Canaries in the Labyrinth
The real estate, title and mortgage industries have a woven a complex catacomb of subterranian mine shafts. The shafts, although invisible from the surface, run deep and the relationships are complex. As the evidence begins to mount regarding alleged impropriety surrounding some of the real estate transaction practices of 2000-2005, REALonomics believes the problems will escalate.
For centuries, the coal mining industry has used a “low-tech” method for detecting deadly gas…canaries. Yes, it’s true. As mine shafts became deeper and more complex in their design, problems with ventilation resulted. The solution was to use canaries; birds highly sensitive to methane and carbon monoxide gas, to signal the miners that the danger in the labyrinth had reached terminal levels. The canaries are signaling danger and the miners are bailing out by the dozens, hundreds and even thousands.
The canaries are left behind, dead or dying as the miners scatter under a sea of bankruptcy filings. Those who were quick to call for the heads of ENRON executives and the like for their scandalous exploitation of the average working canary, should now once again raise the outcry against lending practices pushed by greedy executives within the mortgage industry.
Estimates range from 1-2 million homeowners left behind to face foreclosure in the wake of the mortgage mining disaster. Cleaning out the labyrinth will be painful, ugly and time consuming. Those who escape the noxious fumes will do so at the expense of the canaries, left behind, locked in cages, whose wobbling gave signal to the perpetrators to save themselves.
In this Consumer-Centric Era of the real estate industry the call for business transparency, strict ethical lending standards and industry accountability must go out.
REALonomics hopes we do not simply seal-off the shafts but instead that we recognize the need for serious self-analysis and internal policing of the triad of powers within the industry…real estate, mortgage and title.
Transparent Real Estate…
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