Mortgages

At one time in my life, I was a loan officer. When I was sick, my good friend Glen took me under his wing at his mortgage company, allowed me to work to collect insurance. God bless him, I don't know what would have happened if he didn't. In ALL of my dealings with poeple, I steered them away from the adjustable rate mortgage. Why? At the time of my being in the business, rates were historically low. Unbelievably low. I refinanced my house at about 5 1/4 percent. I knew that if the rates were historically low, they weren't going to go much lower, only higher. My line was, "you'll love me now but in five years, you'll hate my guts." I wanted their business again and in order to that, I was completely honest. Some didn't listen, some did. Those who did are still paying about 5 1/2% and are building some decent equity. Those who didn't are probably in the throes of foreclosure. I feel very strongly about this...when dealing with something as important as your biggest expense ever, ya might want to do a little background work to a) find a reputable lender and b) read the doggone fine print. I feel bad for those who have put themselves in this position but buying a house with no down payment or buying too much of a house is entirely their fault. What would our parents have done? Probably buy a starter house, (or, what we did which was rent until we could afford a house we liked) then when you have the down payment saved, finding a house you can afford. But no, not this generation. It reminds me of an old Queen song "I want it all and I want it now!" About five years ago, there was a massive building boom around my house when all these Mcmansions went up. I thought to myself, who is buying all of these expensive houses? Five years later, 70% of them have for sale signs up. Now I know who was buying them...people who couldn't afford them.