The first article in the series asks an interesting question when they put it in a racial context...why have surrounding predominantly white counties/communties recovered more than Prince George's? And I end up wondering if they got better advice, because they had more people among them who had had experience with more money over a longer time, and could steer them away from the worst of deals. Whereas African Americans have been underpaid and underemployed in the US for generations; there's probably not a lot of experiential knowledge there about how to handle wealth. Not lack of intelligence, lack of information. While we can go to books and articles, we really trust people who are like us, who we relate to, for advice. And we cluster--racially, culturally...it's an even bigger problem, typically, for immigrants. So this family went to the people they trusted to have their best interests at heart, and to know how to operate in this country--their church community. The same way people on this site ask their questions on the forum: not just financial ones but also how to deal with depression, how to exercise, how to talk to their spouse... because there are a million books and articles on the subjects, and we trust the experiences and knowledge of this community to have distilled the best of that information.
So to those who are saying "they should have known better"...how? At the time, they have everyone around them, who is apparently doing well, telling them it will be fine, it will be great. The realtor and mortgage broker are pushing it. Online advice, at the time, was probably overwhelmingly "Buy the house! It will appreciate! Don't worry!" And if they did find come across something that said, put 20%+ down, I wouldn't be surprised if it got lost in the crazy.
[Note: my personal wtf moment was that they *needed* more than 3/2 for themselves, 2 kids and a grandma. Really? You're coming from...anywhere outside the US (in their case, obviously Ghana) and you totally forget that people can live quite happily with far less? ]