'
But they are doing a lot better than you, foreclosed-upon 'murkn! The Boston Globe's page one story, can you believe it?
Sigh (agenda-pushing getting to me, readers)!
"American dream goes global; More immigrants buying land in native countries" by Maria Sacchetti, Globe Staff | July 7, 2008
It is the American dream in reverse: Vinela Arias is part of a growing contingent of immigrants who are gobbling up real estate in their native countries, discouraged by high housing prices and foreclosures in the United States and enticed by the possibility of returning home to a better life than the one they left behind.
Developers from countries such as El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Peru are increasingly courting immigrants at housing fairs across the United States, including two events in Massachusetts in the last few weeks. Thousands of immigrants are buying homes in their native countries every year, and more private lenders and some governments are offering financing to sweeten the deal.
Microfinance International Corporation, a company based in Washington that makes financial services available to poor people in developing countries, including a plan this month to offer mortgages to Mexican immigrants in the United States. Buying houses has always been part of the immigrant experience in the United States.
I never saw the word "illegal" in this article.
You can check the link, but I swear I never saw it.
Immigrants still face barriers to buying homes. Often, they cannot qualify for mortgages because they live in the United States, so they send money to relatives who oversee construction of a home. Even when immigrants qualify for loans, he said, interest rates are often prohibitively high.
In recent years, though, more real-estate developers, private lenders, and governments are making it easier for immigrants to buy homes directly, according to government officials and the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington. The Dominican Republic's government is allowing immigrants to apply for up to $10,000 in aid for down payments. In Mexico, mortgage lender Su Casita had loaned about $66 million in mortgages to 1,420 Mexican immigrants in the United States as of early last year.
El Salvador's government started coordinating housing fairs in the United States two years ago because immigrants demanded it, officials said, to avoid getting ripped off by fraudulent contractors. In Massachusetts, Salvadoran immigrants streamed into promotional events last month for the English-named Riverside Gardens, a development in the Salvadoran state of San Miguel. In restaurants in Chelsea, East Boston, and Attleboro, potential buyers watched videos and flipped through brochures, perusing properties ranging from vacant lots for $27,900 to lavish red-roofed villas for more than $200,000.
The costs can be expensive in a country where the average income per capita is less than $6,000 a year, but affordable for immigrants who earn US wages. The companies are trying to attract immigrants with American-style amenities, including manicured lawns, 24-hour high-tech security, and prestige: Riverside Gardens' home models are dubbed Princeton and Vanderbilt, and the grounds include a gym and hot tub.
It occurs to me this is ALL $$$ going OUT of THIS COUNTRY!!!!
But it's a GREAT THING, according to the Globe!
They sure come up with some sick and strange ideas, folks!
Ronald Espinal, 25, of Attleboro, a sous chef who works 14-hour days at an Italian restaurant, owns two empty lots in Riverside Gardens, including one he bought last month for $32,000. Although he will soon be a US citizen, he misses El Salvador and plans to build homes on the lots. He intends to use the homes for vacations or, perhaps, retirement.
"I think about retiring, resting my body," he said in a phone interview as pots and pans clanked in the background. "Here, you work all the time."
Not if you can't find work you don't!!!!
For Arias and her boyfriend Ramón Quiñonez, owning a home worth just over $100,000 - which will cost them roughly $1,000 a month - will mark a triumphant return to the Dominican Republic after years of sacrifice in the United States.
Arias, the youngest of seven children, followed five older siblings to the United States. The money they sent home built their parents a new house and furnished it with comfortable chairs, a stove, and a microwave. And the money they still send back pays for doctors' visits as their parents age.
Quiñonez graduated from college in the capital of Santo Domingo then gave up a job at a TV station eight years ago to join his sister in Massachusetts and to send money home to their mother. Now, instead of a coat and tie, he wears an apron and baseball cap to stack organic vegetables at Whole Foods.
Their sacrifices meant years apart from their families. Arias is a US citizen, but she doesn't quite feel at home on the gritty street in Roxbury where she lives. He misses his career.
Both of them said they daydream about the house at work, though it will probably be at least a decade before they can live there permanently. They are buying the home through the Dominican group Delta Intur Corp., which held its first housing fair in New England last month. Sales are jumping 8 percent a year, said sales executive Haydeé Rodríguez.
"That's part of my goal, a better life for my family," Quiñonez said. "I think about it, and it inspires me to keep fighting and working. I've acquired something - and I tell myself all this wasn't in vain."
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That's funny (not); I'm an American and I've "LOST" THINGS -- making me wonder if it WAS all in vain.
How come the AmeriKan MSM doesn't give a shit about you, American homeowner?
With all your problems, they make this into a front-page feature?!
The Boston Globe Worships the Wealthy Elite
Boston Globe Celebrates the Declining Dollar and Immigration
