The Housing Financial Meltdown
By Malcolm Hedges (09/15/08)
The mess can pretty much be shared by Congress and reckless mortgage brokers.
1) Congressional mush-minds demanded that unqualified people be allowed to buy homes.
2) Reckless mortgage brokers leaped into the breach and got with the program big time.
At some point the whole scheme started to crumble. A lot of people suddenly found they actually had to pay the raising payments they signed up for to stay in their home.
To compound the issue, the rush to buy homes by unqualified buyers causes home prices to explode and associated property taxes.
Most probably many folks were unwilling to adjust their freewheeling lifestyle to gather funds to pay the mortgage, they just walked away from the challenge.
Mortgage margins are pretty slim, running from numbers like 5% to 7% interest rates. Small issues with payment traffic can be absorbed, once the problem accounts exceed a threshold the house of cards gets pretty shaky.
In many markets the price of homes is/was so inflated that an upper middle class family/person cannot afford the mortgage. A house worth around $100,000 can be priced at $250,000 or more thus making the target impossible to reach.
More government meddling by bureaucrat mush-minds will compound the mess and just make its effects amplify.
The mortgage holders need to bite the bullet, take a hit and refinance viable mortgage holders.
Fat cat mortgage brokers and financial wizards need to relax their commission demands to save their own rear ends!
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