JayS:
I have no problem with low and no down payment plans. What I have a problem with is how much they’ll lend people. When the wife and I bought we were only making about 65-70 combined and they pre-approved us for something like 240. That was WAY more than we could afford in monthly payments though.
But in the end who’s fault is it when people take out these loans they can’t pay back? I guess we have to put some blame on the banking industry, since they’ve gone and fucked up the entire economy, but the majority of the blame lies with stupid buyers.
We don’t expect car dealers to stop people from buying more car than they can afford, or electronics dealers to stop people from buying more TV than they can afford, so we sure as hell should expect people to think about their budget when making the single biggest purchase of their life.
How we fix it now I don’t know. We definitely shouldn’t be spending tax dollars to keep people in houses they should never have bought in the first place though. That’s just another plan of taxing smart people to benefit stupid ones. Maybe foreclose on the homes and use some tax money to help the bank with SOME of the difference between what the mortgage was taken out for and what the house is worth now that the bubble popped. The moron who bought twice as much house as he could afford just better not be allowed to keep the house if you’re going to make taxpayers pay for his mistake though.
And Nick, I did understand what they were doing, my first response was just a joke.
same here, me and my fiance were approved 2.5 years ago for $220k loan, when combined we were making about $75k combined. and I work for a mtg company and knew the loan officer who said this. i looked at her with disgust and said “i’ll stick to $100k kthxbye”
she tried to convince us we could afford it even though when all other bills were paid at that time, we had little left over after our current payment.
:nono: