[quote=sdrealtor] . . . You never refi’d so you must have a straight adjustable loan as you never would have held on otherwise. So you took on alot of risk when you made that decision. The payment is probably lower today and your taxes are as well so your payment when you bought had to be well above the cost of rent. Reading your post the only real reason you gave for buying was you had pets. Really? Did you buy a house for your dog? You criticize this guys wife for not working and you put your family at risk for a dog? Please tell me its not so????[/quote]
sdr, let me ask you, when YOU bought your principal residence (pre-9/11?) did you consider it to be a “risky investment?” I don’t recall many multiple-bid situations or people lining up to get into an open houses back then, do you? Did you know pre-911 that the RE market was going to come tumbling down in 2007?
Since you have been a homeowner all this time, would you now sell and RENT here in SD County if you had kids/pets living with you? I had been a homeowner all of my life. Why would I want to rent? Renting wasn’t cheaper. Do you know what a pet deposit is for 3 pets? Do you know any landlords who will accept all three of them? My adj rate mortgage started out at $1100 and has been as high as $1500 over the years and is now $1200. At all times it was cheaper than rent, bigger than a rental and has a lg backyard. I didn’t feel that I took an undue risk and still don’t. I’ve had this type of mtg since the ’80’s and have had very good experiences with it.
It’s too bad that so many ignorant people took out Option ARMS in recent years who never should have borrowed in the first place. This gave them an (undeserved) bad rap. They are excellent mortgages and I would get one again, if I could. However, there is likely zero chance I will be able to get the deals I obtained in the past as they are no longer “floating” with their respective indexes and the margins are now higher (likely due to prolonged low interest rates). They now have +/- (7.5% ?) annual backstops built into them after the 60th month (to avoid payment shocks?) but they threw out the baby with the bathwater in doing that. That’s what annual caps are for. The borrower must accept the bad with the good.
I must admit I’ve enjoyed the best interest rate climate in my life to be holding this sweet mtg!
The “professional financial planner” here and his spouse were obviously poor money managers in their personal lives. He stated SHE found the house and liked it so they bought it. He also stated HE wanted to spend $350K on a house. He wouldn’t be the first spouse to agree to overspend on a home to please his spouse. They BOTH knew they were going down when they were dipping into their cc’s and HELOC? just to exist month to month. She knew they would lose health coverage when he decided to work for himself.
Many, many families who live in LV work various shifts so that they have minimal or zero child care expense.
As I previously posted, they could have easily kept that house if they just had a little more income and didn’t extract so much cash out of it (which they partly used to live b/c SHE wasn’t bringing in income). Their lifestyles went up (vacations, etc) when they began extracting equity.
As you can see from the photos, this couple came back to the house just last month to gaze at it from the street and be photographed in front of it. Obviously, they miss it but they did it to themselves.
The days of the ’50’s “Stepford wives” are long gone. As a parent (male or female), I believe you have a moral and legal obligation to do what it takes to financially support your kids. She was falling down in this category when his biz started to falter. She stood idly by while he was struggling to pay I/O (or even less) on their “pick-a-pay” ARM (which had probably reached the 125% threshold). I guess we won’t know WHY, with his supposed, “credentials,” he signed up for this disastrous mtg (for them) unless we shell out $24.95 to read his book.
I won’t buy it because I don’t want to help the Richards pay for their annual two-week winter vacations in Beaver Creek that they’ve gotten “accustomed to” now. I’d rather just save my pennies and send myself :=]
