Yes, a combination of rising rates and negative amortization. All the years of paying an extremely low rate wasn't covering the interest charged to your loan, so while you're making payments, your principal balance is going up. When the loans were revisted the new payment was at a high rate and amortized to a new, inflated principal balance causing an enormous increase in payment amount. The rates on these risky loans have gone up much more rapidly and in larger increments than standard indexes or the prime lending rate. There are people, who in four years time, saw a rate increase from 1.75 to over 12%, but it was "disclosed" in the loan documents so its technically legal.
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