{"id":1961,"date":"2009-02-19T10:43:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-19T14:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/snarl\/?p=1961"},"modified":"2009-02-19T10:43:00","modified_gmt":"2009-02-19T14:43:00","slug":"give-me-a-financial-break","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/2009\/02\/19\/give-me-a-financial-break\/","title":{"rendered":"Give Me a (Financial) Break!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>No, seriously! If the government is in hand-out mode I want part of the action. Unfortunately, I&#8217;m responsible. I didn&#8217;t purchase my homes with no money down and 100% financing. I didn&#8217;t purchase a home twice as large as I needed. I didn&#8217;t purchase a home twice as expensive as I could afford.<\/p>\n<p>Now, I know I always interpret these things wrong, but from what I gather, this new &#8220;Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan&#8221; will make lenders\u00a0reduce your mortgage amount to 38% of your annual income if you&#8217;re having trouble paying your mortgage. Then another 7% will be matched by the government so that borrowers are paying a maximum of 31% of their income on the mortgage. In addition, if you pay on-time\/in-full for 5 years, you will get a $1,000 bonus each year.<\/p>\n<p>So, let me get this straight: you act irresponsibily, then get your mortgage payments reduced to unfairly low rates (for this region). On top of that, you&#8217;ll get a $5,000 bonus? Oh, and you can still claim the interest paid on your tax return?<\/p>\n<p>Sign me up! I&#8217;d like a McMansion in Weston, please. Preferably something with a pool and\/or hot tub. There\u00a0are only two of us so i think we&#8217;ll need a minimum of 4 bathrooms and 6 bedrooms.<\/p>\n<p>Give me a break. I&#8217;m all for packages to boost the economy. But this seems completely unfair. Hell, a rental apartment in Boston typically costs more than 31% of your annual income. Shouldn&#8217;t renters then get the discount, too?\u00a0Maybe we should cap rents based on salary. Again, I&#8217;ll take the luxury hi-rise 4-bedroom penthouse unit that previously rented for $4,500\/month please. You wouldn&#8217;t mind adjusting that monthly rent by a couple of grand, would you?<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not an economist. I&#8217;m not a politician. Hell, I&#8217;m not even smart. Buy why can&#8217;t the mortgage lenders simply adjust the mortgages from 30 year loans to 50+ year loans? While they&#8217;re at it, they could possibly reduce the interest rate. This way, the bank still gets the money it was promised and the buyer still pays the amount they agreed to. And in a few years when the economy rebounds, the borrower can refinance to a shorter term and\/or sell for a profit.<\/p>\n<p>But I&#8217;m 100% against lowering the amount of the money people borrowed. And speaking of the borrower selling the property in a few years&#8230;.are there any rules on that? Is it fair for the seller to keep the profit after they were GIVEN tens of thousands of dollars of our tax money?<\/p>\n<p>UGH &#8211; I&#8217;m disgusted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No, seriously! If the government is in hand-out mode I want part of the action. Unfortunately, I&#8217;m responsible. I didn&#8217;t purchase my homes with no money down and 100% financing. I didn&#8217;t purchase a home twice as large as I needed. I didn&#8217;t purchase a home twice as expensive as I could afford. Now, I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1961\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}