Deadbeats Never Make a Mortgage Payment on Million-Dollar Home, Manipulate the System to Stay In It

File this story under: holy fuck, can you believe the things people think they can get away with?

Now, I’m as anti-bank as anyone. Can’t stand the fuckers. Avoid them as much as I can. And I totally feel for struggling homedebtors who are trying desperately to do everything right and stay in their homes. But there are some people out there who are obviously gaming the system that need to be kicked to the motherfucking curb, their shit piled on the lawn for neighbors to loot.

Like these two.

Via WaPo:

The eviction from their million-dollar home could come at any moment. Keith and Janet Ritter have been bracing for it — and battling against it — almost from the moment they moved into the five-bedroom, 4,900-square-foot manse along the Potomac River in Fort Washington.

In five years, they have never made a mortgage payment, a fact that amazes even the most seasoned veterans of the foreclosure crisis.

Yes, you read that correctly. Five years in a million-dollar home without a single payment. He’s done time for bankruptcy fraud and she’s a former real estate agent. Oh, and did I mention that they made a bunch of money during the Before Time flipping properties?

During the boom, they set out to become mini real estate moguls, buying properties and flipping them for a profit. In the process, Keith Ritter, 54, went from being on probation for bankruptcy fraud and making minimum wage to being a successful real estate investor and landlord with a six-figure income. Then, when the housing market tanked five years ago, the couple found themselves facing multiple foreclosures.

The Ritters have tried to negotiate different payment arrangements with their lender to save their posh home near National Harbor, they said, but to no avail.

“It was never our intention to get here and never make a mortgage payment,” Keith Ritter said. “We don’t believe in living for free.”

You know, 30 days of “living for free” and I might believe him. Even 3 payments behind I could maybe buy it. But we’re talking about FIVE years here.

Long story short, the Ritters have filed for bankruptcy several times (notice a pattern here?) and that has somehow kept them in “their” home for all this time. Man, you really feel for people like this, don’t you?

Further testing Maryland’s foreclosure laws, Ritter asked for mediation but didn’t actually show up when it was granted, blaming a mail mix-up for his obvious absence at the hearing he himself requested. Please, I blame the mail too but that’s just lazy.

“Defendant(s), humbly prays that the Honorable Judge, will recognize that this process, written into law by Governor O’Malley was to prevent just this situation, whereby the note holder can . . . trample on the rights of the homeowner,” Keith Ritter wrote in a December 2010 mediation request.

Excuse me. “Homeowner” implies someone who has the full, unrestricted rights – through distribution of their own dollars – to a home. You aren’t a “homeowner” if you put practically nothing down and haven’t paid anything since.

Anyway, you really have to read the entire 5 page debacle at WaPo.

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