On Sep 25, 9:14*am, wrote:
The old 20% down rule was a thing of the past.

Bingo! People who cannot come up with 20 pct should not own THAT
home, period. But they can own a home that represents 20 pct of what
they can come up with.

People can blame the banks and the investment firms as much as they
want, but the bottom line remains, and that is, that the regular folks
buying homes got greedy, denied their real abilities to uphold their
ends of the deals, and irresponsibly defaulted. Many of those folks
were sub-prime and unworthy in the first place to be considered for a
loan, but the govt made the banks do the bad loans anyway. I feel
most sorry for the investors who puchased the securities, because they
were buying lies that started with Mr. and Mrs. Smith on Main street.
And the shareholders are OUR retirement and savings.