Released: October 08, 2007

American Dream becomes debtor’s nightmare

Source: Jennifer Delson and and Christopher Goffard, Los Angeles Times (Free Registration)

Soledad Aviles dreamed for years of owning a home, with a plot of land where he could grow corn and chiles as he did in his native Mexico. So he felt blessed last year when he learned he could buy a three-bedroom, single-story stucco house on West La Verne Avenue in Santa Ana.

Referred to a local loan broker by a trusted friend, he borrowed the entire purchase price of $615,000 from Washington Mutual at a high interest rate typical of sub-prime loans. The monthly payment, as he says he understood it, would be $3,600—steep for a glass cutter who made $9 an hour—but Aviles counted on his wife and three of his six daughters, who also worked low-paying jobs, to contribute.

“We took out our pencils, figured out our take-home pay and figured out that if we all pitched in, it would work,” said Aviles, 54, a stoop-shouldered, soft-spoken man with a sixth-grade education from Mexico.

Relying on the broker’s word, he signed loan documents written in English, a language he neither speaks nor reads, Aviles said.

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