Change Motels


The part that he has to buy a house to get out of the motel pretends there aren't any other motels in town. Um, how about Holiday Inn for two weeks.

And his mom blames Rick Carver, not the bank that foreclosed seems misplaced.

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This bothered me as well. Also, if the bank forecloses are you supposed to get your cut of whichever part of the mortgage you've already payed? The whole point of foreclosing is that the bank recoup their part of the debt.

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the price of the house had crashed and they were moving to auction it off cheaply.

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The problem is that most of these homes were "under water". That means that the value of the outstanding mortgage was worth more than the entire current value of the home.

Let me give you an example.

Say they bought the house in January 2000 for $250,000. To buy the house, they paid 10% as a down payment = $25,000. They took out a 30-year mortgage for $225,000 at 5%. They make their monthly mortgage payments for TEN YEARS, but then in January 2010, they don't . . . leading to the foreclosure and eviction let's say, 6 months later. In the 10 years, they've probably only paid the mortgage down to $178,000. If you don't think is correct, plug the numbers into a mortgage amortization calculator (just google those three words). With me so far?

Okay. After not keeping up with the mortgage payments for 6 months, they're evicted in July 2010, and they're off to the motel. The bank now owns the house. The bank goes to sell the house. But the real estate market has crashed. Why? Because of thousands of foreclosures just like this, there is a glut of housing on the market. No one can afford to buy a home. Those who have been foreclosed upon don't have the credit rating sufficient enough for the banks to lend them money to buy a home. Because there are more homes for sale than there are buyers able to buy them, house prices and values PLUMMET.

That property, which was worth $250,000 in 2000, and had probably increased to, say, $300,000 in 2007, is, as the movie shows, worth only $160,000 in 2010. When the bank goes to sell the house, they will not even be able to recover what's left outstanding on the mortgage. That's what being "under water" means - the value of the home has dropped so much that it doesn't even make sense to keep on making payments on the mortgage.

So the lending bank, the one that owns the mortgage, doesn't recoup its part of the debt. The sale of the home under these circumstances is called a short sale.




I want the doctor to take your picture so I can look at you from inside as well.

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If the sale proceeds exceeded what you owe then yes. But, it would take a long time for the house to actually go on market, and in that market, it would probably sell for less than what his equity was...

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There are other motels, but not many that cater to the homeless with affordable weekly or monthly rates. Such motels do not attract the best "guests".

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The guy has money to buy a $300K house; he could afford to stay in any reasonably-priced hotel in the city.

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You thought given the money he was earning, he would move to a better motel elsewhere.

It's that man again!!

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Clearly when Redbeard started harassing him, he could have found someplace else for two months. Most puzzling aspect of a movie which I liked.

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I thought that too, but in the movie they show him reinvesting every penny in his house through Carver.

I don't understand why he was so bent on re-buying the old house in the first place anyway, but i guess that's not taking into account memories and emotional attachment. Still, as soon as i make several thousands per month, i rent a cheap but decent flat for my family and work my way up to the big deals and big money and only after having made a significant amount, re-invest in real estate/buy a place without the friggin bank! I thought the point was the get out of the bank and loan servitude...

The first house is history, work your bum off to buy an even better one and make sure such a situation never happens ever again. Period. Especially now that his new job is a cash-cow.


People who don't like their beliefs being laughed at shouldn't have such funny beliefsī²

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This is why the poor will always stay poor. Bad decision making. Won't see that in Chinese, Iranian, Indian, Jewish families. They would have rented a modest house, and stashed that cash away.

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He's helping his single mother and she's helping him take care of his single-parent child. That's what loving families do. That makes him smart, not stupid.

In retrospect, it wasn't wise to stay at the cheap motel, but Nash was still new at the eviction game and its paranoia and probably just didn't consider that some of his victims might end up there until one of them did. Before that guy attacked him, moving to a better motel didn't make sense because it would disrupt the kid's schooling and stress him out even more.

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Thought the same thing. And why couldnt Nash rent one of Carver's houses while he was getting back on his feet? He was pretty tight with Carver after a while.

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[deleted]

I actually lived in Orlando for 3 years.

Orlando is a city of transients, not unlike LA. Therefore, there are more than the average number of "rent by the week" hotels, motels and furnished apartments -- more than you would find in (say) Akron, Ohio.

When we moved there, at first my husband went alone and needed a short term residence until we could finalize arrangements to buy a house there. This was BEFORE the housing meltdown -- 2001.


He had NO PROBLEM finding some very nice "Extended Stay" suits, near his job. They were nicer than most motels, though more plain than an upscale hotel. The cost was about $1100 a month in 2001. This was cheaper than renting a motel at $40 a night (do the math) and the Extended Stay place had a mini-kitchen and laundry facilities.

He did briefly stay in a motel and there are PLENTY of those -- remember this is DISNEYWORLD territory. There are more than the average number of motels in Orlando.

If someone was threatening me, I'd move ASAP, to the other side of town. The characters were acting like idiots. Why didn't the mother -- who looks about 45-50 years old -- get a real job in a real beauty salon? and bring in $1500 a month? or more? She isn't 80 and there is no indication she is sick or incapable of working.

The child has a mother somewhere -- is she dead? Why isn't she paying Nash child support?

Once Nash is working....why not move to a nicer motel? Or to a short term rental? or as someone with a brain says here -- why not rent one of the EMPTY HOUSES THAT THE MOVIE IS ABOUT?

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late to this discussion, I know - I only saw this movie last night.
This has been asked a couple of times on this thread - The reason he didn't use one of Carver's many empty properties was because it would have meant his mother knowing who he was working for.
Once ginger-beard came after him at the motel, though, the pretense was up anyway - actually, shortly after that, he did buy a nicer house, only for his mother to complain about where the money came from and how this was the home of someone else who'd been evicted and it was their old house or nothing....so actually I'd say his mother was the irrational one, but if he's spent his whole life being told that THEIR house is the most important place in the world and that the family should NEVER leave it, no wonder he's so set on moving back there and makes such bad decisions in the process.
So the alternative was what the original thread suggests - move to a nicer motel or other short-term stay....although by this point his mother's so angry about the fact that he'd been working for Carver on the sly that I think she'd have refused that too and would have gone to Tampa anyway, and as someone's already said on here, moving before the ginger-beard incident would have meant further disruption for his son....so maybe it's not as irrational as I initially thought!

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