A news story a couple of weeks ago caught my eye. A man knocked “his” house down in order to prevent the bank(s) from foreclosing on it.
The news media treated this story as though the man did something extraordinary. The news made it seem as though the “home owner” won an epic battle with the bank.
Sorry. That’s not the case at all. I’m not sure what people understand about mortgages, but here’s the fact of the matter. The house belongs to the bank until the mortgage is paid off. Unless the owner has the deed the only thing that man did was destroy the bank’s property. What people forget is the house is the collateral against the loan, a.k.a – the mortgage.
We are all renters with the bank until the deed is in our name and the mortgage loan is paid off.
That gentleman made a bad situation worse. He went from having collateral – the house – to give back to the bank for non-payment of the loan to owing the entire balance, since he destroyed the only bargaining chip he had.