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Dear Mr. Berko: I own a three-bedroom home in Boca Raton, Fla. It’s appraised at $211,000 and my mortgage is $133,000, so I have $78,000 equity. My interest rate is 8.125 percent and some banks are offering 6 percent rates, which if I could refinance would lower my payments. Because my equity is high, a new mortgage would lower my payments and eliminate the $76 a month for private mortgage insurance, saving me $300 a month. But they won’t let me refinance. I don’t understand because I’ve never missed a mortgage payment. My problem is that an ex-friend ruined my credit and I have a low credit score. I don’t have a credit card; I don’t owe money to any company or any person. However, I don’t have any reportable earnings and did not file a tax return in 2003 or 2004 or 2005 or 2006. My mortgage is with GMAC, and when I spoke to them, they said they couldn’t help. I have an 18-year-old at home who pays $200 a week and I made $23,000 last year. I tried to tell this to GMAC but they told me not to call until I got myself a “real job.” I must lower my payments by at least $250. My home insurance has nearly tripled and my property taxes went to $2,496 from $1,540. Is there anything you can do to help me refinance my home? I’ve recently painted the outside (by myself) and the inside is neat as a pin with nice furniture and the air conditioning runs good. I have a mortgage in good standing with GMAC. When they gave me a mortgage they knew that I had very low income. Please explain why GMAC won’t make me a new loan at a lower interest rate but they will continue the current loan with $76 a month private mortgage insurance that I don’t need now. This doesn’t make any sense. The $300 a month savings would make my life a lot easier. Please give me advice as soon as possible.

Dear L.R.:

Suffice it to say that you can’t refinance due to the lupine greed of Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Bear Stearns, UBS, Bank of America and other brokerages warmly embraced by the New York Stock Exchange. Their feral appetite for money, like greed on speed, has contaminated the low-income mortgage markets. And their systematic rape and pillage of mortgage-backed securities has created an economic tsunami that’s drowning our economy, paralyzing our banking systems and collapsing financial markets better than Osama bin Laden could ever have hoped.

So thank Merrill, Citigroup, Bear Stearns, etc. who, as guardians of your assets, pretend to care about your stock accounts and retirement assets — the values of which have fallen like a teardrop from a camel’s eye. Some say that supporting these firms with your brokerage business is like contributing money to al-Qaeda so they can finance suicide bombers.

There are many folks with high-interest mortgages who can’t refinance even with substantial equity in their homes. So no matter how significant your equity or how compelling it would be for GMAC to refinance, they won’t do it. GMAC is as flexible as a cement block.

Today, banks insist on a credit score above 640, a respectable reportable income and at least two years of prior tax returns. But while you’re not in their ballpark, you are throwing the pitches and you’ve got leverage. Read on.

A banker friend suggested this course of action. Stop writing checks to GMAC right now, bank your monthly mortgage payments and immediately list your home for sale. However, send GMAC a monthly check for homeowners insurance and specify this intent on the check. In a couple of months, GMAC will begin to bug you. Politely tell them you can’t afford the payments and hang up. After four months, GMAC will begin foreclosure proceedings. It will take them eight to nine months to file, complete the paperwork and physically foreclose. So you have about 12 months before you are legally forced to vacate.

Price your home to sell quickly like $189,500, which is $21,500 below appraised value. Many families want to own homes today but prices all over the country are still unrealistically high. During the past five years, home prices have doubled and some tripled, yet personal income for most Americans has declined.

Because your home looks nice, it should be attractive to a family that must downsize and can afford $1,325 a month in principal, interest, taxes and insurance. Florida’s record high taxes, high insurance rates and low-paying job market are three big reasons Florida’s housing market has collapsed. Now if you are offered $184,500 or even $181,000, jump on it like a duck on a June bug because prices are still going lower.

So after paying brokerage fees, legal costs and penalties, you should keep about $40,000, plus the monthly mortgage payments you put in savings.

I’m sorry, but that’s the best advice I can find for you. However, you might consider leaving the state of Florida. The costs to raise a family and maintain a home are so much less in other states, and many residents are now leaving the state. Florida wages are much lower than the national average, Florida’s education system is probably the worst in the nation, the legislature is as crooked as a shillelagh, gridlock is unbearable, the health-care system is broken and crime (especially violent crime) is epidemic. The sunshine is wonderful, but it doesn’t put bread on table, pay the mortgage or educate your children.

Please address your financial questions to Malcolm Berko, P.O. Box 1416, Boca Raton, Fla. 33429 or e-mail him at malber@adelphia.net.© Copley News Service