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Post by socal on Sept 25, 2008 10:37:55 GMT -6
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Post by socal on Sept 26, 2008 7:16:37 GMT -6
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Post by NotMyKid on Sept 26, 2008 8:15:56 GMT -6
Buying a house with little or no money down wasn't the problem it was people that bought a house with little to no money down, couldn't afford the payments to start with, took out a home equity loan, had any type of ARM loans and didn't know what that meant, weren't saving any money every month, etc. My wife and I bought our first house with very little down about 6 years ago and last month we upgraded to a bigger house with no problem. The bigger problem is people don't know what a F'ing budget is or how to start one and stick with it. |
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Post by Dr. Doofenshmirtz (Heywood) on Sept 26, 2008 8:19:19 GMT -6
We didn't put any money down on the house we bought in 2005 (which is our first and only so far). Luckily I am well versed in loan terms (my dad is a loan officer). We ended up doing an 80% first mortgage and 20% 2nd mortgage to avoid PMI and to allow greater flexibility to get an equity loan later (which we needed when our sewer collapsed). We knew what we could afford going into the home search and we stayed under our ceiling, even though we looked at a few houses that we really liked but were priced way too high.
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Post by Saggitariutt Jefferspin (ith) on Sept 26, 2008 8:29:54 GMT -6
Buying a house with little or no money down wasn't the problem it was people that bought a house with little to no money down, couldn't afford the payments to start with, took out a home equity loan, had any type of ARM loans and didn't know what that meant, weren't saving any money every month, etc. My wife and I bought our first house with very little down about 6 years ago and last month we upgraded to a bigger house with no problem. The bigger problem is people don't know what a F'ing budget is or how to start one and stick with it. A fellow 'no money downer' here as well. We qualified for more house, but looked at our budget and decided to what was within our means. We've had no problems (pretty crazy, huh?). You're right. I work for a major bank in the Equity division...people were flipping houses and treating their house like ATM machines. Some of the shitty investing and moves I see never ceases to amaze me. That said...when I used to deal directly with customers, I did find the lack of education on the products pretty staggering. I can't just pinpoint that on the customer. Most mortgage consultants are straight commission and therefore it's a very high turnover job. It doesn't all come down to lack of education though. Everybody was just trying to cash in...greed. |
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Post by socal on Sept 26, 2008 9:18:16 GMT -6
Buying a house with little or no money down wasn't the problem it was people that bought a house with little to no money down, couldn't afford the payments to start with, took out a home equity loan, had any type of ARM loans and didn't know what that meant, weren't saving any money every month, etc. My wife and I bought our first house with very little down about 6 years ago and last month we upgraded to a bigger house with no problem. The bigger problem is people don't know what a F'ing budget is or how to start one and stick with it. The main point of posting that article - was the tenor of its writing. EVERYBODY!!!!!! (yes, even you) can buy a house, if not - there are ways around the rules. Mind you, this was written at the beginning of the madness. Before the interest-only crack / McMansion crank / "Flip This House" GHB- cocktail addicted the rest of America. |
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Post by NotMyKid on Sept 26, 2008 10:56:08 GMT -6
I hear you.
I saw an article awhile back that one of the families that was on Extreme makeover home edition had their "free" house foreclosed on them because they took out a home equity loan to fund a business and lost their ass.
And the house was free, the Contractor that build house gave them a check to pay off the Mortgage.
F'ing idiots!
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Post by twinegarden on Sept 26, 2008 12:29:29 GMT -6
My big question with our current financial state and the bailout, housing market, etc., etc. is:
Would the nation as a whole (not just Wall Street) be better off if we let the banking system bottom out, let the housing market "collapse", and go through a recession/depression in hopes that a medium term period of downturn would ulitimately correct the markets and leave us better off financially in the long run?
OR
Do we direly need to pump $700 billion into a falling market so that the banks can resume buisness as usual and clear the "toxic" debt off the table?
After listening to Bush's speech the other night as well as other politicians on the internet, it seems they all have this grand idea that the only way to save our econonmy is by bailing out all of these banks and other financial insitutions so the have enough resevre assets to legitamately start loaning money and freeing up the credit market.
I personally do not see what good that would do. Isn't the whole reason we are in this mess to begin with is because the credit market was too loose? What good would it do to reward these institutions who were giving credit to underserving people? Is it really a good idea to bail them out just so they can start giving out credit again to these same irresponsible people?
Seems to me like the man is trying to pull a quick one over the average Joe's eyes and screw the taxpayer out of $700 million so they can continue screwing them over in the debt market.
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Post by twinegarden on Sept 26, 2008 14:35:36 GMT -6
Also, I have to give a bid FUCK YOU to Suzi Orman for scaring the shit out of the Oprah worshiping idiot middle aged women out there. You would think there were UFO's flying around in the sky the way some of these stupid fucking people are acting.
(P.S. I talk to them all day.)
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Post by lpcalihawk on Sept 26, 2008 16:15:47 GMT -6
My big question with our current financial state and the bailout, housing market, etc., etc. is: Would the nation as a whole (not just Wall Street) be better off if we let the banking system bottom out, let the housing market "collapse", and go through a recession/depression in hopes that a medium term period of downturn would ulitimately correct the markets and leave us better off financially in the long run? OR Do we direly need to pump $700 billion into a falling market so that the banks can resume buisness as usual and clear the "toxic" debt off the table? After listening to Bush's speech the other night as well as other politicians on the internet, it seems they all have this grand idea that the only way to save our econonmy is by bailing out all of these banks and other financial insitutions so the have enough resevre assets to legitamately start loaning money and freeing up the credit market. I personally do not see what good that would do. Isn't the whole reason we are in this mess to begin with is because the credit market was too loose? What good would it do to reward these institutions who were giving credit to underserving people? Is it really a good idea to bail them out just so they can start giving out credit again to these same irresponsible people? Seems to me like the man is trying to pull a quick one over the average Joe's eyes and screw the taxpayer out of $700 million so they can continue screwing them over in the debt market. I vote for #1 |
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Post by Norm "racerhawk" Parker on Sept 26, 2008 17:25:19 GMT -6
My big question with our current financial state and the bailout, housing market, etc., etc. is: Would the nation as a whole (not just Wall Street) be better off if we let the banking system bottom out, let the housing market "collapse", and go through a recession/depression in hopes that a medium term period of downturn would ulitimately correct the markets and leave us better off financially in the long run? OR Do we direly need to pump $700 billion into a falling market so that the banks can resume buisness as usual and clear the "toxic" debt off the table? After listening to Bush's speech the other night as well as other politicians on the internet, it seems they all have this grand idea that the only way to save our econonmy is by bailing out all of these banks and other financial insitutions so the have enough resevre assets to legitamately start loaning money and freeing up the credit market. I personally do not see what good that would do. Isn't the whole reason we are in this mess to begin with is because the credit market was too loose? What good would it do to reward these institutions who were giving credit to underserving people? Is it really a good idea to bail them out just so they can start giving out credit again to these same irresponsible people? Seems to me like the man is trying to pull a quick one over the average Joe's eyes and screw the taxpayer out of $700 million so they can continue screwing them over in the debt market. I'm beginning to see #1 as a sensible solution. Ron Paul has written some interesting things about this which echo your sentiments. I haven't been a huge Ron Paul fan, but he does make a lot of sense. At least he's consistently applying economic principles (versus just the convenient ones). |
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Post by mattahawk on Sept 26, 2008 21:40:37 GMT -6
We didn't put any money down on the house we bought in 2005 (which is our first and only so far). Luckily I am well versed in loan terms (my dad is a loan officer). We ended up doing an 80% first mortgage and 20% 2nd mortgage to avoid PMI and to allow greater flexibility to get an equity loan later (which we needed when our sewer collapsed). We knew what we could afford going into the home search and we stayed under our ceiling, even though we looked at a few houses that we really liked but were priced way too high. Heywood, Did you and your wife go through the USDA? I did the same thing you did about 10 years ago with about 2,500 down on a 48,000 dollar house. Worked out pretty good but it is definitely time to get out from under the USDA. |
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Post by Dr. Doofenshmirtz (Heywood) on Sept 27, 2008 19:18:11 GMT -6
We didn't put any money down on the house we bought in 2005 (which is our first and only so far). Luckily I am well versed in loan terms (my dad is a loan officer). We ended up doing an 80% first mortgage and 20% 2nd mortgage to avoid PMI and to allow greater flexibility to get an equity loan later (which we needed when our sewer collapsed). We knew what we could afford going into the home search and we stayed under our ceiling, even though we looked at a few houses that we really liked but were priced way too high. Heywood, Did you and your wife go through the USDA? I did the same thing you did about 10 years ago with about 2,500 down on a 48,000 dollar house. Worked out pretty good but it is definitely time to get out from under the USDA. No, we went through Midwest Heritage Bank (it's owned by Hy-Vee and I was working for Hy-Vee at the time). The mortgages were sold to CitiMortgage right away. We thought about doing a USDA first-time buyer program but decided against it. |
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Post by thunderhawk on Sept 29, 2008 20:11:55 GMT -6
My stock-purchasing trigger finger is growing itchy.
The DOW is below where it was when W took office. Think about that for a minute.
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Post by NOTTHOR on Sept 29, 2008 20:30:59 GMT -6
My stock-purchasing trigger finger is growing itchy. The DOW is below where it was when W took office. Think about that for a minute. And the world's largest insurance company is now majority owned by the Fed, one of the largest banks was taken out in a FDIC power grab today, and there are no pure play investment banks left on Wall Street - those are the real stories, not the Dow's level. I think what we're seeing right now are purely reverberations from the Lehman bankruptcy. If we thought the banks were too big to fail before, the handful that now have the tacit backing of the Fed and have been allowed to consolidate market share with none of the pre-merger notification screening that generally accompanies transactions of the size and scope we've seen in the past few months are going to be way way way too big to fail. The combination BoA/Merrill/Countrywide, JPM/Bear/Wamu and Citigroup/Wachovia are institutions of a size and scale that will be nearly imposible to run effectively and more importantly, impossible to allow to fail, as each one of them will likely have so much in deposits and provide so much credit that we would be looking at a near double digit hit to GDP and losses that would sink the FDIC if any one of them went under. |
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Post by NOTTHOR on Sept 29, 2008 20:32:14 GMT -6
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Post by thunderhawk on Sept 29, 2008 20:51:24 GMT -6
My stock-purchasing trigger finger is growing itchy. The DOW is below where it was when W took office. Think about that for a minute. And the world's largest insurance company is now majority owned by the Fed, one of the largest banks was taken out in a FDIC power grab today, and there are no pure play investment banks left on Wall Street - those are the real stories, not the Dow's level. I think what we're seeing right now are purely reverberations from the Lehman bankruptcy. If we thought the banks were too big to fail before, the handful that now have the tacit backing of the Fed and have been allowed to consolidate market share with none of the pre-merger notification screening that generally accompanies transactions of the size and scope we've seen in the past few months are going to be way way way too big to fail. The combination BoA/Merrill/Countrywide, JPM/Bear/Wamu and Citigroup/Wachovia are institutions of a size and scale that will be nearly imposible to run effectively and more importantly, impossible to allow to fail, as each one of them will likely have so much in deposits and provide so much credit that we would be looking at a near double digit hit to GDP and losses that would sink the FDIC if any one of them went under. Indeed, but the fact that the DOW is lower than it was 7-plus years ago shatters a lot of the conventional wisdom about buy-and-hold investing that has been foisted upon the American investor. I do agree, however, that the stunning collapse of these historic institutions is fundamentally more telling. It's almost too much to comprehend. Hope I don't need a fucking loan anytime soon. |
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Post by NOTTHOR on Sept 29, 2008 21:14:17 GMT -6
Indeed, but the fact that the DOW is lower than it was 7-plus years ago shatters a lot of the conventional wisdom about buy-and-hold investing that has been foisted upon the American investor. I do agree, however, that the stunning collapse of these historic institutions is fundamentally more telling. It's almost too much to comprehend. Hope I don't need a fucking loan anytime soon. Yeah, you're right there. AIG's momentous collapse is evidence of that (and one of the big drivers in the Dow's crappy performance). I just think of the sea change that the world has seen is pretty big. The 90's made the stock market look like the best place to invest, as the market just exploded. But when you look at the factors behind the growth, you have to wonder whether that wisdom is good or not. First, we had a tremendous shift in monetary policy. I was watching CNBC tonight and they showed a 20-year chart for 2 year treasury notes. In the late 80's those things kicked off 10%. now they're kicking off less than 2% with talk that they could go lower. If I could put my money in AAA paper yielding 10%, I wouldn't touch the stock market with a ten foot pole and I'd double my money approximately every 7 years with almost no risk. When the Fed ratcheted rates way down, money poured into the stock market and we saw a huge runup in stocks. The 90's also saw huge increases in earnings growth as companies shifted labor to India and China (lower costs equal higher earnings assuming revenue stays the same) and companies shifted retirement plans away from defined benefit to defined contribution, thereby shifting all market risk onto the employees and away from the corporation. Plus, the baby boomers were around their peak earning potential and poured a bunch of cash into the market. When you hear the conventional wisdom of buy and hold and see the performance of the S&P 500 (a better indicator than the Dow), the tendency is to agree that it is correct, you should buy and hold. But if you back out the one time earning drivers and consider demographics (boomers getting ready to retire), the conventional wisdom might not be so smart. It's clear to me that buying during a bear and selling during a bull is a helluva smarter than sitting around with your thumb up your ass as a buy and hold person. You've also got to remember that the conventional wisdom is driven by the institutions. Of course they want you to buy and hold, someone needs to be left holding the bag when the jackals tear down venerable institutions like Lehman and AIG. It ain't gonna be the market maker left holding the bag, it's gonna be Joe Main Street. |
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Post by socal on Sept 30, 2008 14:29:29 GMT -6
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