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A year on, it’s still a housing story
Around the time Lehman Brothers’ collapse nearly pushed the global banking system off a cliff, Rose Barrett’s own personal financial crisis began.
Recently separated from her husband, the Kissimmee, Florida resident quickly found it hard to keep making her monthly $1,939 mortgage payment on her salary as a night nurse at a local rehabilitation center. She made a hardship application to her lender, the subprime banking arm of Banco Popular seeking relief from her 40-year fixed rate $200,000 mortgage with a hefty 9.45 percent interest rate.
But by the time she asked for help in mid-September, it probably was too late to alter the trajectory of what is an all-too-familiar tale.
As the stories and commentary marking the one-year anniversary of the failure of Lehman mount, it is also worth remembering that housing was a root cause of the financial crisis — and that it had many victims like Barrett.
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The Wall
