I unfortunately worked for a subprime lender for a short time (6 mos) before I decided to become an appraiser. Things are slower now, but I'm able to keep going OK because there aren't nearly as many appraisers and it's pretty difficult to become licensed.
Some things I took away from the experience: Every Tom Dick & Harry got into it- was a modern day gold rush for a time. Many only had high school education and did quite well, but spent nearly every dime they got. There are surely a lot of early BMW lease returns going on and most of these people will never make this kind of money again unless they go back to school and get a real education.
From my point of view, the whole subprime thing was mostly about taking advantage of unaware, uneducated, stupid, and lazy homeowners in a raging market. The ideal borrower would have a good amt of equity and a lot of debt, with low fico scores of course. We were trained to point out how their overall payments could be lowered by refinancing (paying off the mtg, cc debt, cars, etc), and they could also get cash out to enjoy life a little, go on that vacation you've been dreaming about, get a new car, etc. Never mind the fact that they ended up with a dangerous adjustable rate mtg which went back to 30 years in nearly every case, and just paid a whole bunch of fees to refi.
My questions are: Why didn't more people see this coming? Did homeowners think the market would magically increase by leaps & bounds from now to the end of time? Where were the finance media experts in all this and why didn't they warn homeowners?
