Maybe it's a symptom of the real estate bubble, or a metaphor for it...But...this STORY is amazing. It was the biggest and best house that Extreme Makeover ever built for a family. I don't know whether to pity them or be angry with them. A crew of 1800 volunteers, demolishes your crappy house and builds you a new one worth half a million dollars, and rather than thank your lucky stars, you take out a home equity loan for $450,000 and lose it on your construction business, then go into foreclosure!
I hate to kick anyone when they are down, but here are my thoughts:
- If you were any good at construction, they wouldn't have had to tear down your old place for being crappy; you could've fixed it yourself.
- I don't blame you for trying to get part of the American dream, but that house was friggin' sweet and all you had to do to hold onto it was not do anything stupid (they raised $250k for home maintanence costs and college funds for the kids), but you went ahead and mortgaged it to the hilt anyway?
- Unfortunately, people will be less likely to volunteer and help their neighbors out when they hear about something like this.
There's probably a lesson in here somewhere, but I'm still trying to decipher that omen about the cat killing the mouse while I was walking my dog. Anyway, it's hard to feel bad for people when they suffer from self-inflicted wounds, but I hate to see anyone lose their homes no matter how foolish they were. What do you think?