After my recent griping about bailing out the "nimrods" who bought at the top of the market and could wind up having part of their principal forgiven, I received the email below from a reader. I clearly painted with far too broad a brush, and I appreciate this input from someone actually in the thick of this mess to show me things aren't as black and white as they appear.
Our family moved to Oregon a year and a half ago for my husband's work. Our home, a 16-acre walnut ranch 45 mins. southeast of Sacramento, has been on the market for two and a half years. Since we've been gone, the house has only been rented out 9 months. There are no renters, even with price reductions. Stockton has 10% unemployment and our ranch is 30 mins. away. This year the price of walnuts fell 50% so we're barely covering production costs.
It's taken four realtors, numerous price reductions from the beginning (much as in pains me as a trader to say so, yes, we chased the market) to finally get an offer, a SHORT offer. Though we bought at the right time, nearly nine years ago, our ranch is now being sold 66% below what it was worth two years ago. We are walking away with nothing, even losing what we put into it, even though we tried to sell it a year before the market began to fall apart.
We intended to hold onto it through this decline, but as this is going to take years to recover, we can't rent it, and walnut prices have bombed, our lawyer and CPA have told us to get out and take the hit on our 800+ FICO scores.
You are a very intelligent guy, as is Dylan Ratigan on CNBC, but frankly I resent both of your uninformed observations that people losing their homes are "nimrods" and "stupid people who bought houses they couldn't afford" (Ratigan).
I worked in television news for years in Fresno, where I graduated from college. Over the years I got very tired of reporters and anchors who would get in front of a camera and pontificate over issues they were less than completely knowledgeable about. Your blog is your camera, Tim, and I am very disappointed in you.
There are a lot of people getting hurt in this fiasco, more than just "nimrods" and "stupid people". WE didn't create this housing debacle and yet, like an atomic bomb that keeps killing people years later, we are part of the fallout.
As my grandmother used to say, "They don't need a gun to rob us," OR our three children.
