Real estate without tears.
Did your small part to collapse the global economy? Hey! Don't beat yourself up!
Let's face it, the credit-scoring system messed up. You're more than a number—you're a good person.
Real estate agent who shall remain nameless
This generous sentiment, excerpted from a letter to the editor posted March 12, 2009 on the daily online real estate newsletter Inman News, can best be filed under the category "real estate without consequences". No, make that "life without consequences".
And it's not just the credit-scoring system that's messed up. No, when this agent's clients lose "everything—their house, their job, and they are so upset and don't know what to do...I explain to them how the system is messed up. I explain, 'If you would have been able to keep the house you would owe $300,000 more on it than the new neighbor just purchased his for'".
When this kind of explanation makes sense, either to the comforter or to the afflicted, maybe, just maybe, it's not our credit-scoring system that's messed up.
Yes, I know, many of those who've lost their homes since 2007 are victims. Victims of "predatory lending", which I put in quotation marks not because it didn't happen but because like every emotionally-charged phrase it's too often a catchall carelessly used. Victims of job loss. Victims of declining home values. Victims of now-it's-here-now-it-isn't credit markets. Victims of Wall Street shenanigans. Victims of divorce or big medical bills or the other personal calamities that can trigger foreclosure.
So I'm not particularly interested in railing against people who were sold a bill of goods. "Don't worry, prices never go down in California. You can always refinance in a year when your rate adjusts." I'm also not particularly interested in railing against people who bought McMansions. Besides, if the dupes and the unscrupulous had lost their shirts en masse buying thirty-year-old Sunnyvale condos instead of brand-spankin'-new Modesto McMansions (for the same price) this bust would have lacked its quintessentially American sweep and grandeur. I even won't rail against the relative handful of mortgage brokers and loan agents who gave bad loans to dupes and the unscrupulous. That's way too simple.
Because it was a team effort. We're all victims these days. We've moved way beyond "the devil made me do it". Only a few of us are singled out as perps and the media makes them scapegoats for our collective sins. Maybe the credit crisis is Bernie Madoff's fault. That leaves the rest of us what we always suspected we were: good people.
But when I search my mind for real victims, I think of institutions such as pension funds and school districts that invested, on the assurance of the bond-rating agencies, in mortgage-backed securities that now have no market. Institutions comprised, as they always seem to be, of people, at least a few and perhaps most of them good—good people who have a legitimate claim to victimhood.
I also think of good people losing their homes and jobs and savings and dreams, people who like the clients of this big-hearted agent are "so upset" and "don't know what to do", but who bear their loses not because they were dupes or unscrupulous but because other people were dupes or unscrupulous.
But this doesn't mean the dupes should beat themselves up. No, of course not. They're still good people. Good people who just happened to bring down good people who weren't dupes. Still, the dupes are good people and, if they're clients of a certain agent, they lose everything with this encouragement whipping them down the road of life: "So what? Start over. You're fine and you will be fine." Utter ruin as a mere flesh wound. Real estate without tears, life without consequences. I can't tell you how inspiring it is to find someone so resilient in the face of someone else's disaster.
And besides, it's not like the dupes or even the unscrupulous are whoa! Bernie Madoff, record-holder for the world's biggest Wall Street swindle, who made off with the life savings of so many of his clients. Bernie Madoff, who admitted in court the other day that it'd all been a deliberate sham, a calculated scam, since the early 1990s. At least the dupes didn't bring down good people deliberately. Even the unscrupulous were mere pikers compared to Bernie Madoff.
Bernie Madoff, who made off with $65 billion, much of it gone for good. $5 trillion in household wealth gone in the fourth quarter of 2008, all of it gone for good for some good people. Whether they were good people who were dupes or just a tiny bit unscrupulous, or good people who were neither.
Which raises the old question: can good people do bad things? Hey, maybe we shouldn't call what good people do "bad things". That's pejorative. Maybe we should call the things good people do merely imprudent or at most irresponsible. Maybe we should call the things good people do imprudent or irresponsible actions that turned out badly, even for prudent responsible bystanders. Like having one too many at a party and clipping a pedestrian on the way home. Harm without malice.
Maybe we could question whether that's a distinction worth making.