On Apr 25, 5:49*pm, wrote:
On Sun, 24 Apr 2011 23:18:13 -0700 (PDT), harry
wrote:





Don't forget the clueless or greedy individuals who signed up for loans
they knew damn well they could not afford. I blame them as much as I
blame the hucksters that invited them into the tent. I could have gotten
paper for twice as much house as I bought, but saw no point in it. And
even with the housing crash, I think I could still sell this place for
as much as I paid for it. No profit, especially once you subtract out
repairs, interest, taxes, etc, but I am far from upside down. 'Blue
collar' houses didn't crash near as bad as McMansions.

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aem sends...- Hide quoted text -

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They were all conned. *The biggest con of all is the "American Dream".
The fact that there *were so many conned points to the efficiency of
the lies and propaganda Americans are subjected to.

You need to ask yourselves, did the banks know the facts that you set
out above?

Answer, yes, obviously.

So tell me, what you suppose their motive was?

Greed? Stupidity? Incompetance? Or a desire to destroy America?
Or is it a Russion/Chinese plot?

These bubbles are not anybody's plot although there were people
exploiting the situation. There were some smart builders who saw the
end of the party coming as soon as 3q2006. They stopped building
"inventory" units (only building "pre-sold houses" with $50k down) and
they tried to avoid selling to "investors", generally defined as
anyone with 2 existing mortgages. This tended to preserve the
communities that they were developing and they did not have that many
foreclosures. Other developments where they used less discretion,
became ghost towns.

It is easy to say the bankers were the only greedy ones but you can't
ignore the greed of buyers who entered into contracts they had no real
way of honoring, in the hopes that they could "flip" the house at a
profit before they had to pay the higher "adjusted" rate they signed
up for.
The victims were the ones who bought a homestead in that inflated
market. I tried to talk as many of those people I could into renting
until things settled down. The smart ones did and I know one guy who
lived rent free for over 2 years while the house he rented went
through a protracted foreclosure process. In real life, he could still
be living there because it is still hung up in court but he had a
chance to buy a house at a price he couldn't refuse. He had 2 years
rent to put down on the house ... almost $40,000. He only paid $80k
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There were lots of houses sold to people who had no chance of
affording mortgages payments. The only reason was the bonus the
sellers of these mortgages got. Same with insurance and lots of other
goods. The instant gratification syndrome doesn't help either.
Here in the UK some were offering 125% loans on houses. Unbelievable.
They are virtually in a negative equity position now.
Then there were endowment mortgages. Hah!