My Orange County Neighborhood Tale

I live in Ladera Ranch, California. A newish community in South Orange County. We’ve been "put on the map" if you will by the Real Housewives of Orange County. One of them lives in Ladera – I think its Laurie Waring, and the other’s frequent the Beachfire Bar & Grill here. We’ve seen them a few times here and there, my wife talked to them a couple of times as well. I didn’t bother.

As you know, or should know, Orange County is the mortgage capital of the universe. There are so many mortgage companies that employ (or should I say employed?) so many people that live here. I happen to be one of them. In the complex where my company is located I counted four other mortgage companies. That was without looking at the directory – there could be more.

In my Ladera Ranch neighborhood there are no shortages of mortgage employees either. This mortgage meltdown is hitting them all equally (myself included). Try this for neighborhood homogeneity:

I own a mortgage company
My neighbor to my right works for Option One (she was stressed about their sale and whether they were going to wipe out the servicing department upon a merger; she seems safe for now)
My neighbor across the courtyard is a loan officer (she was doing loans out of her house through a branch operation and is now putting her home up for sale)
My neighbor directly behind me owns a mortgage company (amazingly its almost identical to my company)
My neighbor behind me and two houses down works for New Century (their house is up for sale and I haven’t inquired about her future employment prospects)

Each one of these people have been impacted in a negative way by the mortgage crisis. They are all nice people, good neighbors, friendly, hardworking, have nice families. It’s amazing to me to think that there are thousands of other families that live just in my little Orange County neighborhood who are impacted in exactly the same ways as we all are – or worse.

Every time they post a big company going down please remember the families of the people that work there that are now being affected. You don’t have to like the loan officers, the executives the frauds and hucksters, but remember there are people who worked hard, honestly and ethically and were very good at what they did who are now in a tough spot.

It was just an eye opener to me to see how many people within a stone’s throw of my house are impacted by this debacle and I hardly know everyone in my neighborhood.