Holidays Find Loan Crisis Spreading to Businesses and Neighbors – New York Times

December 17, 2007

Holidays Find Loan Crisis Spreading to Businesses and Neighbors
By DAVID GONZALEZ

Marcia is not in the holiday mood this year. She is not putting any Santas, reindeer or lights outside her house. She is probably not going to have many presents inside. There will be no home improvements anywhere. The fact is, she does not know how long she can even call the place hers.

A little more than a year since she bought her Bronx home for $535,000 with no cash down, she is facing foreclosure. Even if she could scrape together the $7,500 to catch up on her overdue mortgage payments, other calamities await: an interest rate that will rise in coming months and a huge balloon payment hovering in the distance like a financial Hindenburg.

“I’m not doing anything to fix up the house,” said Marcia, a nursing home aide who declined to give her last name during an interview at a community agency that offers counseling on preventing foreclosure. “I just work, eat, sleep and hope they don’t take my home. This is the worst Christmas I ever had.”

Holidays Find Loan Crisis Spreading to Businesses and Neighbors – New York Times.