Some homeowners cash in on tough times

Yesterday's Tampa Trib detailed the malleable morality of some homeowners in the face of bank bailouts and declining home values:

Homeowners are walking away - even when they can afford their payments. Some loot on the way out the door, carting off light fixtures, appliances, anything of value.

Others trash the home to ruin the bank's chances of selling it. They pour cement down the drains, flood the house or punch holes in the walls.

A few years ago, such behavior would have been considered reprehensible.

But today's homeowners are tired of watching the lenders who triggered the financial meltdown get bailed out while they suffer. They want revenge.

They feel entitled.

Homeowners are not entitled. We all assume risk in a mortgage -- and we know that going in. If you lose your job and can't pay, that's one thing. But if you're just an opportunist who uses a poor economy to skip out on responsibilities, then ...

... then you are like Shawn Aaron, who bravely, and not too wisely, talked to the Tribune about how he stopped paying on his 5,000 + square foot home two years ago when his loan was sold:

Expensive paintings and flat-screen TVs line the walls of his 5,800-square-foot home in the Cheval community. A Corvette sits in his garage. He paid $1.3 million for the home in November 2004.

More than two years ago, he stopped paying his mortgage and thinks a lot of other homeowners should follow his example. The way Aaron sees it, after the lender to which he agreed to make payments sold his mortgage, he doesn't have a contract with the loan's new owner. That lender, he says, has filed for foreclosure but has yet to prove it owns his loan.

"No one has answered my questions about my mortgage," Aaron said. "I hope I win the case and stay here long term."

Aaron said he also has stopped paying the mortgage on an investment property.

How did we get here? Not only is this guy not ashamed of his behavior, he wants his picture in the paper because of it. Brazen. Amazing. And sad that we have reached this place.