I feel confident in saying that guy is a dick.

And that he likely behaved dickishly (we can debate whether his failings were moral failings) in that file.

I fucking hate everyone.

That is all.

And while I was writing my last post, I saw something Typo Boy wrote that deserves comment. There's a problem with blaming government agencies/deregulation -- a lot of agencies supervise ("regulate" is a dirty word around what call themselves "supervisory agencies" -- not to defend or criticize, just that it is) lenders.

If you have a problem with your mortgage, who can you contact at the government? At the Federal level, it could be any one of at least six agencies. Your State government might have authority. Or it might not. Or it might be the government of another State.

And lenders do play off one agency against another. Some will switch from one agency to another for any of a number of reasons.

t stands next to Jesse

t but not too close

Given that I have so little understanding of it all, this may be callous...but seriously, if you're poor and have a rocky employment history, you know you can't afford a half million dollar home. Sure, I'll leave a bit of room for being told that you absolutely can and desperately wanting a piece of the pie.

I'm wondering where the sense of personal responsibility is in this.

No down payment 2% for six months and then we can raise it to whatever surprise amount we like? It even sounds like a carrot on a stick, or a pile of magic beans.

I would LOVE to own a home. Sadly, I'll likely never afford one on my one salary with my level of credit card debt. Maybe it's just hitting close to my heart.

I'm not even talking about all this larger bullshit! I'm only talking about my local bullshit.

Stabby.

::stands next to Allyson::

Ugh, Sophia! I hate it when things like that happen.

We're just starting to poke our nose into the housing market, because if the inheritance I've talked about in Bitches comes through, we will probably be in a good position to buy when our current lease is up. (Still nothing certain, though. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate uncertainty? Because I hate it A LOT right now.) The housing market hasn't collapsed in Seattle the way it has in so many other places, but we're still thinking our financial difficulties of the last 7 years or so making us unable to buy before may turn out to be a blessing in disguise, because there suddenly are quite a few decent houses in our price range on the market. Though it looks like we may have to make a trade-off between "wonderful house" and "wonderful neighborhood."

It just feels like a perfect storm of economic badness between the real estate bubble bursting and gas prices/general inflation. They're really feeling the bust where my mom lives because on top of everything else, living in the country 30 miles from Birmingham is no longer looking like such a wonderful idea, when most of your commute is the stop-and-go gas-guzzling nightmare of US 280.

Given that I have so little understanding of it all, this may be callous...but seriously, if you're poor and have a rocky employment history, you know you can't afford a half million dollar home. Sure, I'll leave a bit of room for being told that you absolutely can and desperately wanting a piece of the pie.

I'm wondering where the sense of personal responsibility is in this.

The flip-side of that is you have a thin grasp of economics and are easily convinced by an expert who spins or flat-out lies because they're taking no risk by giving you that mortgage.

I spent most of 2003-2004 listening to friends and relatives telling me I should buy. Why rent when mortgages are so easy to get? But, my credit rating was crap, I had no savings at all for a down payment or a housing emergency, and I didn't want to lock myself into buying when my working situation could change at any time.

I'm so glad I didn't listen, otherwise, I might be living in one of those tent cities I saw on BBC America news.

Susan, just from what I've been reading on various economic/housing blogs, I'd hold off on buying for at least a year, and then see what the market is doing in Seattle. The foreclosures are just starting to happen now--many of the ARM mortgages haven't even reset yet. When they do, the foreclosure rate is going to skyrocket even more than it is already.