From: vze8f3tq@verizon.net (v)
Newsgroups: misc.consumers.house
Subject: Re: American Dream?
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2005 20:37:07 GMT

On Wed, 12 Jan 2005 13:56:26 -0600, someone wrote:

>>you might want to get your other financial ducks in a
>>row before you find  out your "dream" is more of a "500 gorilla on your back".
>
>Andy.... you sound like home ownership is a bad thing.
>
>Do you feel this way? If yes.. why?

It certainly can be, if you are mortgaged to the hilt on a home that
you can't unload if you need to move, because you owe to much, and you
are strapped each month because of the high payments.

It is not good strategy to buy the most expensive car with the longest
payments that you can get the dealer to sell you.  It is not good
strategy to max out all your credit cards and then pay the minimums.
But people routinely urge others to take out the biggest loans, lowest
down, for as long as possible, on houses.

Yes yes yes real estate generally goes up in the long run.  Yeah yeah
I know what "leverege" is, for chrissakes I have been a developer.
But to be over your head in debt, no money for repairs or maintenance
or emergencies because you bought over your head - one little
temporary downturn of a couple of years and you're screwed out of
everything you owned.

Real estate is good in general.  So are stocks and bonds.  But a house
is not for everybody.  And not if you need to borrow 103% of MV.  If
you are so hard luck OR irresponsible that you can't come up with even
10%, maybe you should not buy - your hard luck OR irresponsibility is
likely to continue and you will just be in the same situation with the
house as all the other times you got in financial trouble.

(And now Rod Speed will tell us how wrong we are - along perhaps with
"Carleton Sheets"?.)

-v.


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