Third World America - Arianna Huffington [46]
I never thought I’d say this, but last week I lost my home. Despite my best efforts, on January 5, 2010, my house was sold at the Bexar County Courthouse (for less than I paid for it).
In retrospect, 2008 wasn’t exactly the best time to start a new career as a Realtor. I was a guitarist in a touring band. It paid well, or at least allowed me to squeak by when it didn’t.
But I had a plan for my life and wanted to follow it, instead of spending time regretting it. I wanted to focus on something tangible (like real estate), something I could be passionate about again.
It wasn’t easy building a business in 2008. Many of the seasoned agents were struggling. As a new agent, I was told time and time again to be prepared to have some very lean months. And I certainly didn’t make a fortune that year. Instead, I slowly ate through my savings, trying to hang on to what I had as tight as I could. As the bank accounts dwindled, my royalties from the band also dried up. With little coming in other than my wife’s salary, we conserved everywhere we could.
And we did fine—until 2009. That’s when we began to get behind. We’d get a month behind, then pay two, get two months behind and catch up. It was a constant cycle of getting behind and getting back. And each time, our credit went down. With less credit, we couldn’t refinance.… One missed payment on a credit card leads to a higher interest rate, which results in more delinquency, which leads to even higher interest rates, and on and on it goes.
Late that year, I lost two commissions. We got a bit more behind. So the mortgage company began the foreclosure process in November. I tried to work with the lender. We should have been a dream case for loan modification. There was no wild spending, no million-dollar home, no boats. We just hit an unfortunate set of circumstances and were making ground on them—but not fast enough.
In fact, I was having a great year (I was named “Mr. Zero-to-Sixty in Thirty Days” because of the complete turnaround in my business). My wife got a new job with a nice raise. All we needed was a little help from the lender. But lenders are flooded with people just like us. They never even looked at our package.
As a real estate agent, I took foreclosure extra hard. It wasn’t easy talking to people about homes when I knew I’d just lost mine. The thought “I couldn’t keep my own house” was always in the back of my head. Foreclosure is a deeply psychological event. When word got out, I heard from other Realtors who were in the same boat I was. Knowing that really helped me.
What will we miss? Things like the deck on which we had some fabulous BBQs with great friends. Knowing I won’t have my neighbors anymore.
We’re trying to get back on track. We’ve tightened our belts and given up extras. We talk a lot more about our finances—about what we’re spending, and why.
And I have learned a lesson that will help me better understand my clients—have compassion. People all have their own hopes and dreams. So try to be compassionate. The emotions, the anger, the depression—if ever there was a time in a person’s life when they need someone to lean on, this is it.
4
CSI USA: WHO KILLED THE AMERICAN DREAM?
So how did we get here?
How did we get to a place where our infrastructure is well past its sell-by date, our schools are failing, our middle class is on life support, and the American Dream is turning into a mirage?
Who took control of our national GPS and set as our ultimate destination the coordinates of a Third World future? Casting about for answers, the knee-jerk response is to point a finger and hurl an enraged j’accuse! at Washington. And, in this case, the knee-jerk response is right. But for all the wrong reasons.
Listen to the punditocracy and they’ll tell you—loudly and often—that our politics is “broken” and “paralyzed.” That government no longer works because of bipartisan bickering and polarization. That the parties have moved so far to their respective extremes on the left and the right that collaboration and consensus are no longer possible.