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Most people don’t live in a house remodeled, rebuilt and refurnished for their specific needs. Not because they don’t want one, but because they can’t afford it. Sadly, this is true even when Extreme Makeover: Home Edition remodels or rebuilds a home to meet a family’s needs.
The Vardon family discovered this first hand earlier this week. The Associated Press (AP) reports that the Vardons, a hearing-imparied couple with an autistic son, are facing foreclosure. After more then 20 million viewers watched their Oak Park, MI home be remodeled on November 6, 2006, the familiy’s property tax burden increased significantly. Compounding the financial burden, they refinanced their existing mortgage, in part to help pay down the debt incurred by their son’s medical bills, which are not covered by insurance. The situation has become dire now that Larry Vardon’s employer, Chrysler LLC’s Sterling Heights stamping plant, is also on the brink of failure putting his job in potential jeopardy.
They are not the first winners of an Extreme Makeover home to face foreclosure. This summer, the Harper family faced a similar fate, according to the Washington Post. The Harpers used their new home as collateral on a $450,000 loan they used to start a construction company in the Atlanta, GA area. The construction company failed, as so many have as the real estate market has ground almost to a halt. Interestingly, an earlier editorial by Washington Post Staff Writer Hank Stuever indicates that the Harpers also recieved “enough money to pay taxes on it [their new home] for decades”.
The Byers family faced foreclosure on their Extreme Makeover dream home before either the Harpers or the Vardons. The Byers fall was the most rapid and, perhaps, the most tragic of all.In the Byers’ case KATU reports, the family’s original mortgage remained even though their original house did not. Like the Vardons, they face significantly higher property taxes. Unlike the Vardon’s son, the Byers’ daughter, Jennessa, called Boey, passed away.
There is no doubt that a home built to a family’s needs is a wonderful gift. But, like most houses, they are a long term committment. One not everyone is ready for or even able to handle. Perhaps the producers, volunteers and viewers of Extreme Makeover should keep that in mind before they decided to make themselves feel good with no though for the future of those they are trying to help. Then again, perhaps real help would not be as interesting or dramatic.
Hank Stuever sums it up best.
One thing we’ll always remember about this decade was the constant home do-over fetish, in real linfe and in reality TV — the constant warping of the consumer’s sense of entitlement, the fairy-dust economics, the MasterCard reminder that the experience is priceless. We’ll look back ad think of all the time we spent watching shows where people flipped houses for easy profit, or traded spaces, or designed it to sell, or were led into rooms blindfolded to experience paroxysms that came with new paint, new furniture, new life.”
Last 3 posts by Jay Hammond
- Mortgage modification law threatens right to representation in California - July 15th, 2009
- How Cities & States are coping with foreclosure - July 10th, 2009
- Freddie Mac educates borrowers via YouTube - July 9th, 2009
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