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Comment by calgoo | Hacker News Reader

Reminds me of the banks here in Spain in the early 2000s: "Why do you want the loan to only cover your house? Add a car and some vacations in there as well!".... Ummm sure, Ill add a car and vacations... to my house loan? Yea, then people wondered why the country crashed (apart from other issues such as corruption).

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To be fair, in Spain, failing to pay a mortgage will mean not just losing the house, but pretty much anything else you own. A cousin of mine, very well off, bought a summer house, which quickly lost a lot of its value. In the US, she could have said screw it! and let the bank have the house, but Spain being Spain, she'd have to pay the difference between the house's market value and the remainder of the mortgage.

That's one of the reasons that in Spain you have such amazing mortgage rates compared to the US: The banks are taking less risk.

Mortgages in the US are barely above 3% right now (they were sub-3% 30-year fixed not long ago).

How much lower are they in Spain?

I believe that is the case in some states as well (but not California). They get to repo the house, sell it and then can sue you for the rest you owe.

> I believe that is the case in some states as well (but not California). They get to repo the house, sell it and then can sue you for the rest you owe.

Even where allowed in the US, they tend (not always, it varies by state) to increase the judicial oversight of (and thus extend timelines for) the foreclosure sale, and often reduce the finality of a foreclosure sale by providing a post-sale redemption period. Both of these things are things that lenders might prefer to avoid in many cases where a deficiency would, in theory, be available.

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