Romney's roll in abusive Son of Boss tax shelter ignored

[Danzig]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/10/us...ples-gain.html


Yet for the Stampses, who have been writing $600 monthly checks to “Willard M. Romney” for 15 years, the money they borrowed from him to buy their home in 1997 was life-changing.

The mortgage is the last vestige of a troubled, and previously unreported, investment by Mr. Romney in Texas real estate in 1982, before he struck it rich as the wunderkind of Bain Capital. And while the Stampses’ happy ending is a counterpoint to the image, seized upon by political opponents, of Mr. Romney as a cold, calculating financier, the episode also offers an early illustration of his appetite for deals promising low risk and high return.

Lured by the prospect of buying five rent-to-own houses in the Houston suburbs without putting up any of his own money, Mr. Romney jumped into a speculative deal geared toward “affluent free enterprise capitalists who desire a quality investment with tax shelter benefits,” according to a prospectus. Based on frothy assumptions of a never-ending real estate boom, it was unlike the data-driven, analytical investments that came to define his later successes at Bain Capital.

The result was a rare Romney flop: The housing market soon collapsed, and he was stuck renting out the houses for years before unloading them, mostly at a loss, in the late 1990s, according to property records. The renters were offered the first chance to buy, but the Stampses could not qualify for a mortgage, recalled Mr. Stamps, who at the time had recently lost his job at an oil company.


and i wonder who they could be?:

Mr. Stamps said that he and his wife had received calls in recent months from strangers who “seemed to be looking for negative stuff” about Mr. Romney, but that the couple had nothing to say to them.


and further down:

When Mr. Stamps took the call from Mr. Romney, he and his wife, a nurse, had all but given up hope of being able to buy the house they had been renting for five years. Mr. Romney told him it looked like the couple had been taking good care of the property and that “we would be good people to buy it,” said Mr. Stamps. Mr. Stamps said he never heard from Mr. Romney again, and only became aware of who he was when he started running for president four years ago.

“His name came up somewhere,” he said, “and my wife and I said to each other, ‘That’s the guy we bought our house from!’ ”

Mr. Jolly, 76, laughed when told that Mr. Romney was still collecting mortgage payments on one of the houses he talked him into buying 30 years ago.



but you know, i'm probably looking at it wrong, and the home owner is too. obviously romney doesn't need that mans money, and should just give him the house!!!