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They used to, but the housing market before such was not treated as such a fad volatile market.
What kind of idiot takes the claims of organizations and such as truth in the face of the evidence that showed the housing market was moving too fast, too high and becoming extremely volatile? The housing markets in Calif were always bubbling and crashing. But for those of us "old timers" that didn't buy "speculative" type housing it wasn't really a problem. We bought at what should have been a resonable price according to the bank appraisers, we were not living in a "speculative" part of Calif. nor did we get a "speculative" type loan. We were the unwitting victims of the SPECULATORS on wall street that bundled the mortgages of everyone, crook, gangster, idiot, or flipper into one big bundle and sold it to other wall street gangsters and overseas. We are not is the least little bit responsible for any of this mess, nor are thousands of other buyers.....we're just stuck. We've been doing the "right thing" for 4 years, but after next year and we are then on retirement/medicare/ssi/ and paying healthcare and trying to get by until we die.....welll that house will have to go and I sereiously doubt the market will have leveled in our time remaining before 50 years of "doing the right thing" is going to get "short saled"....no matter what anyone thinks. If you were our age, you would think much differently. But hopefully YOUR world will be better.
I mean, I saw homes in less than 1 year jump 2-3 times their value. There is NO reasonable grounds to claim that such a market would be safe! It defies all logic and it is why some of us were not rushing out to buy these over priced homes.neither did we.
I knew it was the issue the moment their price jumps started to make the last 30 year average look as if it was a flat line. No, there is no justification for claiming one was "tricked" in this. This was pure greed driving stupidity on this issue. Most buyers were not tricked "INTO" it. They were tricked in trying to get out of it.
People wanted to get rich off homes turning them into a fad market and they lost out. I call pure BS on the claim they were innocent and were mislead. Complete BS.
most buyers simply wanted a home to live in, then they lost their jobs/retirements/401ks/ which in turn, made them have to sell at any price which helped in the bursting of said bubble! Along with all the other issues. The majority of people simply want to do the right thing, work, raise their families and be left alone. don't brush the entire mortgage holder with the same brush.
Oh complete BS. Real estate was a safe investment DUE to its slow steady growth. Any moron could see that when it spiked the levels it did that it was false rise, a fad increase.
Idiots out there gambled on housing being a quick buck and the lost. To blame this on everything else is nothing short irresponsible.
Many idiots always gamble....but many thousands did not. We were one of those "non idiots" , we bought carefully, with great thought, we had bought and sold houses before and knew what we were doing, and we like all the early baby boomers actually made the mistake of trusting our banking system. Nor did we overpay. But when it comes down to live under a bridge or let the loan foreclose.....well they have a very nice beautiful mountain home in the gorgeous gold country of California to have in their inventories. The banks really are not losing out.....which is why it was so easy to get mortgages....because in the end....you could always foreclose on property....which according to the banks NEVER loses value....even if the house burns down! The majority are not morons and idiots, just duped!
I'm sorry if I keep harping on this but you are wrong to purport the housing and realty in general as a long standing "known" safe growth investment as that simply isn't so. this last "bubble" is not something new but is just another in the cycle of up and down's that the realestate market has seen happen before and probably multiple times in your lifespan.As in my prior post....and being a Californian, that is very true....which we took into consideration while buying this particular home, and we were (are) of upper middle income so we were buying a "lesser" home that we normally would have been buying because we believed a bubble was going on, otherwise we would have bought a couple hundred grand higher.I'm sure you were aware of these downward trends. You chose to believe one wouldn't happen in conjunction with your endeavour when all the signs and even a few that weren't present in previous examples were farily screaming it was coming! It literally whispering when we bought the house, but still felt at our ages, no point in buying more than we needed. Then just about a month or two before we went on the market Countrywide/Enron/Worldwide and all those wall street scandals started and VERY QUICKLY the "screaming" started. We IMMEDIATELY SAW IT, but my husband who was "officially retired already", and he had to secure a job before we could sell. Who would ever think the housing market bubble could burst so badly and so quickly. We literally saw him working again and the house on the market and the freefall happened in LITERALLY 2 WEEKS! It had never happened before in our lifetimes evenwith all the ups and downs of Calif. real estate.
I would like to ask if an investment counsellor or retirement advisor was consulted at the time of your purchase because I would be VERY surprised if that were the case; given your proximity to retirement that they would have advised "sure go ahead and sink yourself into a 3k a month mortgage" while imminent to projected retirement date. VERY surprised! Considering my husband is paid LOTS of money as a financial guru!!!! we really would not havefound anyone smarter or more knowledgeable than him, yet timing caught us in a mess, and after we went "on sale" is when the market really tanked. It took along time to catch up with us because we did buy "smartly" but it did.
You are right to "assume" this person did not jump on the housing market as I was brought up to believe in a different model for retirement and commenced saving for it in my twenties with moderate foray's into diversified investments that held varying degrees of risk with a paring back of those with higher risk factors the closer to retirement age I got.As did we all, but life takes us where life takes us...and the best laid plans of men, are the biggest laugh God ever gets!
The point is; you rolled the dice, chose a speculative envestment and put all of your eggs in one basket, the really painfull part is: I believe you know this!No we didn't, we bought a home to retire in. But again, those best laid plans.....
The banks can only provide you with something you ask for. It's not like they were selling morgages door-to-door out of the back of a panel van.
Point being?
Were they morally wrong to follow congess's (Barnie Franks) push for affordable sub-prime loans to then sell that paper off at further discount; that's up to the voters to decide but to date he's still sitting in the house so I guess all is forgiven.that's politics, not real life. Nor does it matter to all those mortgage holders in our same position. Luckily most people in this position are younger such as yourself and will have time in their live to adjust....as we did many, many, many, many, many times! This one caught us late in life....and we may still luck out....but if we don't....we'll short sale in a heartbeat!
While I'm a staunch advocate of personal responsibility I'm also going to say "you must take whatever steps will allow you to sleep at night with a modicum of self respect maintained while also keeping your health and overall objective of retiring while still alive to the fore".
Good luck and god bless.
Thanks, and to you as well. Just realize, (and you will) that life doesn't always follow your particular chosen path.
Thanks, and to you as well. Just realize, (and you will) that life doesn't always follow your particular chosen path.
I know that as well and that is why we chose not to gamble with real estate for anything other than to provide housing for ourselves or to augment existing revenues with rental housing purchases that we went into knowing we could absorb those losses completely WITHOUT risking our retirement investments. We've been retired since 2004 and are indeed very fortunate to not have your worry to deal with and with no health issues to date at the ages of 63 (D/W) and myself at 65.
We own our own home and another in Lakeland Florida that we winter in after a lifetime of travelling abroad. We have done and seen most of it and are content now to not leave this continent other than for the occasional cruise.
Our plan worked for us but is not for everybody as we fully understand. We also understand that a major health issue could have/might yet put us into an entirely different scenario.
I also am a firm believer in a silly axiom of "today is just the tomorrow you worried about yesterday".
They used to, but the housing market before such was not treated as such a fad volatile market.
What kind of idiot takes the claims of organizations and such as truth in the face of the evidence that showed the housing market was moving too fast, too high and becoming extremely volatile?
I mean, I saw homes in less than 1 year jump 2-3 times their value. There is NO reasonable grounds to claim that such a market would be safe! It defies all logic and it is why some of us were not rushing out to buy these over priced homes.
I knew it was the issue the moment their price jumps started to make the last 30 year average look as if it was a flat line. No, there is no justification for claiming one was "tricked" in this. This was pure greed driving stupidity on this issue.
People wanted to get rich off homes turning them into a fad market and they lost out. I call pure BS on the claim they were innocent and were mislead. Complete BS.
Ten to one you weren't saying this when it was happening. Everybody is an expert after the fact.
I know that as well and that is why we chose not to gamble with real estate for anything other than to provide housing for ourselves or to augment existing revenues with rental housing purchases that we went into knowing we could absorb those losses completely WITHOUT risking our retirement investments. We've been retired since 2004 and are indeed very fortunate to not have your worry to deal with and with no health issues to date at the ages of 63 (D/W) and myself at 65.
We own our own home and another in Lakeland Florida that we winter in after a lifetime of travelling abroad. We have done and seen most of it and are content now to not leave this continent other than for the occasional cruise.
Our plan worked for us but is not for everybody as we fully understand. We also understand that a major health issue could have/might yet put us into an entirely different scenario.
I also am a firm believer in a silly axiom of "today is just the tomorrow you worried about yesterday".
Mine favorite is "There aint' no answers, There aint' never goin to be no answers....and that's the answer".
As to your retirement, that's fabulous you were not one of the many thousands that didn't lose everything as the country fell apart. The dot.com burst...just following our "retirement"...of which we were invested, followed by 9/11 on the actual date that our realtor open house was, and we lived in Tampa. 4 years to sell that house....at a loss, followed by moving back to Calif. where it looked for awhile as though everything was going to sort of level off and stop tanking...and then the financial collapse....surprise....but we have withstood it to date, but time and health is running out.....and many thousands did not....even all those people that were "collateral damage" and had done nothing wrong. Life is always a surprise, not always such a good surprise. Here's hoping that things turn around soon for the whole country. This millenenium just hasn't been the America we have always known.
most buyers simply wanted a home to live in, then they lost their jobs/retirements/401ks/ which in turn, made them have to sell at any price which helped in the bursting of said bubble! Along with all the other issues. The majority of people simply want to do the right thing, work, raise their families and be left alone. don't brush the entire mortgage holder with the same brush.
I lived in California during the time prices started to go up. The simple fact is that these houses were not worth what they were being sold for even if they were being appraised as such.
That is the entire problem here. You relied on these "institutions" to tell you the value of something when common sense was screaming they were not worth such.
I don't care how many market experts you get to back you up, the fact is, these homes were not of that worth. A simple calculation of cost of living and the wage index should have shown you that the home price was far above any reasonable value to which the average wage (or even above average) could not even remotely justify.
The homes were a money sink just on that very basic concept and as I said, anyone who was paying attention should have seen it.
You know what the irony of the situation is? People are pointing to the mortgage companies and the appraisals as a fault, but the simple fact is that if people didn't accept the prices of homes, they would have dropped. My wife and I were looking to buy about the time of the price jumps in California, but when the houses doubled and tripled in less than 6 months, we came to the conclusion that market was being pushed into a fad craze.
That is, much like the collectible market, there was no "natural" value determining their worth. It was strictly being pushed through the fad to which was driving the prices so far up that loan companies could not finance people without using various tricks and methods to get people to qualify.
In the end, as unfortunate as it is, you were in control here, you agreed to pay that price for the home and regardless of the appraisal, "you" accepted that the home was worth that much. The power was entirely within your hands the whole time. Nobody was forcing you to pay that much and nobody forced you to accept the loan or the home. You decided to. You can blame it on others for misinforming you, but as I said, the issue was quite telling in the dramatic change of home prices and trying to claim that you were cheated because some institution claimed that a 100-400% increase in a homes value in the time that they rose was "reasonable" is simply a very poor assessment on your part.
Homes do not shoot up that high, in that short of time unless there is something fishy going on. Anyone who stopped for a moment to think about that knew this. Which is why I did not buy a home for a ridiculous price and left the state that was acting like a teenage girl at a boy band concert with the home prices. it made no sense, it was a severe bubble, and common sense dictated it was a very risky venture if you were concerned about your homes value being safety net investment.
Many idiots always gamble....but many thousands did not. We were one of those "non idiots" , we bought carefully, with great thought, we had bought and sold houses before and knew what we were doing, and we like all the early baby boomers actually made the mistake of trusting our banking system. Nor did we overpay. But when it comes down to live under a bridge or let the loan foreclose.....well they have a very nice beautiful mountain home in the gorgeous gold country of California to have in their inventories. The banks really are not losing out.....which is why it was so easy to get mortgages....because in the end....you could always foreclose on property....which according to the banks NEVER loses value....even if the house burns down! The majority are not morons and idiots, just duped!
The issue is extremely complex I understand, that there were many players that contributed to the problem, but this was pretty clear.
You claim you have done this before, that you were informed in your decision and that you did not trust the banking system, yet why did you buy the home then?
You have in past posts pointed out that it was appraised at that value, so you placed your trust in such. You claim that the banks forced an appraisal means of their choice, yet this did not bring about any concern?
You watched a housing market shoot up dramatically, yet you did not do any analysis of past home values and their increases over the last 50 years to see if this trend in value was not unprecedented? Did you do an cost of living analysis and compare the wage index with home values to see that they were severely out of sync?
And after all of that, the other poster here pointed out some very odd risks that you took when purchasing this home so close to retirement, was this not a dangerous move?
My point is, you claim you were experienced, did not trust, and were informed, yet all that I have asked you were strong indicators of the issue. Those things were tell tale signs of the market being a bubble and not supported by slow and steady growth to which a safe investment would provide.
You will do what you have to do as it concerns the survival and well being of yourself, but that is not the objection I have with your responses.
The problem I have is your unwillingness to accept you made some very poor decisions and you took risks that were apparent if you had spent the time evaluating them. You now go on to blame the industry (to which I agree they share some responsibility, as well as the government) and you seem to disregard all responsibility of the buyer to which this issue could have never reached such levels if buyers were paying attention more and not looking at the housing market as if it was a fad trading card game.
It is easier for idiots to buy on margin when there is nearly free short term money available. The real speculators never lived in the houses they bought and sold when some profit was available. They never intended to keep them for very long. They got out, some with considerable winnings, when the getting was good and left the mess for the folks just trying to find a place to live.
Our major policy failure was guaranteeing the loans, before and after the fact, that fueled the speculation. The people that did this should have had their investments collapse just like previous bubbles.
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You are right!
