Respectfully, I could not disagree with you more. When my wife and I purchased our home about a year ago we sat down and went over our finances and decided that we could comfortably spend "x" amount of money on a new house. It did not matter how much the bank wanted to give us or how big of a house the realtor wanted to sell us. We were responsible for our own spending and if we would have gotten in over our heads we would have had no one to blame but ourselves. There is a major lack of accountibility in our society. No one is ever wrong, its always someone elses fault.
We are in this situation because irresponsible people bought way more house than they could afford and it is now catching up to them. Note: If you are a responsible person who bought a house within reason but have lost your job and house due to the down economy then I feel for you and this does not apply.
I will agree that it was
partially irresponsible buyers. If your young with a family, and realtor tells you that he can get you in a house, arent you going to consider that? they were
knowingly giving loans to ppl who did not make enough money to pay the note. These clients could never qualify for a loan thru full documentation.
They were betting on the housing market to continue going up and up. Your situation appears to be different. It appears that you have the job, the income, responsibility, and stability to pay for your mortgage note. The guy who was 28, making 31k a year flushing away $1200 in rent per month, was prime picking for these shady realtors.
Realtors, not all, but ALOT of them gave loans to ppl that simply did not qualify. Realtors knew that here is a client that can barely make an interest-only loan payment, once that loan matures, that payment will balloon to 5K+ (at least in cali it did) and that person making 31K will not be able to make even half that payment. Alot of ppl lost their home that way. If they were lucky, they were offered a short sale by their bank holding the note. By this time, the realtors and the ppl working for them, already made their money on this client and they were free and clear. The loan was sold off, and now the banks own 1000's and 1000's of homes nation wide with no one qualified to buy them. Given that US economy has a great effect on the global economy; I think this has serious effect on the economy, globally.
Nationwide, especially in CA, 1000's realtors repeated the above scenario 1000's of times. 1000's of ppl lost their homes within 24 months of buying them. Companies like CountryWide, bought up all these bad loans and are now left holding the bag.
bottom line, if you cant afford the down payment on a house, you cant afford to buy one.
by the way...im sitting at a 30 year fixed at 5.75%, even after the value of my home has dropped 95k, i'm not upside down on my house. When I bought my house in August of 2005, I insisted on a 30-year fixed rate, full documentation loan. 66k down payment. there was no way I was going to allow my house to be pull out from under me.