Work From Home Couple

Much of my writing income comes from the stories I write on residential real estate. When I started covering the home-selling business, the country was in the middle of a huge housing boom. It seemed that everyone was selling their homes and making tons of money while doing it.

That, of course, has all changed. Today, no one wants to put their homes on the market. Sale prices have dipped dramatically in most major markets across the United States. And, even worse, loads of people are now struggling to make their mortgage payments, and are now facing foreclosure.

I’ve run into a lot of people who have no sympathy for people in danger of losing their homes. They peg foreclosure victims as homeowners who were simply greedy, and who purchased too much home for their income. It’s true that some foreclosure victims do fall into this category. But the vast, vast majority of them are simply people who’ve run into tough luck: They may have lost their jobs. They may have suffered a serious injury or illness. They may have been talked into an unsound adjustable-rate mortgage loan by a lender who was supposed to be looking out for their best interests.

Unfortunately, stories like this one, which ran in a recent USA Today, and which I blogged about on one of my other sites, don’t help this situation any. The story talks about homeowners who are intentionally missing their mortgage payments so that they may qualify for federal housing assistance.

It is people like this, scam artists, who create the atmosphere of cynicism that causes people to regard all foreclosure victims as either greedy, lazy or dishonest.

Losing a home is a terrible tragedy. Even missing some mortgage payments is enough to cause homeowners serious stress, shame and angst. So remember, next time you grouse about the fact that “someone is getting something for nothing,” that most foreclosure victims are hard-working folks who’ve just gotten caught up in some bad luck.

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