun blather to bring you news that’s grounded in actual facts" .. New West has been one of the best unbiased RE news sources. Well done.

I'm trying to cut through the rhetoric in Billings and the rest of Montana by making independent, fact-based housing market videos ... see http://www.topoimagery.com/billings

http://thehousingbubbleblog.com/ is a great source for individual stories and overall market perspective. Use the search engine to find stories about particular states or cities.

I'm trying to refinance and I actually had a lender who want to discuss interest-only and ARMs . He must have been nuts to think I'd even consider. Never called him back.

a friend of mine recently told me he missed his first house payment and he is considering bankruptcy. He and his wife both have substantial incomes. the home they owned was in a subprime area of town and was built around the early seventies when shoddy workmanship abounded. My friend and his wife have spent the past 7 years fixing the house up. New antique oak floor that they installed themselves. new tile in all the bathrooms. landscaping. granite countertops. the works. and all for nothing. the combination of credit card purchases to do this along with home equity loans that were subprime have done them in. it is very sad. but they are still fairly young and optimistic. For at least the past year they have not slept a single night without extreme anguish over this. they literally put their hearts and souls into the house and now they must abandon everything they worked for.
I don't know if this helps but I think it is usefull for us to remember that in all the numbers is flesh and blood, hearts and souls and dreams dashed.
hopefully on a related note I have been invesigating the pay day loan / vehicle title loan businesses that have mushroomed accross missoula and montana and have found some interesting facts if you wish to look at this horrible scourge which is not just targeting our poor but our seniors and disabled folks as well.
take a look. it will open your eyes. I know it did mine.
http://problembear.wordpress.com

problembear, I'm sorry about your friends and their loss. Very disheartening. However, they did not work for it, they borrowed for it with credit cards and equity loans. Therein lies the seeds of their problem. Everyone, PAY YOUR CREDIT CARD BALANCES IN FULL, MONTHLY! If you can't, put the damn cards away until those balances are retired. Ego and appearances aside, face reality and practice financial discipline.

Kristen - would that be a local lender? As opposed to someone like GMAC or Countrywide?

Unbelievable.

Craig- my friend and his wife work hard at their jobs. they worked very hard to fix that house up. they also borrowed too much and then they got caught in the bubble.
it's a mixture of emotional attachment to a place you love combined with some impulse borrowing combined with bad timing and bad luck. there but for the grace of god go many of us.
point well taken on the lecture about not borrowing anything you can't pay back quickly. also a good idea to never run with scizzors,
ride your harley without a helmet, or buy lottery tickets.....
doesn't mean we can't emphathise with their situation. did you check out the numbers on the pay day loan businesses at my blog.
I can't wait to see how you lecture the poor.

problembear-- OK, call me heartless. What do you propose we do for your friends, bail them out? You seem to be rationalizing their foolish financial decisions. Sounds like they make well over the median income, and they still can't live within their means. I would have sympathy on a personal level for friends like this, but on an economic level you have to let the market and experience teach some people a lesson. Ever notice how financially responsible depression-era folks are? The lesson was hard, but it sunk in.

As for "emotional attachment", I think that is one of the major ills of this housing boom. Since when did a wooden box atop a piece of dirt become more important than our families, or our emotional health? Our obsession with "the house" as part of our identity has gotten out of hand.

For what it's worth, I have a number of young-ish friends who have bought recently. They didn't get "caught in the bubble"-- you make it sound so accidental and unavoidable! They saved, planned for the unexpected, thought about the risks, and didn't take out home equity. That's called responsible financial planning, and people who don't do it -- here it comes -- should not own a house. There, I said it.

Sorry if my post comes across a little harsh :). I enjoy the debate here, and thanks for posting.

Kristen-- I would like to know if that is a local or national lender as well!

Always enjoy the youth of the USA exchanging their views. Keep on doing it! And being the old fart that went to a one room school near my home and then grad school @ MSU(Michigan), & then taught for 25 years @ college level.(Economics) I can say this about that!

It does not matter what you receive in$: as far as $ spend wisely & you shall not go into too much debt! But more importantly-Our values & our heart shall endure much later than Wal-mart or Bon-Marche or even NY (made in China duds!) For after all we were all born naked and shall get planted naked and have same colored blood so go OBAMA!

problembear, you misunderstand my comment and confuse advice with lecture. Here's another piece of advice. Don't EVER take out an equity loan. Sell a kidney first. If you won't sell a kidney, then you will never have a sufficient need for an equity loan. Delay gratification and budget, budget, budget... Save for that remodel rather than borrow. The amount saved goes in one's own pocket rather than in the payday loan shark's.

Craig- again good advice- for home equity loans. but maybe I am confused because you seemed to mix up the two issues. many people (at least from my tiny sample) use payday loans to get necessities: gas to go to work and food to feed themselves or rent to shelter themselves. they are already one small stumble from being homeless and these places just push them over the edge. did you read the Wall Street Journal article in my site how these places are targeting seniors and disabled as well as the poor?
http://problembear.wordpress.com

No, I have not gone to your site as I don't know you (you don't use a real name here!) and I don't trust such solicitations. I am not judging you, just stating what I won't do and why.

I have no use for the predatory payday loan operatons. But, people are adults.....

If I have a knock on this article and some of the discussion is that it is narrowly focused on mortgages. The whole credit/personal debt environment is the problem. The mortage only makes up a piece. Then there are school loans, car loans, and double digit credit card and equity loan rates.

People should seek the advice of a qualified debt counselor to examine their portfolio, the options, and the credit diet they need to be on.

Goof- fair enough. you can google search the article at
wall street journal online pay day loans. it was written by Ellen Schultz and Theo Francis. it published on Feb 12, 2008.
the stories in there about preying on seniors and disabled people by this scourge will curl your toes.

sorry, my bad . craig - not goof.

I work at a small bank in NW Montana. I have been keeping a close eye on other real estate lenders big & small in our area and it appears that we don't have any local banks that jumped in the sub-prime housing market. You can actually go onto the FDIC's website and look at any banks most recent financial records. It will tell you how many real estate loans are past due or charged off. Although a lot of local lenders have more "troubled" loans that a year ago, it is clear that this mess was created by mega-banks like Countrywide, Washington Mutual, Citibank, Chase, Capital 1 Mortgage and Wells Fargo Financial to name a few. Of course this does not mean that the bad loans don't exist in our areas, there are just less of them than other areas and the foreclosures that happen here won't directly effect our local economy (besides the people that own the property).

My personal opinion is in line with a few that have already spoken. I thinnk the mess is more about people living and spending beyond their means. It is so strange to me when people point the finger in the general direction of financial institutions or the government for this whole problem. 3 years ago, the same people were mad at me for turning them down because I didn't think they could afford the house they wanted to buy. Back then, all those people turned their nose up and walked down the street to the nearest mortgage broker and went through with a "stated income loan" (that is where you lie about how much money you make) and burried themselves in a payment they could never afford under terms they didn't bother to understand. I agree that a lot of the blame falls on the shoulders of stupid banks but somebody had to sign the bottom line and legally accept responsibility for the repayment of the loan.

By the way, equity loans are great for people that handle them correctly. Low interest that is tax-deductable.

There's a lot more mortgage successes out there than anything else. Maybe you should write about those...honestly.

yeah and then let's have our evening news start with....thirty thousand motorists arrive at their desinations safely...instead of reporting accidents. a record number of people losing homes at the rate this economy is going is unfortunately the news that is going to happen, no matter how much we want to wish it away with shiny bright reagonist jargon. speaking of good fiscal management- it seems like the United States budget is a little out of line after 8 years of Bush and 6 years of republican controlled shiny bright optimistic record deficits. people who lose their homes is news when it is at unprecedented levels. and you ain't seen nothin' yet folks.

The political fingerpointing was predictable. Reporting the complete whole story, both sides of the coin, takes the agenda out of the picture and creates perspective.

I personally had a wonderful home buying experiance with CBH Homes. My family and I (5 kids) were trying to find a house that would be large enough to work for our family and still stay within our budget. Renee and Irmia with CBH went out of there way to find us what we were looking for. Everything went off without a hitch and it was truely a stress free experiance. I think it really matters who you buy you home from. We ended up with a Brand new 2832 sq ft house and could not be happier.

What political fingerpointing, Craig? A story is a story. There is a mortgage meltdown going on.

I don't see that going on in these pieces, nor the comments. No one has put out there that one political party is to blame.

jhwygirl, first I have enjoyed your writing over at B-birds.

The political fingering pointing was in problembears last comment, "...it seems like the United States budget is a little out of line after 8 years of Bush and 6 years of republican controlled shiny bright optimistic record deficits. people who lose their homes is news when it is at unprecedented levels. and you ain't seen nothin' yet folks."

The misery that problembear's friends find themselves appears mainly self-inflicted. They may not have budgeted their cash flow versus the cost of their wants and needs. Their debt woes were more than mortgage. He talks about them taking out equity loans and maxing their credit cards. Nothing is even noted about vehicles or school loans. As I recall spending bills arise in the House, which has been D controlled since 2006. Every politico is tarnished here when it comes to budget deficits. We need to hold ourselves accountable for personal debt choices and not point the finger.

personable accountability is in the long run the only way to go. and yeah, methinks the post would have been more effective if i had skipped the barbs aimed at republicans. It is just hard to teach a populice to have personable accountability when greed and lying and bribery rules in washington dc and no accountability is shown by our political leaders for lying, accepting bribes, and creating a political climate that encourages corporate entities to cheat, lie and make sure there is some shred of plausible deniability that their 2000.00 dollar per hour attorneys can help them hide behind. yeah craig my friends are very bad people who deserve the scorn of your criticism because this is amerika and in amerika the losers lose and the winners win, and while my friends pack up their things and hold garage sales to move into their apartment you can sit back and revel in your success. enjoy.

problembear, what a discharge of explosive hyperbole. I hope you feel better. Since I don't have any independent knowledge of your friends, I will leave it to your more intimate knowledge to justify your harsh judgement. It's too bad that you have used them here to make your political statement that has nothing to do with the topic.

I will feel better when I can see some personal accountability by our crooked government officials, greedy corporate entities and the oblivious wealthy in this country, who have managed in less than a decade to drive the ship of state and the economy up on a reef.

So you would vote out all those low life Dems that have a horrible approval rating? See: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0608/11232.html

>>>>>>>>>
Confidence in Congress at record low
By DAVID PAUL KUHN | 6/20/08 11:49 AM EST

Only 12 percent of Americans now have confidence in Congress, the lowest percentage in the 35 years that the Gallup Poll has tracked the number.

Americans now view Congress less favorably any of the 14 other American institutions tracked by Gallup, including big business, newspapers and health maintenance organizations.

Even as President Bush’s approval rating languishes at a record low, more than twice as many Americans have confidence in the presidency — 26 percent — than have confidence in Congress.

The Democrats have controlled both houses of the Congress since January 2007. It remains to be seen whether the Democratic Party brand will find itself chained to the poor public view of the legislative branch. A recent analysis of ABC News-Washington Post polls found that in April the Democrats held a 24-point lead over President Bush as "the stronger leadership force in Washington." Today, it's a tie.
<<<<<<<<<<

it's all a big mess, craig. that is why we need change and fast.
but the president is the leader, craig. and my grandfather always told me that if there is something wrong with the dog, then the master is at fault.

Your cute grandfather story doesn't come very close to the reality we have. Nancy Pelosi is the master of the House. Harry Reid is the master of the Senate. Both of them are presiding over the 12% confidence rating, not the President. I guess you may mean to suggest that these Dem leaders don't have a clue what to do unless the president tells them. Well, Bush has told them. They refuse to listen and go their own way. They are where they are at 12% because of the choices they made. Perhaps you mean to suggest that we don't need Congress at all if only we have a benevolent tyrrant we like that walks on water.

My younger kid and his wife bought a house built to their specs on a cheap lot several years ago. 1100 sq ft was all they could afford. But the little house has a master bedroom and bath, and two small kids' bedrooms with a bath, and the rest of the house has vaulted ceilings to make things livable. And 10' ceilings in a finished garage. Three weeks ago they packed up kids and .22s and went to the snowline, to a rock pit, and filled the suv with rocks after a bout of target shooting. Grandpa got each their own .22 for their first Christmas, and they love to shoot them. The girl entering first grade is the better shot. Last week, with the kids off to grandparents in central Oregon, they took a week off and built a pond with a waterfall and little creek in the backyard. Pond liner, pump, and did a nice job. Now their little backyard with aspen trees, a little lake and creek, the hot tub, patio, and trampoline they traded the kids jungle jim and tree house for, all make for a cozy backyard full of flowers and a pleasant place to sit and not burn fuel. And the neighbors don't mind the aspen trees that are showing up in their backyards. Yet.

My spendthrift kid and family are living within their means, in a fixed 5% mortgage too small house that they can afford to make the payments on. And their two kids will grow up and leave that house someday, and it won't be too small anymore. Also, they will own it. The place has more electrical outlets than any house I have ever seen. Ones in the soffits for Christmas lights, ones in the back yard that now serve the pump for the creek and lake. Many in the garage for tools and freezers. They went through an elk and a half a beef in the last year. They can't live large, but they can live comfortably. And they don't envy friends who seem to have more stuff and are earning less, all supported by debt. They accept their lives, each other, and the grandkids are even tolerable. The temptation to move up, to get to the big house, was certainly there for the last couple of years, but common sense and a good assessment of financial reality prevailed, and there is NO mortgage crisis.

okeydokey. well mother, everything is just hunky. now let's put Bonzo to bed.

Well, I don't live in "amerika" and, problembear, you've shed all credibility with me with that anti american sentiment. Covering car wrecks is unfortunately what the tv news has become. Can't we expect better on New West?

Unfortunately, New West has lost much of it's credibility as well as it's evolved it's mission away from presenting local issues of Rocky Mountain communities and into this "unabashed bleeding heart liberal" (yep that's a quote from one reporter's biography) message. That was the gist of my comment, that focusing on the "send us your terrible story so we can tie it to supporting Obama" message that problembear immediately keyed on is a dead giveaway to the bias of this ever less interesting on line paper.

Craig and others were just hip to the jive and challenged it right away. I hope the editors and publishers of New
West will refuse to be used to pursue outside agendas and instead insist on real journalism, not opinionated blogging or worse, presented as journalism.

4&20;or other blogs are just that, blogs and their writers present a personal point of view. Outright advocacy is part of those sometimes quite capable and informative websites. New West purports to be something different.

With "stories of mortgage woe" are not going to come, "stories of credit problems, 105% loans, and buying houses with uncertain job futures", or "I took on too much debt" or "I moved to Montana without a career that is sustainable in a Montana recession". I empathize with those people, Montana's not a place where a person can lose one job and move down the block and find another, and serious economic distress can be the result of tying long term debt to a scarce and variable job market. I don't think anecdotal voyeurism on other people's misery is a worthy article.

Those of us who remember and suffered the mid 80s Montana economy and the loss of thousands of railroad, manufacturing, energy and wood product jobs can understand and empathize with what is going on now.

Some good stories would be a compare and contrast the various local markets and economies around the rocky mountain west and the reasons for the variations.

the america i grew up in has been stolen by bush and his legion of corporate pirates. that is why i call the present government amerika. but fortunately there are hundreds of millions of true patriots like me who intend to get america back. so just sit back and watch us do just that goof, with or without you, in november.

problembear, another discharge of explosive hyperbole. You should write for the Socialist Worker. By the way here is what SW has to say about your champion: socialistworker.org/2007-1/617/617_05_Obama.shtml

>>>>>>>>>>

With his charm and broad "appeal"--traditionally conservative white Illinois voters supported him in large numbers, along with urban voters in the city--candidate Obama was selected to give the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention (DNC). But Obama's convention speech--with lots of neat sound bites, but little content or concrete proposals--should have been a warning to progressives and the liberal "base."

The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC)--which was formed in the mid-1980s by socially conservative and economically neoliberal Democrats to "reclaim" the party from "special interests" (unions, oppressed minorities, immigrants, women and so on)--had already put Obama on their list of the top 100 Democratic Party leaders to watch.

As senator, he quickly signaled his pro-business stance by voting for "tort reform"--legislation limiting the liability of corporations in class-action lawsuits.

Obama also formed one of the largest and most powerful political action committees in the Senate, raking in $3.8 million by the summer of 2006 and dolling out hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions to Democratic candidates.

"It is also startling to see how quickly Obama's senatorship has been woven into the web of institutionalized influence-trading that afflicts official Washington," journalist Ken Silverstein wrote in Harper's magazine last fall in an article entitled, "Barack Obama Inc." "He quickly established a political machine funded and run by a standard Beltway group of lobbyists, P.R. consultants, and hangers-on."


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

OBAMA HAS become a "master triangulator," in Abunimah's words, figuring out how to reflect the aspirations of an economically wounded and war-weary electorate, while at the same time staying within the bounds of "acceptable" Washington politics. Nowhere has this been clearer than on the question of the Iraq war and U.S. imperialism in the Middle East.
Days before his 2004 DNC speech, Obama remarked to the press that there was, in fact, little difference between his position on the war and George W. Bush's--except how best to "execute" the policy.

Obama occasionally said things that seemed to give voice to a more radical position on the war--arguing, for example, that it was "time to give Iraqis their country back." But evidently, the time to give Iraqis their country back has come and gone.

Obama echoes the prevailing sentiment among mainstream Democrats that we need to bring the troops home--but on ever more vague timetables and constraining "conditions."

So Obama calls for a "phased redeployment" on a "timetable that would begin in four to six months." But even at the end point of this "redeployment," the war would not end, because U.S. troops would continue to occupy "American enclaves like the Green Zone," and perhaps some troops would be sent "over the horizon" to the Kurdish territories in northern Iraq.

While the U.S. has, in Obama's view, made mistakes in Iraq, the fault lies not with Bush or U.S. imperialism, but Iraqis themselves. "The days of asking, urging and waiting for [Iraqis] to take control of their own country are coming to an end," Obama said after Bush's January speech announcing his surge plan. "No more coddling, no more equivocation."

This is nothing less than the logic of colonial racism: Iraqis are themselves to blame for the horrors caused by the occupation.

Beyond Iraq, Obama has made his fidelity to U.S. empire very clear. He has repeatedly called for sufficient military strength to deal with "rogue nations like North Korea and Iran" or the "challenges presented by potential rivals like China."

He may position himself two steps to the left of his main opposition in the Democratic Party--or, in general elections, his Republican rivals--but never beyond the corporate-dictated confines of official politics.

Like Bill Clinton, Obama is a smooth politician. When the Black Commentator Web magazine editors asked Obama about being on the DLC's top 100 list, he asked the DLC to remove his name. When he was asked if he would sponsor legislation to repeal NAFTA, he promptly said yes--although he has yet to deliver.

He promised to oppose building a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico unless it was accompanied by a "path to legalization" and "a guest-worker program"--but then he voted for a border wall anyway shortly before last year's congressional election.

In late January, Obama announced his proposal to have all Americans covered by health insurance within six years--that is, the end of what he hopes will be his first presidential term. But this is the vote-getting promise made by candidate Bill Clinton in 1992--on which Clinton and a then-Democratic Congress failed to deliver.

Obama presents himself more or less as a liberal--but in terms of what is acceptable in today's "war on terror" and neoliberal "Washington consensus."

If Obama today is a cipher of doublespeak and triangulation, we can be sure that a President Obama would be a safe bet for the ruling elite and U.S. empire. And a losing bet for the rest of us.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

well thanks, goof. so nice of you to come down off the ponderosa like ben cartwright and tell us poor dirt farmers how to live.

I am a pretty conservative independent by the way and your attempt to label me as something other than what i am is a desperate tactic to hope that the status quo is still appealing to most of the voters. it definitely is not.

i will quote one of my heroes for you if you want to further personalize this-

"I'm not in the habit of explaining myself and I'm not about to start with the likes of you."

regarding hyperbole; I have strong opinions about things like people losing their homes, people being victimized by pay check /vehicle title loan slime devils, and people going hungry because I work day after day with volunteers who will have to clean up after the mess left behind by stupid bush policies which are only just beginning to be felt accross this country. if you can't stand the hyperbole stay out of the soup kitchens. that is where real americans pitch in and help.

craig- sorry, goof my bad again. this trying to doubles tennis match with you two is hard on a bear of very little brain.

Taking a stab at bringing this conversation back to the topic of mortgages, you are aware that Dem senators Dodd and Conrad got sweetheart VIP deals from Countrywide while the sat in power positions to help craft the very policies and corporate boogeymen that you rail against? The Dem leadership wishes to sweep the matter under the rug.

My wife and I bought in 2004 in a part of town that was over-valued, but shopped carefully and found a place well within our means. We've paid on time -- made extra payments too -- and weren't suffering until a recent trip to Europe. (Trip of a lifetime and all that. Saved a bunch to afford it.) We called our banks multiple times before the trip, but STILL they cut off access to our cash, and it took hours on the phone to be able to get cash for meals.

Turns out the "fraud prevention" departments have ratcheted up protections in response to recent losses. ... Would that they had such protection in place when they gave loans to those who didn't have the stuff to pay them off.