Sometimes, it’s the little things that get you.
After yanking that “Sold” sign out of the front yard, every first-time homebuyer finds themselves confronted with an endless list of bits and bobs that they never seemed to need when they were renters – a lawnmower, power tools, paintbrushes, a meth testing kit…
Oh yeah, about that last $50 dollar item.
That’s one little thing that’s going to cost Oregon homebuyer Jonathan Hankins quite a bit. Hankins and his wife purchased a foreclosed home from Freddie Mac for $36,000 with the intent of fixing it up. They were in the house less than a month when Hankin’s wife started having breathing troubles, and soon afterward his two-year-old son developed mouth sores.
A quick word with the friendly neighbors revealed what the aforementioned kit later confirmed: The house had previously been used as a meth lab. And with remediation costs starting at several grand and often running north of $100,000, you’d have to be Walter White to afford to fix it.
Now, Hankins is pushing to get Freddie to test every house on its books before they’re sold – his online petition on the issue has already garnered 20,000 signatures.
The Teller wishes him luck, because he’s going to need it
The Obama administration has been browbeating Ed DeMarco and the green eyeshade brigade at Freddie for almost a year to cut a break to underwater borrowers by cutting their principle – something that at least has a chance of saving the mortgage giant money if it ends up reducing foreclosures in the long run – and has gotten bubkis. The only thing meth-testing all of their REO inventory will do for Freddie is saddle them with god-knows-how-many unsalvageable toxic waste dumps on their books only fit for the bulldozer, and not the auction block.
So you can bet DeMarco and the boys will be doing their best impression of the three wise monkeys if and when that petition ever does make its way to their desks.
In the meantime, the wise foreclosure buyer will have at least one $50 item to add to their shopping list before they sign on the dotted line….
