Saturday, May 27, 2006

ARMs

I tried to warn people, but nobody listens to Atrios...

ATLANTA - In the suburbs of Dallas, Bridget Edwards comes home to uncertainty every day. She and her husband, James, are four months behind on their mortgage.

“It's been just like a roller coaster,” Bridget says. “Our payments have been just up and down.”

Up and down, from $1,300 a month to more than $2,000.

...

The reason?

“We have an adjustable-rate mortgage,” she explains. “I really didn't know it would change like this.”

Today, foreclosure looms over their $129,000 home. That’s a problem facing a growing number of Americans, who are finding themselves one crisis away from financial ruin. RealtyTrac, an industry organization that maintains a nationwide database of foreclosures, says mortgage defaults between January and March of this year numbered 323,102 compared with 188,122 during the same period last year — an increase of 72 percent.



Thanks for the good advice, Greenspan.