else does. what happens, a lot of home owners get underwater and don t maintain insurance on their property and don t have any assets if they leave the property and the bank takes it over, well, then the bank becomes responsible because they have taken over ownership of the home. if they own the home, they re responsible, just like any other home owner, they don t deserve special dispensation for that. joel, the final word? well, they have any defenses that a home owner would have, whether or not they ve contributed to the problem and taken necessary steps to prevent problems from occurring. simply because they re an owner of the property does not make them automatically liable. all right, michael and joel, we appreciate you joining us this morning and goes to show you how far this foreclosure crisis has gone. thank you. coming up on the show, the first of what terrorists say will be many attacks. new details into the failed mail bombs. how cheap they apparently were to pull
owner, it took the property through foreclosure. what we don t know from the facts as they ve been presented to us, what steps the banks did take. the bank may have put a fence and may have in fact put a lock on the fence, they movie in fact covered the pool. they may have in fact taken all of the necessary steps to make that pool safe. they may have not also known about the problem. it s possible that when they lent money to the owners of the property, who borrowed the money to build the house, subsequent the pool may have been built and the bank no nothing about it. michael, you re smirking at that. you re saying the bank wouldn t know they had a pool? i m saying throughout this banking crisis the bank saying we have so many properties we can t take care of them all. if my bank would lose my money, stolen, you know we have too much money, michael,
the bargainink owns the propert doesn t the bank pay restitution and pony up for the family? it seems they are the owners of this home. don t they need to put a fence in. they come in and board up the front of the house and don t they have to drain the pool? absolutely, clayton. the law is clear, a homer owner, whether it s a bank or you and me, we both have to keep our property safe and for most everywhere in the country, if you own a pool, you have to fence it, and you have to have a working screen door around it. in fact, in the florida case, the screen enclosure around the pool was wide open and for a few dollars they could have fixed that door and could have saved this averted this tragedy, terrible. what s the difference then? what s the difference? why is the bank not a home owner in the situation? the bank may be the home
i can t watch all of your money. it sounds like the same argument to me. it s easy for everyone to point fingers at the bank. there are many times that the bank would have lent money to an individual and that individual then abandons the property and never makes a payment on the mortgage and the bank has a mortgage on the property that may decrease in value and may decide that it s a better deal for them not to foreclose on the property, not to take over the property and the bank ends up a loser in this bad situation, and just like everybody else. mike, let me ask you this, if you re a home owner, so many americans are going through the foreclosure process. do they need to be worried that their houses they have a fence or some sort of an issue with the back of their house and god forbid somebody wanders on the property and at the home they re not living anymore, do they need to be concerned. in a civilized society if you have a pool, you have to maintain it in a safe condition ju