Although [the community of] Merced [California] has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country, this borrower isn\u2019t in such dire straits. She\u2019s not even behind on her mortgage. But her oldest daughter is turning 18, which means an end to $500 a month in child support. She just wants a better deal.<\/p>\n
The mayor hangs up and shrugs: \u201cIt\u2019s a surprise her daughter is turning 18? You\u2019d think she could have planned ahead.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n
But hardly anyone in Merced planned very far ahead.<\/p>\n
Not the city, which enthusiastically approved the creation of dozens of new neighborhoods without pausing to wonder if it could absorb the growth.<\/p>\n
Certainly not the developers. They built 4,397 new homes in those neighborhoods, some costing half a million dollars, without asking who in a city of only 80,000 could afford to buy them all.<\/p>\n
Obviously not the speculators turned landlords, who thought that they could get San Francisco rents in a working-class agricultural city ranked by the American Lung Association as having some of the worst air in the nation.<\/p>\n
And, sadly, not the local folk who moved up and took on more debt than they could afford. They believed \u201d\u201d because who was telling them differently? \u201d\u201d that the good times would be endless.<\/p>\n
\u201cOwning a home is the American dream,\u201d\u009d says Jamie Schrole, a Merced real estate agent. \u201cEverybody was just trying to live out their dream.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n
The belief that this dream could be achieved with no risk, no worry and no money down was at the center of the American romance with real estate in the early years of this decade<\/b>, and not just in Merced.<\/p>\n