I knew about it. They had a major currency crisis. It wasn’t just the housing/financing collapse – their banks were offering HUGE interest rates for deposit accounts. A friend was getting 12% for a savings account and didn’t understand why the US didn’t offer similar. (Any European could open an account.)
That money went poof when their banks collapsed – and it was a HUGE deal in Europe.
My friend owned her condo and was super underwater when it collapsed – but so was everyone else. Because she and her husband had good income, they were able to “move up” – by assuming another underwater owners mortgage – and had someone assume their’s. Those were the only real estate transactions happening as the housing prices collapsed. For them – it ended up being ok because banks ended up writing off portions of the loans.
