Back, as if the nightmare of the housing bubble was a distant memory, are mortgages that offer 102% financing (that’s right! more than the house is worth), ARMs of various lengths with low, low, low interest rates, 100% “Doctor” loans (they’ll probably need it), the much used 80/10/10. Yep. They’re all making another appearance on the mortgage landscape.
Who the heck cares about “skin in the game”? We need to make loans. Now, to be fair, you have to have astronomical credit scores and all sorts of other documentation that shows you’re an A+ borrower. I wonder, though, if this might be the proverbial camel’s nose under the tent or a slippery slope back to the days when, if you could fog a mirror, you could get a mortgage.
Far be it from me to warn off the next housing boom. With any luck, I’ll live through one more whopper and hoard my pennies like Scrooge McDuck and get the hell out when the bust comes, again. I was just thinking that maybe we should wait a little before all the weird stuff comes out, again. You know, in the interest of doing the right thing.
Nah. Let’s go for it!
