1% interest rates

[SquidGirl]

Sorry - my two cents of ranting.

I am currently 27. I bought my house when I was 24 on a impulse buy (I know, I'm a little odd). I was all alone buying the house, not even a boyfriend and I still pay the mortgage all by myself regardless of 'the boy' whose lived here for 1 year. Anyway...I was utterly dumbfounded on why all of these foreclosures were occurring. Hell, if I can do it...why can't others. Some days I don't understand HOW I can do it, but I manage and am okay. Then I realized what people (perhaps 'young people') were doing. They were trying to live out the American Dream in one giant step. People are no longer buying 'starter homes.' I actually saw one of my friends go through it pretty bad. They see what they qualify and MAX it out. Sometimes they get an additional mortgage/loan to fix up their house or make it livable. I drove past my house, thought it was cute (600 square feet) and 30 days later was living in it, no joke. I have no clue what I qualified for. I just saw a simple, starter home, good enough for just little me and bought it. People see they qualify for $200,000 homes and they go for it, because they can. I could be wrong, but that is my interpretation. Also, I think some hopeful/gambling homeowners got into signing onto a 'balloon' mortgage it does not have a set interest rate so as the economy struggles and there is a lack of control in the mortgage industry the interest rate goes up, resulting in more $$ and people can not pay it in the long run. I believe I am at 5.88% set. Just my thoughts.

Also - tw - I just gotta say....you are smart!

[tw]

Originally Posted by SquidGirl

Also - tw - I just gotta say....you are smart!

I was never smart. I simply spend much time learning the facts behind what so many others knew - but could not specifically cite. None of this is complex. It's all in the newspapers today or years previous when I was being so poltiically incorrect by posting these warnings. Just wondering how many so doubted when I discussed that falling brick labeled "Housing prices".

Despite rumors to the contrary, I read far more than I write. How long ago did we know we had a problem? (My first indication was in 2001 when the Norwegian foreign minister said George Jr would destroy the Oslo Accords.) From the Economist of 16 Jun 2005:

Perhaps the best evidence that America's house prices have reached dangerous levels is the fact that house-buying mania has been plastered on the front of virtually every American newspaper and magazine over the past month. Such bubble-talk hardly comes as a surprise to our readers. We have been warning for some time that the price of housing was rising at an alarming rate all around the globe, including in America. Now that others have noticed as well, the day of reckoning is closer at hand. It is not going to be pretty. How the current housing boom ends could decide the course of the entire world economy over the next few years.

3 years and 2 months later ...