Who do you blame more for housing crash: realtors or appraisers? (agents, mortgage companies)

[colincobre]

Poll's coming up.

[manderly6]

I put very little blame on either. Banks and home buyers get the vast majority of blame in my book.

[DMenscha]

Gee you left out mortgage folks who did liar loans. Left out Wall Street CDO's. Left out greedy buyers.

[colincobre]

Originally Posted by DMenscha

Gee you left out mortgage folks who did liar loans. Left out Wall Street CDO's. Left out greedy buyers.

At least I didn't left out greedy agents.

[Tampa Homes]

Lots of blame to go around, including the buyers. Unless they were somehow forced against their will to purchase homes?

[bbronston]

Of course I am biased but I got in after the run up. Realtors don't make the market, buyers and sellers do. It takes two willing parties. Realtors just take the information after the fact and the trend and make a prediction on where the next buyer and seller will fall. Appraisers, on the other hand, are responsible for helping lenders determine if the risk they are taking makes sense. If the lenders look the other way while the appraisers give them what they want to see, how is that the Realtors' fault? In my book, the Realtors have to fall in somewhere at the bottom of the list but, again, I see it from the inside and I'm not taking into account the relatively few weasels that really were doing something wrong.

[Hemlock140]

I too place most of the blame on the mortgage companies, but the appraisers "played ball" with them and were happy to make sure that they always appraised at or above asking price. It was the gimmick loans with balloon payments, interest only and low down payments that should take most of the blame. While realtors benefit from higher prices, they are really just doing their job by
trying to get the highest possible price to help their seller.

[aneftp]

I blame regulators of fannie/freddie plus AIG and other insurers of credit default swap.

Without those insurers, the big banks would not have made risky bets. if no one wants to insure your risky products you don't don't do the loans.

Of course Fannie and Freddie were buying all these toxic loans and not clearly evaluating the clients or the risk.

You stop things at the top you stop everything.

Realtors are just a pawn in the whole blame game. They wouldn't push a home sell through if they knew the mortgage wouldn't be approved. It would be a waste of time.

Stop the hole at the top. You stop everything.

[Rakin]

Well, it all started back about 1994 when Bill Clinton decided every person should buy a home whether they could afford it or not.

It went down hill from there.

[TimtheGuy]

Originally Posted by colincobre

Poll's coming up.

Absolutely neither. I blame Wall St. and their crappie loans that circumvented Fannie/Freddie/FHA (Alt A & subprime) and the ratings agencies like Moody's & S&P.