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Steve Gilliard, 1964-2007
It is with tremendous sadness that we must convey the news that Steve Gilliard, editor and publisher of The News Blog, passed away June 2, 2007. He was 42.
To those who have come to trust The News Blog and its insightful, brash and unapologetic editorial tone, we have Steve to thank from the bottom of our hearts. Steve helped lead many discussions that mattered to all of us, and he tackled subjects and interest categories where others feared to tread.
Please keep Steve's friends and family in your thoughts and prayers.
Steve meant so much to us.
We will miss him terribly.
me: "US News - Mortgage crisis hits million-dollar homes"
Even monster mansions have nightmares
Thanks to "me" for this great score - uh oh!Mortgage crisis hits million-dollar homes
Thu Mar 29, 2007 2:52 PM ET
By Walden Siew
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Sheriff Leo McGuire presides over foreclosure auctions in Bergen County, New Jersey, where the bidding for a home reached $1.2 million last June -- a record for one of the wealthiest counties in the nation.
Homes sold on the auction block for as much as $852,000 this month -- more than quadruple the median home price in the United States. County officials believe they are close to setting another record soon.
In Troy, Michigan, Dorothy Guzek, a credit counselor since 1988, has also seen the changing face of foreclosure.
Her clients, while predominantly poor and minorities, increasingly are neither. Nowadays, homeowners holding professional careers with six-figure salaries regularly drop by her office. More and more they come from upscale Michigan communities such as Independence and Clarkston -- once the summer retreat for Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Co.
"Because of the financing that was possible, so many people bought the bigger house, the million-dollar house with the bowling alley or the tennis court outside," says Guzek, who works for GreenPath Debt Solutions, a nonprofit service based in Farmington Hills, Michigan. "People across all income brackets are having financial hardship."
>>
This is not a poor person real estate crisis or even a middle class real estate crisis. People think that upper middle class people aren't immune to the same needs and situations as everyone else?
Note --- I did not say rich or wealthy -- because by my definition, those are people who never need to think of things like a paycheck and can drive whatever they want, wear whatever they want, live however they want. They're not the ones eyeing the flatscreens at Costco. They're not the ones who go apeshit at the mall and they don't feel guilty about buying less for their kids in December. Consumption is NOT a sport or an ongoing holiday.
True rich people are not subject to the emotional vagaries that purchasing things can seem to solve. Crappy school system? Not a problem, just send the kids to private/boarding school.
- posted by "me"