Comments on: Will Extreme Makeover Harper Family Lose Home?

By: goutie

goutie — Wed, 18 May 2011 17:10:15 +0000

Seriously, some of you posters need some information from a local gal. The house, I believe is in Clayton County, not Henry Country like some blogs said. I grew up there from the age of 10 til 18. My parents still live there. My parents build their dream home there around the time the EM crew built the Harper’s house. My parents house is worth more, more square footage, etc. The expenses they quote make no sense. My parents expenses with the initial house in Clayton County, 2 kids, 2 private school tuitions and my 3 relatives living with use for 10 years, kids went to public school, was less than 6,000 a month. 3 kids in public school and a less expensive house cost more? By using my parents property tax bill as an estimate, I had estimated about 3,000 a year for the property taxes, so 230 a month increase. With the 250,00 in the bank making 3 per cent interest, they couldn’t find the 230 a month. The mom or the 17 year old couldn’t work 10 hours a week at chick fil A? Also, when they saw they couldn’t make the expenses, they took out a business loan for 100 per cent of the equity? Sell the house instead. Because of the economy Henry and Clayton counties have for sale signs EVERYWHERE!!!! IF they had sold the 450,000 home for 225,000…..a steal for someone who has the money, they could have bought a 200,000 home in the same area. A NICE HOME, trust me, I see what people are asking. Then, if you have to start a business, save some money but if you are not going to do that, use the 250,000. At least when they lose that money it will just be kids not going to college instead of not having a home to live in. HOPE scholarship will pay tuition if the kids get a 1200 on math/cr of the sat, so if the parents could have blown 90% of the money, the kids could maybe still have gone. Sorry but this family makes me sick. What is it with people who use “We shouldn’t judge, only God should” nonsense. When you hear about a terrorist killing innocent children, you think its horrible, you don’t say “WE shouldn’t judge. To conclude my long post, Clayton County is known for bad things, and these people helped. You know people see a black family messing up and some blame the whole race. Its wrong but it happens and this IDIOTIC family did not help.

By: Geo

Geo — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 19:39:17 +0000

I recently watched a short interview with the lady and it seems like they are driving around in a brand new Avalanche. unbelievable.

By: MikeG

MikeG — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 04:37:23 +0000

Regardless of the outcome I think it is apalling to be gambling with your home. What makes it worse is that 1,800 people donated their time and work so that they could have this home. The mind blowing issue is really why did they have to use ALL the equity of the house? Although I don’t agree with using ANY portion of the house, why couldn’t they use like 10 % or 20% of the house’s equity.

By: mynxr

mynxr — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 10:40:40 +0000

It’s one thing to get an equity loan on a house that you purchased with your own sweat equity. It’s a totally different story to put the house up for an unsecured loan for the value of the home when it was donated/given to you. This could put the generosity of Extreme Makeover in jeopardy not to mention dramatically decrease the kindness of strangers. Can’t they put some kind of clause in the contract that the family signs that they can’t use the house as collateral for a loan of any kind for any reason??

In today’s economy, a construction company was a very poor investment. Didn’t this family research starting a construction company and how hard it would be to get it off the ground before jumping into it or was this just a pipe dream they’ve had and saw a way to make the dream come true regardless of the consequences.

Are you sure the kids will lose their scholarships? They shouldn’t because they should be in the kids’ names not the parents so those at least should be safe.

By: theo.johnson

theo.johnson — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 06:36:10 +0000

Wow frank! Judgmental assholes?

The whole purpose of a blog is to express your opinion about things you find interesting. MY issue is with the fact that they did it on someone else’s dime and time. The purpose of the show was to make a struggling family’s life a little better by giving them a home and a way to pay for it.

The future for the family was set in motion by ABC. Scholarships, a home, paid utilities. Come on! I was disappointed because it seemed to be a slap in the face to all who made it happen. I have no issues with taking risks to build a dream. The most successful people in the world are where they are because of it. But the future of the family in my opinion was moving in the right direction when they said “Move that bus!”

By: frank

frank — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 22:54:39 +0000

People really shouldn’t judge this family. So what they got a free house. From what i know of Exteme Makeover they only do this for good honest people with some form of history. This family choose to use the house to make an even better life for themselfs & Due to the state of the economy they could loose everything.. Did they do it for greed? No!. Did they do it to indulge? No!. They did it to build a future.
How dare anybody come on a site and slate them for trying to build a future for their family. You don’t know anything about these people.

The credit crunch screwed them over. These people have done nothing to be ashamed of. A gift is a gift and what the recipient wants to do with that is upto them. What a bunch of judgemental assholes on this site.

By: sam

sam — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 00:36:32 +0000

i think it’s a bit harsh to judge b4 you know the facts, today’s economical state just shows how bad it is out there. maybe they were just trying to give back a little by going into construction. it’s not like they wasted the money on drugs or overspending on themselves. i’ve seen so much construction put on hold because there is nothing out there to build. I think it’s a shame that this is happening to them they were trying to invest in a future that is economicaly bad right now and maybe were miss advised, like i said who are we to judge we are not in thier shoes and i wish them all the best and i hope this all works out for them.

By: Sinjin322

Sinjin322 — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 22:47:40 +0000

Having read all the replies and reasons I can only say what this come down to is one simple word/concept “CHOICE”. We are all given the dignity of choice. No one put a gun to these peoples heads, whatever “reasoning” they care to pander to the media does not change the fact that they made a foolish, self centered choice. It speaks to their character or lack thereof that they did this, and by their choice have shown that they are truly unworthy of what was given them. As a side bar ABC should really make better choices in the building of these echo unfriendly behemoth houses. No family of that size requires that kind of square footage to live in. A more modest home would have been much wiser, I say this being fully aware that the name of the show is “Extreme Home makeover” not Modest. It just goes to show you cant save people from themselves

By: amanda

amanda — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 23:30:39 +0000

They were given $100,000 for expenses which they used to pay their mortgage. So all they needed to come up with was $5000 + $6000 and living expenses? There were two adults in that family. They couldn’t pull that off? I cannot help but think that greed, ignorance and low self esteem had to be a factor in making such dumb decisions. $450,000 to create a business? So now you have a home payment (say $3000+) and now business expenses as well. Someone walked into their home and convinced them to do it. Someone made some money- someone had to have scammed them. I don’t feel sorry for them because they don’t deserve a home like that. The Harpers confirmed that by their actions. What I do wonder is if the parents can ever forgive themselves for what they’ve stolen from their children.

By: jessie

jessie — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:01:03 +0000

Are you kidding me???? They had a FREE home and they blew it. Their operating expenses went up to $5,000 – $6,000 a month???? What the hell were they doing? They obvisouly have no idea how to save on energy. My company has a bigger building than that and the operating expenses (water, garbage, PG&E etc etc) is less than that and this building is twice the size of their house. In addition, taxes going from $1,000 a year to $5,000 a year is nothing. All they had to do was keep the job they had and they would have been living the easy life. They go on Dr. Phil looking for more hand outs. I mean I feel for them for losing their son. There is nothing worse than losing a child. Nothing. But they obviously are still looking for a free hand out and making excuses for their own stupidity. Now I guess they’re back to the projects where they began. I feel for those poor kids. They shouldn’t have to suffer because their parents are stupid.