[Hydroshock]

Your thoughts?

[CutePuppy]

Just like with almost anything, "you can get 'em fast, cheap, and good - as long as you pick two out of the three".

[RockinRight]

Subprime isn’t “gone” per se, but it’s more sensible. Zero down? Fuggetabout it. Stated income? Maybe if the loan-to-value ratio is under 70%, pretty much ensuring that the lender won’t lose their shirts.

[STONEWALLS]

.....Sounds to me like we’re returning to “old school” lending practices...in other words a return to sanity....thanks for posting this article Hydroshock...you keep an eye on the housing market which I enjoy.

[doc30]

It will return sanity to the real estate market. All of these exotic, interest only loans simply allowed people to borrow more money to but a bigger home. And when many people get those huge loans, real estate prices get bid up higher and higher. I think it’s a good, common sense thing.

[luckystarmom]

It’s back to the way it should be.

We have a young couple in our church. He’s a mortgage broker, and he got himself one of the fancy loans. He just lost his house, and now has horrible credit. He’s married with 1 child and another on the way, and he’s living at his parent’s house.

He’s still in shock that he lost his home.

The older couples in our church just think he made a risky decision. We also think that he needs to change jobs and get something that does not work off of commision.

We live in California, and we have a large home for the area. A lot of people think we must have a huge mortgage.

There’s a big difference also between having a 500K mortgage with 0 equity in a home, and no savings.

We have a 500K mortage with almost a million in equity, and we also have lots of savings. Our home already dropped in value, and we could handle the swing. If something happens to my husband’s job, then we have savings to handle home payments for awhile.

I think a lot of young homebuyers in California thought they would buy their house, and it would appreciate very quickly. People that have lived in the area long enough know that you have to be able to ride out waves where homes don’t appreciate fast. Our first home didn’t go up in value for the first 5 years (then it skyrocketed). We made sure that we had enough money to handle that situation.