I just finished refinancing the mortgage on my home. Similar to the way in which the right-drifting intellectual writer
had to subject himself to
before being convinced that it was indeed a horrible torture, I apparently had to jump into the mortgage market in the
to be certain it was in the throes of a desperate and dehumanizing crisis.
These days a bank, in something akin to a financial rectal exam, needles one with minutiae, paperwork and intimate details for sustained periods of time in a kind of mental, white-collar interrogation technique.
The worst part is the knowledge that rather than being subject to intense scrutiny, borrowers should be the ones doing the scrutinizing. It’s estimated that around three percent of borrowers are currently in serious danger of default with their mortgage payments. But with mounting concern about the number of banks that will fail in the coming year, estimates peg a similar percentage of lending institutions as being at risk (for more on other looming financial crises, see this week’s cover story, Page 17). Yet banks are strangely unresponsive to a borrower’s demand for evidence that the institution is not going to collapse during the term of a loan agreement.
We can be sure, however, that the buying and selling of houses, especially in Santa Fe, is going to continue. Consider the AARP magazine’s recent peg of Santa Fe as the fifth “
.” On top of hiking and recreation, nearby Albuquerque’s wealth of medical specialists and a fancy farmer’s market, Santa Fe’s median home price ($499,000 when including the county, although 2008 second quarter statistics are $353,900) sits in a comfortably average spot among hot retirement locales. It feels expensive to locals, but to a retiring baby boomer, especially one coming from a coastal metropolis, home prices are downright reasonable. And with retirements occurring this year at the rate of one every eight seconds, according to Jared Bernstein (author of
Crunch: Why Do I Feel So Squeezed? (And Other Unsolved Economic Mysteries)
), we can assume a healthy number of homes will be purchased in apparently desirable Santa Fe. Add that David Borchard, author of
, suggests that most retirees long to “reinvent” themselves—another of Santa Fe’s specialties—and the future of homes sales here is bright against an otherwise bleak backdrop.
The question lately is how many of those homes will sell for $750,000 and above, thus triggering the real estate transfer tax that Santa Fe voters may enact in March of 2009. That, of course, is assuming it gets to the ballot.
The Santa Fe Association of Realtors
has gone with the current vogue of suing the City of Santa Fe in an attempt to have the tax ruled illegal before voters get a chance to have a voice. The lawsuit hinges on a fine point of the New Mexico State constitution, but the rationale, according to the Association of Realtors, is that those able to own expensive homes should not bear the “burden” of workforce and affordable housing, which is where the tax proceeds would be used.
I wonder what the Association believes to constitute a true burden? Is paying $1,000 on a $1.6 million home sale a burden in the same way as not being able to afford a modest home in the city where you were born? Is paying one percent on the transfer of a multi-million dollar home a burden along the lines of a potential
to bail out the irresponsible practices of mortgage lenders and federally coddled organizations? Is it a burden at all similar to having to decide whether you’re going to pay your rent or buy food or keep the heat on during the winter?
I’m not crybaby for the way things used to be but, damn it, it used to be a point of pride in this country to give something back when you’d been fortunate enough to earn (or inherit) more than you needed. It used to be a point of pride for people to care about the health and wealth of their community and not just their own slice of the pie. And even if it didn’t used to be like that, or at least not to the extent that I want to believe, that doesn’t make it right to be a greedy whiner with no sense of vision or community. The so-called burden of workforce and affordable housing is a mutual responsibility for us all. It is about saving the middle class that our federal economic policy is hell-bent on destroying. It is about preserving class, race and cultural diversity in a unique and beautiful place.
Does the short-sighted Association of Realtors not see that if this becomes an Aspen-ized enclave of wealthy white people that even most wealthy white people will want to stop coming here? Does the Association and its top-tax-bracket cronies who are moaning about an amount of money they will never notice is gone from their tall balances realize that Santa Fe’s home values are healthy because of the diversity and culture made by people who are creators and service providers and police and fire fighters and teachers?
When an ambulance or a fire truck doesn’t make it to the million-dollar hilltop home of someone who opposes this tax, will they realize as they grip their chest or watch it all burn that the crew couldn’t scramble fast enough because they had to come in from Rio Rancho, from Española, from Pecos?
And of all the petty ways to solve a disagreement…litigation? The Santa Fe Association of Realtors should be ashamed of itself for this waste of time and money.
I can’t wait until the
give it right back to them in March.
