A year ago I got divorced after being a married homeowner for 15 years I didn’t have much of a clue about Real Estate other than the two houses I had owned. I assumed I would be fine, I made over 100k a year at a stable job that I’ve had for 15 years with an 800 fico, no debt other than a small car payment, no alimony, and a small chunk of money from being bought out on the house in my divorce. I was wrong! Prices were crazy and I found I could only buy something below my standards yet for the lionshare of my income. Where are all these people getting this money? This is insanity. Refusing anything other than a 15 or 30 fixed with 20% down, I was made to feel like someone clinging to an ancient religion. One saleswoman at a new development didn’t even know how to calculate those “old loans” on her computer.

Then I found this site and have been an avid reader here and in the news, watch the mls regularly and have become a student of the game. Thanks to this site I didn’t buy last year even though I almost had to. I am in a cash position and have watched things fall with each passing day while I save more. I don’t want to claim this site changed my life but it did, without it I would have bought in February of 2006, ten years from now we will look at graphs and that may end up being the peak of the graph, for that I thank you piggington. I will buy again, I could today but i won’t. I will keep my eye on the ball and hopefully I will be able to lean on others to guess the bottom or near bottom of this cycle.