Sympathy? The buyers of overvalued homes have reduced national wealth, weakened international financial markets, raised everyones’ property taxes, on and on. Might as well feel sad for the drunk driver that sideswipes your car as they crash over the cliff and then mobilize a half million dollars of resuce efforts and then racks up millions in the hospital with no insurance only to go to jail at public expense where millions in public defender appeals tie up the courts for years. Sympathy? Their family should get the bill for the bullet.
I’ve no problem with people “wanting” to buy a house. People have wanted to own a house for centuries or longer. These people are not teenagers being handed the keys to the Ferrari. These are people who are lying and cheating and then stealing joyrides. They are signing documents they know to be false. Bank fraud costs me money. These people are distorting the markets causing overbulding and congestion and municipal expenditures. Those cost me time and money. It is a long list and these are not victimless crimes, never were. In the next few quarters we will see victims. Some complicit at first but more and more the innocent bystanders. Imagine your HOA fees skyrocketing in Thousand Oaks (the safest city in the US) because the board is carrying so many pre-foreclosures on former Countrywide employees and also defending itself from legal attacks as these same people get desperate.
No, $7-$9 trillion in asset valuation is evaporating because of this nonsense. These people deserve no more sympathy breaking into these houses because of their need to own than would a drunk breaking into a liquor store because he needed a drink. Neither could feed their addiction through legal means and they don’t care who they hurt.
