Steve Sailer: From the Washington Post, a story of an African immigrant family who have racked up $1.3 million in debt, even while not paying their mortgage for over six years.
Is plight exactly the right word to describe somebody who has not had to pay to live in a new 3,292 square foot house for the last six years? And who owns a second home?
Research has suggested that the subprime bubble looked in part like an Affinity Group Scam. A lot of the worst loans were made to minorities by co-ethnics who had gotten into the mortgage business as part of the financial world’s enthusiastic Drive for Diversity.
… Hispanics (mostly immigrants, presumably) had worse foreclosure rates in Prince George’s County than did blacks overall. From a study of foreclosures in Prince George’s County by Katrin B. Anacker, James H. Carr, and Archana Pradhan:
White: 1.91% (372 foreclosures)
Hispanic: 6.42% (3.4X the white rate, 1,091 foreclosures)
Black: 3.62% (1.9X the white rate, 4,219 foreclosures)
That implies that being an immigrant is a risk factor for default…
Everybody knows that a great way to select people is through a random lottery. That’s why Harvard lets in 500 applicants per year at random. Goldman Sachs annually puts all the resumes they receive in a spinning drum and hires the first 200 they grab. Bill Belichick always makes one of his annual NFL draft picks by throwing darts at a list of all the college football players in America.
COMMENTS TO STEVE SAILER:
* Amazing how the financial industry took advantage of these hard-working immigrants who just wanted a better life.
* I have to say I find this article quite enlightening. I hope the Post readers make it all the way through to the end. Plenty of American 21st century problems are illustrated brilliantly.
She has two bachelor degrees and a masters. And 90k in student debt and no job.
They rent out a home and the tenant won’t pay. And it takes MONTHS and legal bills to get rid of a bad tenant.
They accumulate mountains of debt. This means they’re able to make payments and are eligible for bigger mountains of debt. This sounds like Greece.
As soon as they can, they bring in family members from the old country. No waiting list for mom!
They get to live for free in a big, new home because the bank is too slow to kick them out. Will they owe back taxes on all that unearned income?
What did I miss?
* For a couple of rubes from nowhere, they sure took the corporate American slickers for a joyride. And the idiot “journalist” is feeling sorry for them as exemplifying something wrong with us white-boys.
* Saw this story earlier. Read a bit of it, until I just couldn’t take it anymore, and stopped in disgust. Wanted to know how many of these Blacks were government employees, since I think without affirmative action and government employment — also often the result of affirmative action — there would be practically no black middle class. And on top of that, one of my least favorite themes from the ‘mortgage meltdown’ — deadbeats living for free, and for a long time, in nice houses, whereas a renter would be thrown out on the street pronto, along with his belongings, by local law enforcement.
Here’s a photo of the reporter. Surprise!
* As a Ghanaian American, whose family lives in DC area, the Boateng’s story is not unusual sadly. The community is more tight knit and more susceptible to keeping up with Joneses than others I suppose. I know of 2 relatives and several family friends that ended up foreclosed upon in Prince Williams County.
There is an unseemly fondness for big, brand new homes among West Africans. During the run up, relatives were scoffing at my mother for not moving from her 1960s built home to a brand new one. She bought her home in the mid 90s and wasn’t interested in moving. Ironically she is the only one in the family to live in PG yet she actually has equity.
I’ve read all the articles in the series. Today the WaPo removed all comments from the previous stories and disallowed any for this new story. I guess they didn’t like the general tenor of the comments that sneered at the notion that these people are victims.
PG simply doesn’t have the fundamentals to support high home prices. The schools are rated the 2nd worse in the state of MD. Crime is comparatively higher and there are few major non-government employers.
However if one is realistic you can get a good deal. In my mother’s neighborhood of Camp Springs I’ve noticed more non-Black residents moving in. Homes go for about $200-250K the area is a 5 minute drive to the Beltway and Metro and 30 minutes to DC. You figure the money you save on housing you could easily put the kids in private school.
* Sounds like these scam artists have made out like bandits here. By my reckoning they’ve conned over a million dollars and they’re still going at it. Ultimately native-born, middle class taxpayers will be footing the bill. I’d be willing to chip in a buck or two to get these freeloaders on a plane back to Ghana.
* Given their occupations (him being an IT consultant) and educational achievements, I don’t think we’re dealing with people afflicted with extremely low IQs. We’re dealing with total and complete ignorance about the way money works. Also, it looks like the Boatengs hang out exclusively with fellow financial morons from their church community.
I know a few people like that in black immigrant communities. A lot of those people I know are legitimately educated but they come from both a country and a social class where no one knew anything at all about money.
I’m guessing that black african immigrants are more affected by the foreclosure because they’re more likely than african-americans to try to become homeowners by any means necessary.
Also, I can totally picture their pastor and church friends telling them to not worry and to let god take care of everything!
* Most of all, our Dear Rulers had no business importing the Boatengs or any of the other millions of Third Worlders they’ve imported since 1965, to the despoliation of what’s left of what used to be our country and to the corresponding simultaneous massively increasing wealth of their super-rich globalist campaign donors. Why, in the name of all that’s good and decent, do Americans need to have needlessly imported Third Worlders taking American IT and health care system worker jobs?
* The Litvin Law firm mentioned in the article wasn’t just in trouble with the Maryland AG, as mentioned. A quick Google reveals they also got into trouble in Rhode Island and New York for the same thing. Its principal is one Gennady Litvin of Brooklyn. So my guess is that we have a freedom-loving Jackson-Vanek immigrant preying on freedom-loving Ghanian immigration lottery-winning immigrants as they all clamber towards the American dream, which oddly enough has nothing to do with freedom and everything to do with monster-homes. I think there’s a Tom Wolfe novel in here.
* I also note with some interest the importation of Grandma to mind the kids. When they arrived in the USA the Boatengs had two children and gave birth to another within the next decade. It doesn’t seem to say how many they have now.
I’ve wondered for a while now about whether white families are equipped to keep up(in terms of reproduction) with non-whites who come to traditionally white nations but import their own child-rearing habits. Steve likes to periodically contrast the different marriage and family-formation customs between historical England and and China, with the former creating a culture that encouraged reproductive restraint to some extent, and the latter culture having a system that allowed a select group of men to be a fecund as humanly possible.
A can’t speak for the American experience, but in Canada, a lot of Asian(eat south, west or wherever) immigrants also import their family structures to their new homes as well. Many households in these immigrant communities are not nuclear. They often have three generations under one roof, perhaps with multiple siblings and their families, all guided by the patriarch. Thus individualism is discouraged. That’s why white politicians fall all over each other to win these non-white votes, because it’s generally a more efficient use of their time and resources.
Going back to the main point about higher reproduction, Canada’s long-lax family reunification rules have made it easy for recent immigrants to import non-productive older family members whose prospects for work are minimal (Eg. Grandma Boateng), but can easily mind children while the parents work, allowing them to save money and possibly have more children. It is also not uncommon among immigrant Chinese in the west to host older mothers and fathers, who shuttle between adult children to help whenever a new grandchild is born. In general an Asian or African wife probably wouldn’t see much out of the ordinary of her mother-in-law came to live with them and help raise the children. She might not like the idea, but it wouldn’t be outside the realm of her cultural experience.
In contrast, the individualistic western family model means that a parent generally does not cohabit with an adult offspring’s family unless they are incapable of caring for themselves, so if they are to aid their adult offspring in child-rearing(Eg babysit so the parents save on childcare), they must live nearby, which is becoming less and less frequent, especially as more and more eastern Canadian whites move west for better job prospects. So basically even with educated, law abiding types like the Boatengs, I think that by importing them, we’re basically importing people who are culturally equipped to out-birth us.
Also, if you read the original article, you’ll see that Kofi’s first job when he arrived in the US was as an “IT instructor”. Was this at a community college or as part of some corporate training gig? Either way, I’m sure that the customers, whether teenaged students or companies, felt privileged knowing that in exchange for their money, they would be taught by a man with degree in computer science at the University of Science and Technology in Kumasi.
Finally, Steve, you failed to mention that before construction started on the Albatross-home, the Boateng clan went to the building site and well, this happened:
“We sanctify the grounds with the blood of Jesus,” Kofi said.
* In Chicago in the 1990s I lived next to a 20-story public housing project for the elderly. A large fraction of the residents were East Asians who didn’t speak English. I believe most were imported by their immigrant children as child minders and the like and then turned over to the American taxpayers to house when they were no longer useful in that role.
* Another note on this “case”: I understand the weapon was never found — from the tone of the story, someone must have held a gun to their heads.
* Some simple arithmetic, based on the WaPo excerpts that Steve quotes.
The Boatengs bought their P.G. County home in November 2005, with a $60,000 down payment and two mortgages totaling $554,683.
They refinanced in September 2006, taking out a mortgage for $612,286.
During this time, the WaPo reporter claims their income was about $113,000 ($82,740 (Kofi, IT consultant for a government contractor) plus $30,000 (Comfort, administrative assistant)).
A prudent person with good future-time orientation would estimate their house payment in terms of PITI (principal, interest, taxes, and insurance) over the long term, i.e. not as the initial payments in a balloon vehicle.
Assuming 0% equity and an assessed value of $612,286:
Principal and interest, 30-year 5% fixed interest loan, monthly payment: $3,290.
P.G. County property tax, $0.96 per $100 of assessed value: $490.
Private mortgage insurance is required, costing $350-$550. Say $350.
Homeowner’s insurance will cost at least $200 per month.
Thus, the Boatengs committed to monthly payments of at least $4,300 on their new home. That’s $52,000 per year, or at least 46% of their claimed gross annual earnings.
“As a general guideline, your monthly mortgage payment, including principal, interest, real estate taxes and homeowners insurance, should not exceed 28% of your gross monthly income.”
This doesn’t take into account any of the many adverse factors mentioned by the reporter, such as the fully-mortgaged Germantown house.
Everybody who touched this ticking bomb knew that it was going to explode. The banks, the brokers, the advisors, the husband, and the wife.
Knew or should have known.
This reporter and her employer seem to hate the notion of accountability.
