OT: Martin Defaults on Rocklin Home...

[KingInExile]

OK, this is a couple days old...but I though was still something worth bringing up. Apparently Kevin Martin is now in default on a mortgage for a home he owns in Rocklin...

A bank has issued a notice of default to former Kings basketball star Kevin Martin – the first step in foreclosing on his million-dollar Rocklin home. The notice comes just a few months after former Kings basketball star Ron Artest finalized a short sale on his Loomis property.

Martin's attorney, Michael Hackard, said a foreclosure probably won't happen. Like a lot of homeowners, Hackard said, Martin has been tangling with his bank as he pursues a short sale on the home.

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So, does this change your opinion of him?

For me it only reinforces the feeling I had when he got traded, which was that he was a punk hiding behind a "nice guy" exterior. Yes, I know very well that the housing market in Sacto (and all over the nation) is crappy. Yes, it's regrettable that the value of his house has dropped nearly in half. But I also find it inconceivable that a guy pulling down $10M a year can't either absorb the loss or can't just sit on the property until the market improves. The bank should NOT be the one to take any hit on this deal. I don't have a lot of sympathy for the banking industry (especially the larger predator banks that made billions off of questionable loans). But I have even less sympathy for someone pulling down an eight-figure salary who tries to make others foot the bill for an investment of theirs that went bad. IMO, this move just put Martin in the same boat with Latrell Sprewell's "I won't take $7M a year because I have a family to feed".

[/rant]

Edit: I don't know much about Artest's "short sale"...but if it ended up with the bank absorbing a loss while he got to walk away, then he should be in the same boat with Martin and Spree.

[_SRV_]

When doing a short sale, who pays the difference between the loan and sale price?

[longfellow44]

^^nobody the bank is forced to take it as a loss.

Thats why banks always fight so hard against short sales because it affects their bottom line. But usually a short sale is much more profitable for a bank than a foreclosure where the house could be vacant for a significant time. Vacant houses drop their value quickly. It largely has to do with the lack of daily use, if a person doesnt use their pipes for water then after 3-4 months the pipes couls become damaged. Little things like that add up to a huge drop in value for the bank. So honestly they should accept a short sale as long as they dont lose more than 20% of the mortgage value.

[_SRV_]

The person who couldn've afford his loan goes clean? no damage whatsoever?

[ICMTM]

If you're saying that a short sale should be a means for people who have no other financial options...then yes I agree. In any event I always thought Martin was a fraud. I remember people being up in arms about my opinion at 1st.

To quote Lauryn Hill:

"It's funny how money changed the situation!"

[DickVitale]

I do not like or dislike martin...
My opinion is...
If martin can legally and morally get away with sticking the bank with the bill... then why not do it?
It is not like the people in the banking industry are a bunch of saints... I am sure they've screwed over their fair share of honest and hard working people... a little taste of their on medicine wouldn't hurt

[Wolfay]

My opinion of Martin for a while now has been that he's more of a douche than he lets on.

[KingInExile]

I do not like or dislike martin...
My opinion is...
If martin can legally and morally get away with sticking the bank with the bill... then why not do it?
It is not like the people in the banking industry are a bunch of saints... I am sure they've screwed over their fair share of honest and hard working people... a little taste of their on medicine wouldn't hurt

Martin pulls down $10M a year. That means he makes enough money in 15.5 games to have bought that $1.9M house outright. It takes him 6.5 games to make enough money to cover the $800K loss from the original purchase price and current value. Sorry...I have zero sympathy for a guy who makes that much money.

As I said earlier, I have little sympathy for banks. But if they are going to suffer losses on home deals gone bad, then it needs to be because they were the ones who made bad decisions to give bad loans to people who bought houses they couldn't really afford. They shouldn't be the ones to suffer when the guy who has the loan makes enough money in one month to pay the original cost.

[SacTownKings4Life]

And um... why does anybody care so much?
Kevin Martin & Latrell Spreewell in the same sentence? lmao!

[OGSactownballer]

What's the difference?

To me this illustrates why nobody making less than a million - or really quite a bit more - per year has any business supporting the Republican party. It is simply a a business transaction to him and quite possibly his business manager is handling it and he knows nothing about it - and the same with Ron.

The point made above about the banks making BILLIONS of dollars off of the whole mortgage farce and then USING the taxpaying man and woman that they screwed in the first place to not only bail them out of their losses but pad their profits is correct.

I am an excellent example. In 2005 I bought my first home - a townhome in Sacramento - for @$280,000. This property is now worth @$65-70,000 due to the fraudulent upward soar of the real-estate market that was perpetuated on the American people.

Think about it. Who loaned people the money whether bad risk or good (and I am certainly a VERY good risk in the medical field) - the banks. Who rode the artificially low interest rates to encourage people to keep refinancing for greater and greater sums - the banks. Who encouraged second and THIRD loans to people with artificially high home values that held no vasis in reality and rather wer just pumped by BANK-EMPLOYED estimators - the banks. And lastly, who not only was bailed out at taxpayer expense but also gets to write off this "terrible loss" from their corporate taxes? You guessed it, the banks!

Kevin Martin is really a very small cog in that wheel.