Quote:
Originally Posted by sloth2946
I, like Bryan wouldn't call it a crisis per se, rather a major correction for about a decade of stupid decisions by banks and more importantly potential home owners.
They, the home owners say they were duped into signing what they didn't understand...I say bull****. Read the ****ing papers. Don't just take the word of some high school drop out who works off of a commission to tell you that you can afford it when you really can't.
Banks made some risky decisions....so what...they have to deal with it too.
Any government money put into this is a mistake. This correction needs to occur to right our economy. People need to be foreclosed upon because they can't afford their houses. Banks need to lose money so that they can be more prudent with their lending.
And realtors need to realize that their collusion techniques that artificially drove up house prices have massively aided in this so they should quit their bitching about the market and their smaller commissions.
Guys like me, who could have gotten a very nice home with an ARM realized that it was gambling, like Aaron said. So I decided to wait it out so prices could become more reasonable again and fixed interest rates on 30yr mortgages is where they make sense for us.
I should hear by next friday on whether I get the home that I have been pursuing which when I am done fixing it I will have gotten it 60-70K below market. There will be winners in this and it is likes of me and other investors who pick up these short sales and foreclosures to turn them around at the right time.
|
FWIW, I mostly commenting on the difference between the US and Canadian housing situation, where ours is booming (best it's ever been, my house has more than doubled in value in the last 5 years).
But you are totally spot on that the problems people in the US are having are almost entirely their own doing. I remember on this forum a few years ago I commented that people are crazy to let themselves get saddled with such huge mortgages, and a few people chimed in with "well, my bank thinks it's a good investment".
Seriously, there's people out there who make less than 50k/yr household, and they got into half million dollar mortgages, and they are surprised that they couldn't afford it? If there is a crisis, it's a crisis of stupidity.