Nope, they sure weren’t. They were, however, affordability tools to people who had no prayer of affording the house they bought. The “option” they wanted was to live in a larger house.
It is mind boggling to me that 71% of option-ARM borrowers are negatively amortizing their loans in the face of declining home values. There is only one way for that to end, and I suspect it will come when they hit their loan-to-value caps.
