How the Rich are Different: As Foreclosure Looms, They Can Pay
The mortgage meltdown includes even some homeowners in the nation’s most affluent communities. But the rich, as F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, are different than the rest of us. They have more money (as Ernest Hemingway is said to have noted), and hence may well be able to pull out of a downward financial dive even on the brink of foreclosure.
As a result, at least one auctioneer is now about to try, for the fourth time, to get a handsome single family home in the suburban New York City community of Greenwich, Conn., reports the New York Times. “We never had a case that had gone through three separate sales attempts,” said the dazed would-be auctioneer, John Thygerson, as he put up a fourth set of signs. The last sale attempt failed, according to the newspaper, when the owner tendered a $50,000 payment a few days before the scheduled auction.
Rescue options that work better for the well-to-do include so-called short sales (lenders apparently may be more willing to work with the wealthy, who can perhaps meet a payment plan for the shortfall between the amount the home sells for and its mortgage balance) and even simply selling the home on the open market—buyers, even in the current struggling real estate market, are eager to snap up a Greenwich home at a bargain prices, according to the Times.
