What's the deal with cast members of Bravo's The Real Housewives of Orange County and their struggles to remain homeowners in the real Orange County?
Newport Beach's Alexis Bellino is the latest to come up with trouble making her mortgage and facing foreclosure.
It's enough to make your waterproof mascara run . . . all the way to your friendly neighborhood loan modification company.
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Jim and Alexis Bellino, who joined the cast last season, recently defaulted on a $4.6 million loan for their Circle Drive home. They failed to pay $83,856.92 as of April 26 on their home
loan, and faced the threat of foreclosure, plus having their home sold
at public auction to the highest bidder, according to documents obtained by the Orange County Register. The Bellinos, who managed to modify their Chase Bank loan before an auction scheduled last Wednesday, have not had to move out of the 4,200-square-foot, five-bedroom, five-bathroom house.
After facing eviction four times, Frank and Lynne Curtin were finally bounced from their Laguna Beach home. In fact, the family tragedy worked its way into the Real Housewives plotline in Season 5. One must suffer for their drama, after all.
Simon and Tamra Barney, whose divorce was announced in January, lost their home in a short sale for less than they paid for it.
And Jeana Keough, an original member of the cast who left the show shortly after her marriage to former Major League pitching ace and repeat DUI offender Matt Keough blew up, defaulted on her home loan, faced foreclosure and finally worked out a loan-mod agreement with her lender.
Indeed, the housing woes faced by cast members may be the most real thing about The Real Housewives of Orange County, whose sixth season is filming now. According to the Register's housing guru Jonathan Lansner, home sales are down 68 percent in the real Orange County.
Which means, at the risk of confusing my TV remote, there are a lot of desperate housewives out there.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.