[snugs]

Absolutely I can remember in Britain when you needed minimum 10 - 15 per cent down payment and only 3 time the major breadwinners salary; at one time they did not even count the wife's salary because it was considered that she would take a career break to raise the children. Nowadays or at least until a few weeks ago it was not unheard of to give 5 times combined salaries and little or no down payment instead a secondary loan to cover that or some form of guarantee.

It is a mess but IMHO both the borrowers and the instituations are at fault there are very few borrowers who did at not at least have some doubts they would not be able to repay the debt year after year. Many would have realised it meant both of them continuing to earn the salaries they were and hoping against hope that interest rates, utility bills etc etc did not go up substantially.

Bottom line is of course you should not lend money to people that stand a good chance of not repaying it but also those borrowing IMHO must bear some of the responsibility.

[9YearLurker]

I look at it as being:

- the fault of the borrowers if they took on mortgages they now can’t afford,
- the fault of the institutions who took on too much misunderstood, bad mortgage securities (believing the unrealistic ratings of the bond rating agencies, etc.),
- and the fault of our government that it forced this level of bad lending on the banks—and that the taxpayers are going to get stuck with the bill.

[altura]

It was that way here about mortgages a while back.

I’ve heard that it’s still sensible not to count the wife’s salary.

My daughter got her home loan based solely on her own salary, which is weird because, while she could make the payment, she couldn’t do much else.

[rodguy911]

bottom line of course is that you should not lend money to people that stand a good chance of not repaying it

words of wisdom had to be repeated.