Homeowners Should Be Prepared

By Ed Hoffman

Believe it or not, I do not resent all government-sponsored programs. Case in point: The HERO™ program, which allows homeowners to make energy efficient improvements to their properties with no money upfront. HERO has gained all kinds of exposure in the Inland Empire, and there are dozens of contractors in the area approved to provide services like solar panel installation, window upgrades and even some plumbing improvements; they sell their services to homeowners by telling them that the HERO program will pay for the costs upfront.

So, why do I like the HERO program? For one, it’s not free (AKA paid by other people’s taxes). With this program, the homeowner pays for the improvements with his own property taxes. I have a great deal of experience with this program because my company, Wholesale Capital Corporation, works with servicers who maintain impound accounts (sometimes called “escrow accounts”) for mortgage borrowers. After we set up a borrower’s impound account, we send them to the servicing company – and then, it could be as long as two years before the servicing company sees the contractor’s bill added to the homeowner’s taxes. If the homeowner isn’t prepared to pay those higher taxes when the tax assessment finally shows up, it can lead to them becoming delinquent on their property taxes.

The good news is that it’s possible to avoid this. A homeowner can just send in extra money every month and ask us to add it to their impound account. If they do this, we will have the money in their account to cover it when the tax bill arrives. Unfortunately, not all homeowners do this – and they have to pay the consequences of their failure to pre-plan in the form of a big, fat property tax bill. Of course, the contractor who sold them on a “zero down” solar installation didn’t tell them this was going to happen. Was that necessarily ethical? No – but regardless, it was still the homeowner’s responsibility to pre-plan for a larger tax bill down the road. If it didn’t come the first year, it was bound to come the next.

It kind of reminds me of our President. Lately, he has been faced with a variety of circumstances that show his inability to pre-plan for a crisis, not the least of which is the endless onslaught of Islamic terror around the world. In those rare moments when freedom is not under attack from Islamic extremism, the President of the United States should be prepared for the next crisis that almost certainly looms on the horizon. His mindset should be that if something isn’t happening today, it will almost certainly happen tomorrow.

Instead, he sits contentedly while nothing happens. Then when disaster strikes, he sends out State Department lackeys to tell the media these situations are “fluid” and “we don’t know all the facts.” Smart Americans know this isn’t true; we do know the facts, and one of them is that Islamic extremists want to end our way of life. The President knows this, too; he just doesn’t want to admit it, and would much rather react after something disastrous happens. He’s the homeowner who isn’t prepared for a crisis – and in this case, he’s burning down the house.

Ed Hoffman is the host of the Main Event on AM590, which airs Saturday at 9:30 AM and Sunday at 4:00 PM. Follow him on Twitter @EdHoffman, and like him on Facebook by searching The Main Event AM590.