♪♫ ♪ Bad boys, bad boys – what ya gonna do? What ya gonna do when the foreclosure police come for you? ♪♫ ♪
That sounds like a theme song for some really bad reality television. However, ABC’s April 2 “Good Morning America” decided to exploit the housing downturn with its own form of reality TV. Cameras accompanied an officer of the court as he removed delinquent borrowers from their foreclosed homes.
“This house is ground zero,” von Fremd said. “It is in foreclosure. It is excruciating for both the families and the people forced to be the bearer of bad news. In his 38 years in law enforcement, Constable John Collins is proud he put thousands of criminals behind bars. Today, he is devastated to be putting homeowners out on the street.”
Von Fremd did not explain how the foreclosure and eviction process works in Texas, where Collins was, and each state is different. However, there is usually a process in place to notify people that the home is being foreclosed on to give them a chance to leave the property before being thrown out.
One of the homes Collins had to remove a family from was worth $500,000. That’s not exactly average. The national median home price for the month of February was $195,900, [1]according to the National Association of Realtors.
“When the owners of the half-million-dollar home could not make the payments, the bank took possession,” von Fremd said. “The court ordered Constable Collins to evict the family. He says it’s heartbreaking that some refer to him as the grim reaper.”
“Good Morning America” did its best to make it seem like this could happen to anyone. Von Fremd called foreclosures “a nationwide crisis” and “a fiasco.” But Sawyer offered a disclaimer at the end of the segment.
“By the way, of the two million about to foreclose this year, we have to keep some perspective,” Sawyer said. “There are 75 million owner homes here, owner-occupied homes in the country. So, that’s two million out of 75 million.”
If you do the math, the two million foreclosed-upon homes represent less than 3 percent of the total owner-occupied homes – hardly suggesting foreclosure is an event that can happen to anyone.