A foreclosure nightmare

That's what gun licenses are for. The guy should be careful- never know if you're harrassing/stalking the wrong people who own your old house. Wouldn't want to be hasty and break into a gun enthusiasts house now would ya.

I find the most interesting point to be that the new owners still lost money on real sale, despite buying a foreclosed property (granted a step removed).

It shows that the price of a foreclosure IS usually the market price, not a discount from the market price as is oft assumed.

Don't get me wrong, I am a religious believer in market inefficiencies. But I have trouble buying into the popular myth that foreclosures are one of them.

In the owners place I probably would have fought back. But I'm a very large guy and if I were in there it would be with a tough streetwise crew. So its not quite the same.

I'm not sure why someone not mentally competent should have a free license to harass people, as an aside - if anything, I'd much rather be harrassed by mentally competent people.

What would you have done in the Ohio family's place?

I would not have purchased the home in the first place. I could never justify taking advantage of someone else's misfortune. How can you live in a foreclosed home as a happy, thankful family at the expense of someone else's loss? I realize each circumstance is unique, and in many cases people made reckless decisions in trying to live beyond their means; HOWEVER, many families tried their best to live modestly at a time when home prices were skyrocketing, and due to many other reasons couldn't make ends meet. So I don't sympathize with the family that was harrassed. That's the price you pay for such a "deal" or when you don't have a conscience. The people that show up at these auctions and expect to capitalize in these conditions make me ill. One can argue that without such sales the owners, banks and economy lose more, but I'm not buying it - literally.

Charles the piece states that the family sold after "years" of harassment. So if the previous owner that lost the house was foreclosed upon say in 2005 then it would have most likely been a good deal at the time. And the new owners probably intended to stay for years, however after the harassment they decided to sell early and in a soft market so yes they are going to take a loss.

@right to bear arms: Yeah, I'd break into a gun enthusiasts house - see, I'd have a gun too, and mine would be loaded and right at the end of my arm, whereas the homeowner would actually have to take three seconds to wake up and five seconds to reach under the pillow...and I could probably empty my clip into him by five seconds...so yeah, breaking into a home where there may or may not be a gun would not be much of a deterrant to me, were I a criminal. As for the former owner....Mentally stable or not, the dude needs to be locked away - either by his family for his own well being or by the state for the safty of everyone else.

ah, didn't see that mention wendy

I think I could possibly out crazy anyone if I tried. So we would just have a 'crazy' off .

Especially if I heard the judge say that was liscence to harrass some one. That guy would never wnat that house after i open my crazy can.

Way to go, Alex! I couldn't have said it better.

I marvel at the ingenious solution proposed here. Yes, let's all refuse to buy foreclosures. Then, the house will be bought by no one, get taken over by squatters, become a haven for gangs and drug dealers, kill the tax roles, and destroy neighbors' property values, so the whole street can get foreclosed on, too. Plus, the lender will be unable to recover a nickel, so we can have more bank failures.

As the Guinness guys say, "Brilliant!"

Yoshimi - criminals do fear armed homeowners. It's the only thing they fear since your liberal judges let them right back on the street after a trial.

Yoshimi-
This gentleman doesn't seem like a very good criminal, and shame on the family /husband for letting it go on for as long as it did. Men should act like men- protect the home and the women-folk. (I'm a female if anyone's wondering)
I failed to mention the 2 rotties and the german shepherd-
Have you seen Cops? German Shepherds don't like to let go. Better than ADT I'd say.

But then again, I don't live in Ohio- that state's crime rate is probably pretty high, at least in the digusting cities I've been stuck travelling to for business. Anyone ever been to Cleveland? Gross. Euclid? Grosser.

And please remember, we're not talking about B&E's...we're talking about some wack job who's convinced a house is still his. With that being said, if it were my home, he'd be stepping on the wrong property. He'd get his leg gnawed off by 3 ANGRY dogs, and that'd be the least of his worries. :-)

#8 - sorry to hear you couldn't say it better than #3.

I was just listening to a program on GBH on, amongst other things, the fact that its rather silly to make rational decisions emotionally. Seems pretty apropos to the idiotic theory of not buying foreclosed houses, much as I think they tend to be a bad business deal.

Alex, I find your comments to be extraordinarily naive, short-sighted and morally and spiritually immature. You are blaming the victim here. First, it is not at all clear that the person lost his home through "misfortune." After all, he was deemed not mentally competent and that probably had as much to do with him losing the home as anything. Can you imagine what it must have been like for his neighbors? Secondly, these homeowners didn't buy a foreclosed home, the investors did and then sold it to them. It's not even clear that the buyers necessarily knew about the foreclosure. Thirdly, bad things happen to people, sometimes because of their own bad decisions, sometimes for no other reason than bad luck. The challenge for all of us is to find ways to make good come out of it. These homebuyers bought a home and contributed to their community. Marcus is right, we should just let these home sit empty on the market? Have you seen Hendry Street?! We need to put our minds to finding good uses for all these foreclosed homes on the market rather than turning up your nose in some false moral outrage. Saying that you are benefiting from someone else's misery is just sticking your head in the sand. These issues won't go away because you want to assuage guilt. Some of life's greatest leaps forward, on an individual or societal basis, are created out of misfortune and misery - think of WPA or CCC. If you did not cause the misery or misfortune, there's nothing wrong with making something good for yourself or your community from it.

You'd better get your head out of the sand soon because this depression we're going to be going through is going to create a lot of misery (both self-created and other). We'd better be ready to get creative about making some good out of it.

I bought a foreclosure and got a great deal... never heard a peep from the old owner. Good God did she have some ugly decorating tastes, though!!

alex I also find your comments incredibly ignorant! I bought my home from an owner that made over $200,000 profit. I think that is totally unfair, why charge me so much when he only bought the home 4 years prior. People buy and sell things every day and bad things happen. When my wife lost her job I did not go crying to her company or to my mortgage company. I sucked it up and paid the bills. If I lose my job then I may have to move or sell my house. Economies and fortunes rise and fall, I don't look for excuses. If you lose your home then tough, why harass others that may at that time have the fortune to purchase it.

Economies have been rising and falling for 2000+ years and somehow some people get through them.

I can understand that some people have moral qualms about buying foreclosures, but they are a necessary evil. What is the alternative? Let the house sit there unoccupied with no remedy available for the bank who lent the money to the original purchaser? The people who were foreclosed on, for whatever reason, failed to meet THEIR moral and financial obligation to the lender. I sympathize with those who have suffered illness, job loss, tough personal circumstances - but the bottom line is that you borrowed money from someone to buy that house. Until it's all paid for, it's not really yours anyway. You can rationalize this any way you want, but I think charles has a point re: market inefficiencies. In refusing to buy based on your moral qualms, you are simply creating a market inefficiency that someone else will be happy to take advantage of like it or not.

Alex, you are wrong. The family that purchased the home did not attend the foreclosure; an investor did. The investor later sold the home to the family who probably did not know it was a foreclosed property until their attorney completed a title search. They likely made an offer, completed a home inspection and signed a P&S before they even knew the state of the title. A buyer cannot back out of a purchase because there was a foreclosure in the chain of ownership. You would be surprised how many properties were the subject of a foreclosure at one time or another.

I don't have moral qualms about buying foreclosures, I have practical ones.

Assuming the former owner is a decent, non-lunatic, a person who can't afford to pay the mortgage on a house probably wasn't spending a whole lot on maintenance. At best, that means having to replace/repair a lot of stuff in the house. At worst, it means the new owners get stuck with liens left by the previous owner's inability to pay the contractors. And once you sign the papers, those liens become your problem.

Then there's the specre raised by this very article: A lot of people who get foreclosed are not decent, non-lunatics. Some of them are unbalanced, like this guy. Others are simply unscrupulous, and decide to squat. There aren't a lot of legal options available to the new owner if the previous owners decide not to leave (the previous posters who recommend getting a gun permit to deal with the aforementioned lunatic aren't very familiar with Massachusetts law regarding self defense in the home. If you can even get the police to issue you a permit-- a gigantic if-- you can't use it unless the aforementioned lunatic poses an immediate danger to your life. And him being across the room with a knife doesn't count, because he's not in striking distance: You can't shoot him until he has a reasonably good chance of killing you with whatever weapon he's holding). Heck, there's even an organization in Massachusetts dedicated to making sure that squatters don't get evicted, as was chronicled in this very blog:

http://tinyurl.com/6c5qc3

Foreclosures may be cheaper, but they're not worth the extra headaches.

Two words: Restraining Order.