[quote=briansd1]BG, you personalize this issue too much. Try to look at it from a detached perspective.
Now you complain about lender malaise for causing property value to crater. But before you’ve complained about too much credit that causes people to overspend on things they cannot afford.[/quote]
brian, I don’t recall complaining about “too much credit” but “lender malaise” and “too much credit” are one and the same.
[quote=briansd1]Lenders are now returning to asking for full docs and downpayments. That will bring sanity back to the market.[/quote]
How many more years do you think this will take, brian?
[quote=briansd1]You’ve advized people to buy houses because, in your opinion, those deals cannot be found again. Why is Chula Vista different?[/quote]
What you are referring to here, I believe, are properties which are unique in their architecture or location. Chula Vista has properties like this, along with SD and many other areas.
[quote=briansd1]On the question of home improvements, those are consumption items. Even a kitchen remodel is consumption and not investment in my view. People who overdo and over-customize with moulding and colors, etc… will not recoup their money when they sell.[/quote]
Owners don’t expect to recoup all their home-improvement monies. They expect improvements to help them sell faster and expect to recoup a portion of “prudent” improvements (that is, improvements made that are appropriate for the area’s values).
[quote=briansd1]The “special treatment” you mentioned was made possible by irrational exuberance, the blind faith that markets were rational in the aggregate, and the belief that banks had institutional controls setup to prevent fraud.[/quote]
I disagree. The special treatment was made possible by political decisions from TPTB to fund the Big Banks and other institutional lenders so they could afford to “coddle” into oblivion the most irresponsible borrowers under the guise of “allowing them to remain in their homes,” even if those homes were clearly out of their league both now and at the time of purchase.
[quote=briansd1]In fact, the actors involved in selling financial products only cared about the commissions they could make. They couldn’t care less if the loans went bad after they were paid.[/quote]
This is true. I’ve witnessed a few of these disasters first-hand and tried to assist the resultant “home-debtors” with the fallout. I was disgusted reading their usurious settlement statements and then later finding out the precise amount of “yield-spread premium” these “mtg broker”/actors rec’d exactly 1.5 minutes after the borrower’s mtg was sold and shipped off to some poor chump “investor” … usually “out-of-sight, out-of-mind” on the east coast :=0
