11 ms·

My 10-Year Odyssey Through America’s Housing Crisis

75 points by dankohn1 9y ago

neonate 9y ago
http://archive.is/GPTMc http://archive.is/GPTMc
toomuchtodo 9y ago
My god, the author of this story made all the wrong choices. Wouldn’t walk away from the property, liquidated his 401k to obtain sole possession of the dwelling from his ex, wouldn’t commit to missing payments to get a workout commitment from his lender. Had he walked away from the property, he’d still have his 401k (protected from creditors by federal law; he could’ve lived in the house for years while it went through foreclosure and put his mortgage payments in his 401k) and if the lender absolutely decided to pursue the deficiency judgment (rare), he could’ve settled for pennies on the dollar or declared bankruptcy and still been hundreds of thousands of dollars ahead. Just sad. My advice to those who read this: never get emotionally invested. It’s just business. Look at the numbers, and throw out any sense of morality of the debt repayment. That is how the system is built; act like a rational actor within it (losses are built into the mortgage interest rate). Your future self will thank you.
- x0x0 9y ago
  He'd already moved by the time he desperately wanted to sell.
- DubiousPusher 9y ago
  For some of us, it's engrained into our moral code to fulfill our word with people. And this is manipulated so we'll extend it to corporations. It took me years to learn how to handle relationships with large companies and I still feel horrible frequently after a call with a rep for one. I've spent hours on the phone trying every way I can to resolve some issue and it too often just comes down to being a jerk. But in so many ways they create the rules of the game.
- lazyasciiart 9y ago
  Hell, if he'd sold the property for 'less than it was worth' at any point, it sounds like he'd be better off. > I prepared to sell our house. To cover sales commissions and other expenses, we’d have to sell it for more than we’d paid for it yea, that's not how house prices are set.
- squiggleblaz 9y ago
  Yep. In German, debt is guilt. In Aramaic, debt is sin. But in English, debt is just debt. If you owe your debt to a physical human being who's legit struggling, I implore you, make every effort. But you owe nothing at all to a company unless the law will force it out of you.
- tankerslay 9y ago
  >My god, the author of this story made all the wrong choices. Did he? He kept his job, didn't get drunk or hooked on pain pills, bailed out what sounded like a very uncooperative ex-wife, and all through it kept his house clean and even took care of the neighbor's dog. If anything, I'd say the story comes dangerously close to being a humble brag. Whatever money difference there was be between him and pretty much any of the others, including the couple who skipped town with pizza on the counter...I'd gladly pay it twice over to have neighbors like this guy.
  - mortgage_debt 9y ago
    However, his neighbours didn't pay him any money to thank him for being an upstanding guy. He took the hit himself.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - justherefortart 9y ago
    My first wife tried this uncooperative shit with our home (I bought before we were married). I told her I'd sell it for exactly what we owe if she didn't take my fair offer. Probably should have just gone ahead and done that but I didn't want to move.
  - IkmoIkmo 9y ago
    From the assumption of self-interest, yes he made all the wrong choices. Being a model citizen or nice neighbour or a bank's best friend is another story.
- tomcam 9y ago
  I know, what a fucking stooge, amiright? He actually wanted to pay his debts. What a loser.
  - frankc 9y ago
    If you treat your mortgage like a blood oath instead of a contract, then yeah, you're a dummy.
  - tonyedgecombe 9y ago
    You could compile a good list of who to do business with and who to avoid right here.
    - jackvalentine 9y ago
      I'd prefer you do business with me because our contract is mutually beneficial and we both understand the risks we're undertaking. Not because you think you have some kind of honour debt to me.
      - tonyedgecombe 9y ago
        On the other hand if you think you could weasel out of an agreement because the contract isn't defined tightly enough then I wouldn't want to do business with you.
        jackvalentine 9y ago
        Emotive words like 'weasel' don't belong in a business discussion. If the best course of action for you is to walk away from our deal, then I encourage you to take it. I would hope you understand me doing the same.
  - mortgage_debt 9y ago
    > A few bank employees told me, candidly, to skip a payment or two and feign distress to draw the bank to the negotiating table. I tried that once. Almost immediately, I was inundated with threatening calls. He was actually advised by the bank's own employees that he could renegotiate the payments. This wouldn't have been defaulting on the debt, just paying it at a rate he could afford. Literally billions of dollars from the federal government was given to banks to help people who were struggling to pay their mortgage. Because he wasn't prepared to go through this process he lost out.
chime 9y ago
I bought my first very similar house in 2005 and experienced this exact thing. Fresh out of college, moved to South for a promising job, and bought something small I could easily afford. I even wrote about the potential of a housing crash in Oct 2005 ( http://chir.ag/200510301225 http://chir.ag/200510301225 ). I lived there through the housing bubble, saw my 145k house go up to 200k and then down to 75k, rented it out after I got married and moved away, and kept losing thousands each year for 5-6 years. Last week someone offered to buy it for just a bit over my mortgage pay off balance. I will lose a few thousand but at least I will be out of the landlording business. I have my fingers crossed that the inspection goes well but I'm not holding my breath. > From the original purchase in 2005 to last year’s sale, I lost $25,500. My losses as a landlord? At least $35,000. Whatever the sum, it no longer mattered. I was free. It's scary how similar even his figures are to mine. I bought a much more modest house than I could have bought in a prime location, I fought hard to get a great deal on my mortgage, I paid bills on time and kept up with maintenance, and I've kept up with the market trends so as not to miss my chance to refinance/sell. Time and again I asked myself what I did wrong to lose 60k+ of my hard earned money over a decade. But after an investor friend of mine discussed his plans to buy numerous distressed properties to fix and rent them, I realized what had happened. The Great Recession had turned affordable residential real-estate into a zero sum game. I, along with millions of others had to lose 10k each per year to make it worth it for him to be a residential real-estate investor. My piggy bank investment was competing in the same arena has his tooth-and-nails livelihood. The big lesson is that market manipulation can convert a non-zero sum activity into a zero-sum activity. It used to be that your small family home was a safe, gradually appreciating asset. Most everyone won, few lost. > In 1944, John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern proved that any non-zero-sum game for n players is equivalent to a zero-sum game with n + 1 players; the (n + 1)th player representing the global profit or loss. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_game#Extensions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_game#Extensions Just need one new player to turn the game around. Enter my friend and a few thousand others like him with resources to buy out every third upside-down house in the neighborhood with cash, upgrade bath and kitchen, and then rent them out long-term with a team of property managers. It's a sellers market but very few homeowners are bidding up sub-200k houses. Instead it's the cash investors low-balling the price until owners such as myself and the author just break down and say 'Screw it! At least the 60k loss will save me some taxes next year.'
wonder_er 9y ago
it's sad, how much the author suffered for bad behavior on behalf of the banks. They got bailed out, the author didn't. He should have foreclosed. The banks lent money they didn't have. I don't see why the author paid it off. I respect his integrity, but he should have declared bankruptcy.
- x0x0 9y ago
  The author pointed out that his mortgage was a recourse loan.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    Bankruptcy only lasts 7 years on your credit, and would’ve wiped all of his debt clean (save for government backed student loans). He’s been stuck in limbo for 10. It’s rare for lenders to pursue recourse when the borrower is insolvent.
    - x0x0 9y ago
      In general, yes -- the luxury car in the drive was also bought on credit and is underwater and/or is a lease, and you can't repossess poorly chosen tattoos. Thinking you have a moral obligation to a bank is a fools errand, because they'll happily screw you for a penny. As the article points out, however, the author was gainfully employed elsewhere. So in this case, the threat of recourse was quite real.
      - toomuchtodo 9y ago
        You can still declare bankruptcy while gainfully employed. Some states have much stronger protections for borrowers from creditors than others.
        madengr 9y ago
        Not all jobs. If you have a security clearance, that would be pulled for bankruptcy.
timewarrior 9y ago
I have lived in the Bay Area for 6+ years. Could have bought a house, but the prices seemed crazy in 2014 and look a lot more crazier now. And the prices keep on creeping up higher! All my friends have bought houses. Some of them have bought houses worth 2.4M in Cupertino. Most of them are Indians on H1B visa and not Green Card in sight! Are Bay Area prices sustainable? Am I being unnecessarily paranoid?
- stevenwoo 9y ago
  I own and am not sure. Could have bought in San Francisco in 2001 and decided to buy on the peninsula instead. Cupertino still had starter homes < 500,000 at that time but I didn't want to live there, either. For a while there it looked like a mistake to not live in the city then the market turned insane and the peninsula housing market is almost as hot as the city. Part of me wants to take the profit and run but to where?
  - JKCalhoun 9y ago
    Nearly anywhere.
    - DubiousPusher 9y ago
      Unfortunately no. Not all of us are thrilled about a life of remote work. I for one work best side by side with a team of people. That environment is only easily attained in the exact places that have ridiculous real estate markets. I've looked many times at different markets and for me moving doesn't make sense. So near Seattle I stay.
      - automoton1 9y ago
        "That environment is only easily attained in the exact places that have ridiculous real estate markets." There are places in middle America with open positions for many people that have relatively inexpensive living costs in comparison to places like SV, Seattle, New York, and so on.
juhq 9y ago
Any link to this article without paywall?
- neogodless 9y ago
  https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/10-year-odyssey-americas-housing-crisis/ https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/10-year-odyssey-americas...
puppetmaster400 9y ago
No mention of Feinstein, who voted for bailout, despite 90 percent of voters against. https://www.capitolhillblue.com/node/11539 https://www.capitolhillblue.com/node/11539
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
karma_farmer 9y ago
anti-paywall: https://outline.com/fSGxss https://outline.com/fSGxss https://archive.is/GPTMc https://archive.is/GPTMc https://facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fmy-10-year-odyssey-through-americas-housing-crisis-1516981725 https://facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Fart...
jcadam 9y ago
Bought a house in 2007 in Colorado Springs and had to move out of state in 2012 for work - the crash meant I was underwater on my mortgage, but not by much. So, I decided to hire a property manager (Lesson 1: Never be a landlord if you're not going to be present to manage the property yourself - PMs take their 10% cut of the rent and do absolutely nothing in return) to rent the place out and sell in a few years after the market had recovered - which didn't happen in Colorado Springs until recently. Last summer I gave my tenant her 60 day notice, found a listing agent, and my wife flew out to Colorado Springs to help prep the house for sale... Turns out the tenant had totally trashed the place. In fact, she had been operating a rabbit breeding operation in the house (there were rabbit cages stacked floor-to-ceiling in some places, and a large outdoor hutch had been constructed in the back yard). Carpets ruined, feces smeared on walls, and a general unholy smell throughout the entire house. Hell, large amounts of rabbit bedding and feces had been dumped into the crawlspace. This is the tenant I had cut a lot of slack to over the years with late payments, etc (Lesson 2: Never cut a tenant any slack - if you do they'll walk all over you). What should have easily been a $40k profit (had the house sold at market rate) turned into a $5k loss (at least I didn't end up owing any capital gain tax, pfft). I will burn a house to the ground before I become a landlord ever again. Also, Zillow keeps sending me updates on the property value (which magically keeps going up), despite my attempts to make it stop (I don't want to know, really) :(
- branchless 9y ago
  Love the hypocrisy: > So, I decided to hire a property manager (Lesson 1: Never be a landlord if you're not going to be present to manage the property yourself - PMs take their 10% cut of the rent and do absolutely nothing in return) to rent the place out and sell in a few years after the market had recovered - which didn't happen in Colorado Springs until recently. So you figured you'd do nothing and wait for your profit whilst another parasite waited for theirs whilst the tenant did all the work and gave you both a cut! And easy $40k. Glad it didn't work out for you. Here's some light reading from today's Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/16/landlords-social-parasites-last-people-should-be-honouring-buy-to-let https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/16/landlo...
txsh 9y ago
What I don’t see anybody talking about what’s going on with car loans. The next time we have a recession it’s going to be a lot worse as people will lose both their houses and their cars. I know a waitress who can barely afford an apartment, with no family support or co-signer, who financed a brand new Jeep. This is not sustainable.
wpdev_63 9y ago
Why don't more people just live in RVs/vans? Taking out a mortgage is a huge risk over 30 years - what happens if you lose your job and cannot find another one at the same pay? Or you get sick and cannot work? I guess you could sell and take the equity out of the house but you lose so much money and time to the banks.

75 points by dankohn1 9y ago

http://archive.is/GPTMc http://archive.is/GPTMc

My god, the author of this story made all the wrong choices. Wouldn’t walk away from the property, liquidated his 401k to obtain sole possession of the dwelling from his ex, wouldn’t commit to missing payments to get a workout commitment from his lender. Had he walked away from the property, he’d still have his 401k (protected from creditors by federal law; he could’ve lived in the house for years while it went through foreclosure and put his mortgage payments in his 401k) and if the lender absolutely decided to pursue the deficiency judgment (rare), he could’ve settled for pennies on the dollar or declared bankruptcy and still been hundreds of thousands of dollars ahead. Just sad. My advice to those who read this: never get emotionally invested. It’s just business. Look at the numbers, and throw out any sense of morality of the debt repayment. That is how the system is built; act like a rational actor within it (losses are built into the mortgage interest rate). Your future self will thank you.

x0x0 9y ago
He'd already moved by the time he desperately wanted to sell.
DubiousPusher 9y ago
For some of us, it's engrained into our moral code to fulfill our word with people. And this is manipulated so we'll extend it to corporations. It took me years to learn how to handle relationships with large companies and I still feel horrible frequently after a call with a rep for one. I've spent hours on the phone trying every way I can to resolve some issue and it too often just comes down to being a jerk. But in so many ways they create the rules of the game.
lazyasciiart 9y ago
Hell, if he'd sold the property for 'less than it was worth' at any point, it sounds like he'd be better off. > I prepared to sell our house. To cover sales commissions and other expenses, we’d have to sell it for more than we’d paid for it yea, that's not how house prices are set.
squiggleblaz 9y ago
Yep. In German, debt is guilt. In Aramaic, debt is sin. But in English, debt is just debt. If you owe your debt to a physical human being who's legit struggling, I implore you, make every effort. But you owe nothing at all to a company unless the law will force it out of you.
tankerslay 9y ago
>My god, the author of this story made all the wrong choices. Did he? He kept his job, didn't get drunk or hooked on pain pills, bailed out what sounded like a very uncooperative ex-wife, and all through it kept his house clean and even took care of the neighbor's dog. If anything, I'd say the story comes dangerously close to being a humble brag. Whatever money difference there was be between him and pretty much any of the others, including the couple who skipped town with pizza on the counter...I'd gladly pay it twice over to have neighbors like this guy.
- mortgage_debt 9y ago
  However, his neighbours didn't pay him any money to thank him for being an upstanding guy. He took the hit himself.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- justherefortart 9y ago
  My first wife tried this uncooperative shit with our home (I bought before we were married). I told her I'd sell it for exactly what we owe if she didn't take my fair offer. Probably should have just gone ahead and done that but I didn't want to move.
- IkmoIkmo 9y ago
  From the assumption of self-interest, yes he made all the wrong choices. Being a model citizen or nice neighbour or a bank's best friend is another story.
tomcam 9y ago
I know, what a fucking stooge, amiright? He actually wanted to pay his debts. What a loser.
- frankc 9y ago
  If you treat your mortgage like a blood oath instead of a contract, then yeah, you're a dummy.
- tonyedgecombe 9y ago
  You could compile a good list of who to do business with and who to avoid right here.
  - jackvalentine 9y ago
    I'd prefer you do business with me because our contract is mutually beneficial and we both understand the risks we're undertaking. Not because you think you have some kind of honour debt to me.
    - tonyedgecombe 9y ago
      On the other hand if you think you could weasel out of an agreement because the contract isn't defined tightly enough then I wouldn't want to do business with you.
      - jackvalentine 9y ago
        Emotive words like 'weasel' don't belong in a business discussion. If the best course of action for you is to walk away from our deal, then I encourage you to take it. I would hope you understand me doing the same.
- mortgage_debt 9y ago
  > A few bank employees told me, candidly, to skip a payment or two and feign distress to draw the bank to the negotiating table. I tried that once. Almost immediately, I was inundated with threatening calls. He was actually advised by the bank's own employees that he could renegotiate the payments. This wouldn't have been defaulting on the debt, just paying it at a rate he could afford. Literally billions of dollars from the federal government was given to banks to help people who were struggling to pay their mortgage. Because he wasn't prepared to go through this process he lost out.

chime 9y ago

I bought my first very similar house in 2005 and experienced this exact thing. Fresh out of college, moved to South for a promising job, and bought something small I could easily afford. I even wrote about the potential of a housing crash in Oct 2005 ( http://chir.ag/200510301225 http://chir.ag/200510301225 ). I lived there through the housing bubble, saw my 145k house go up to 200k and then down to 75k, rented it out after I got married and moved away, and kept losing thousands each year for 5-6 years. Last week someone offered to buy it for just a bit over my mortgage pay off balance. I will lose a few thousand but at least I will be out of the landlording business. I have my fingers crossed that the inspection goes well but I'm not holding my breath. > From the original purchase in 2005 to last year’s sale, I lost $25,500. My losses as a landlord? At least $35,000. Whatever the sum, it no longer mattered. I was free. It's scary how similar even his figures are to mine. I bought a much more modest house than I could have bought in a prime location, I fought hard to get a great deal on my mortgage, I paid bills on time and kept up with maintenance, and I've kept up with the market trends so as not to miss my chance to refinance/sell. Time and again I asked myself what I did wrong to lose 60k+ of my hard earned money over a decade. But after an investor friend of mine discussed his plans to buy numerous distressed properties to fix and rent them, I realized what had happened. The Great Recession had turned affordable residential real-estate into a zero sum game. I, along with millions of others had to lose 10k each per year to make it worth it for him to be a residential real-estate investor. My piggy bank investment was competing in the same arena has his tooth-and-nails livelihood. The big lesson is that market manipulation can convert a non-zero sum activity into a zero-sum activity. It used to be that your small family home was a safe, gradually appreciating asset. Most everyone won, few lost. > In 1944, John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern proved that any non-zero-sum game for n players is equivalent to a zero-sum game with n + 1 players; the (n + 1)th player representing the global profit or loss. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_game#Extensions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_game#Extensions Just need one new player to turn the game around. Enter my friend and a few thousand others like him with resources to buy out every third upside-down house in the neighborhood with cash, upgrade bath and kitchen, and then rent them out long-term with a team of property managers. It's a sellers market but very few homeowners are bidding up sub-200k houses. Instead it's the cash investors low-balling the price until owners such as myself and the author just break down and say 'Screw it! At least the 60k loss will save me some taxes next year.'

wonder_er 9y ago

it's sad, how much the author suffered for bad behavior on behalf of the banks. They got bailed out, the author didn't. He should have foreclosed. The banks lent money they didn't have. I don't see why the author paid it off. I respect his integrity, but he should have declared bankruptcy.

x0x0 9y ago
The author pointed out that his mortgage was a recourse loan.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  Bankruptcy only lasts 7 years on your credit, and would’ve wiped all of his debt clean (save for government backed student loans). He’s been stuck in limbo for 10. It’s rare for lenders to pursue recourse when the borrower is insolvent.
  - x0x0 9y ago
    In general, yes -- the luxury car in the drive was also bought on credit and is underwater and/or is a lease, and you can't repossess poorly chosen tattoos. Thinking you have a moral obligation to a bank is a fools errand, because they'll happily screw you for a penny. As the article points out, however, the author was gainfully employed elsewhere. So in this case, the threat of recourse was quite real.
    - toomuchtodo 9y ago
      You can still declare bankruptcy while gainfully employed. Some states have much stronger protections for borrowers from creditors than others.
      - madengr 9y ago
        Not all jobs. If you have a security clearance, that would be pulled for bankruptcy.

timewarrior 9y ago

I have lived in the Bay Area for 6+ years. Could have bought a house, but the prices seemed crazy in 2014 and look a lot more crazier now. And the prices keep on creeping up higher! All my friends have bought houses. Some of them have bought houses worth 2.4M in Cupertino. Most of them are Indians on H1B visa and not Green Card in sight! Are Bay Area prices sustainable? Am I being unnecessarily paranoid?

stevenwoo 9y ago
I own and am not sure. Could have bought in San Francisco in 2001 and decided to buy on the peninsula instead. Cupertino still had starter homes < 500,000 at that time but I didn't want to live there, either. For a while there it looked like a mistake to not live in the city then the market turned insane and the peninsula housing market is almost as hot as the city. Part of me wants to take the profit and run but to where?
- JKCalhoun 9y ago
  Nearly anywhere.
  - DubiousPusher 9y ago
    Unfortunately no. Not all of us are thrilled about a life of remote work. I for one work best side by side with a team of people. That environment is only easily attained in the exact places that have ridiculous real estate markets. I've looked many times at different markets and for me moving doesn't make sense. So near Seattle I stay.
    - automoton1 9y ago
      "That environment is only easily attained in the exact places that have ridiculous real estate markets." There are places in middle America with open positions for many people that have relatively inexpensive living costs in comparison to places like SV, Seattle, New York, and so on.

juhq 9y ago

Any link to this article without paywall?

neogodless 9y ago
https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/10-year-odyssey-americas-housing-crisis/ https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/10-year-odyssey-americas...

puppetmaster400 9y ago

No mention of Feinstein, who voted for bailout, despite 90 percent of voters against. https://www.capitolhillblue.com/node/11539 https://www.capitolhillblue.com/node/11539

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

karma_farmer 9y ago

anti-paywall: https://outline.com/fSGxss https://outline.com/fSGxss https://archive.is/GPTMc https://archive.is/GPTMc https://facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fmy-10-year-odyssey-through-americas-housing-crisis-1516981725 https://facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Fart...

jcadam 9y ago

Bought a house in 2007 in Colorado Springs and had to move out of state in 2012 for work - the crash meant I was underwater on my mortgage, but not by much. So, I decided to hire a property manager (Lesson 1: Never be a landlord if you're not going to be present to manage the property yourself - PMs take their 10% cut of the rent and do absolutely nothing in return) to rent the place out and sell in a few years after the market had recovered - which didn't happen in Colorado Springs until recently. Last summer I gave my tenant her 60 day notice, found a listing agent, and my wife flew out to Colorado Springs to help prep the house for sale... Turns out the tenant had totally trashed the place. In fact, she had been operating a rabbit breeding operation in the house (there were rabbit cages stacked floor-to-ceiling in some places, and a large outdoor hutch had been constructed in the back yard). Carpets ruined, feces smeared on walls, and a general unholy smell throughout the entire house. Hell, large amounts of rabbit bedding and feces had been dumped into the crawlspace. This is the tenant I had cut a lot of slack to over the years with late payments, etc (Lesson 2: Never cut a tenant any slack - if you do they'll walk all over you). What should have easily been a $40k profit (had the house sold at market rate) turned into a $5k loss (at least I didn't end up owing any capital gain tax, pfft). I will burn a house to the ground before I become a landlord ever again. Also, Zillow keeps sending me updates on the property value (which magically keeps going up), despite my attempts to make it stop (I don't want to know, really) :(

branchless 9y ago
Love the hypocrisy: > So, I decided to hire a property manager (Lesson 1: Never be a landlord if you're not going to be present to manage the property yourself - PMs take their 10% cut of the rent and do absolutely nothing in return) to rent the place out and sell in a few years after the market had recovered - which didn't happen in Colorado Springs until recently. So you figured you'd do nothing and wait for your profit whilst another parasite waited for theirs whilst the tenant did all the work and gave you both a cut! And easy $40k. Glad it didn't work out for you. Here's some light reading from today's Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/16/landlords-social-parasites-last-people-should-be-honouring-buy-to-let https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/16/landlo...

txsh 9y ago

What I don’t see anybody talking about what’s going on with car loans. The next time we have a recession it’s going to be a lot worse as people will lose both their houses and their cars. I know a waitress who can barely afford an apartment, with no family support or co-signer, who financed a brand new Jeep. This is not sustainable.

wpdev_63 9y ago

Why don't more people just live in RVs/vans? Taking out a mortgage is a huge risk over 30 years - what happens if you lose your job and cannot find another one at the same pay? Or you get sick and cannot work? I guess you could sell and take the equity out of the house but you lose so much money and time to the banks.