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News Articles: consumer debt

Karen McDonough sits inside her home in Quincy, Mass.

Tagged as: 

  • Your Money

Zombie 2nd mortgages are coming back to life

Karen MacDonough of Quincy, Mass., was enjoying her tea one morning in the dining room when she sees something odd outside of her window: A group of people gathering on her lawn. A man with a clipboard tells her that her home no longer belongs to her. It didn't matter that she'd been paying her mortgage for 17 years, and was current on it. She was a nurse with a good job and had raised her kids here. But this was a foreclosure sale, and she was going to lose her house.

Karen had fallen victim to what's called a zombie second mortgage. Homeowners think these loans are long dead. But then the loans come back to life because they get bought up, sometimes for pennies on the dollar, by debt collectors who then move to collect and foreclose on people's homes.

On today's episode: An NPR investigation reveals the practice to be widespread. Also, what are zombie mortgages? Is all this legal? And is there any way for homeowners to fight the zombies?

This episode was hosted by Chris Arnold and Robert Smith. It was produced by Sam Yellowhorse Kesler. It was edited by Jess Jiang with help from Bob Little. And it was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Engineering by Robert Rodriguez with an assist from Patrick Murray. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.

Help support Planet Money and get bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+
in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.

May 10, 2024
|
By:
  • Chris Arnold,
  • Robert Smith,
  • and 2 more
Yazmin Lopez, here at home in Madison, Wis., first learned about credit scores from a personal finance book she picked up at Goodwill a few years after coming to the U.S. as a teenager.

Tagged as: 

  • Business

Welcome to America! Now learn to be in debt

The U.S. economy counts on you to borrow money and stay in debt for a credit score. But what if you were taught to never owe anybody anything?

May 24, 2023
|
By:
  • Alina Selyukh and
  • Tirzah Christopher

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