I feel a lot of the blame also has to be put on the Realtors. The first realtor that we worked with asked for our price range. We gave it to him and told him that we would like to stay in the lower end.

Well he showed us so many horrible houses I couldn't believe it. We would see 3-4 horrible houses that were for what we wanted to pay, then he would take us to see a Nice house that was at the absolute top end of what we could get. We ended up dropping him and went with a realtor that my Aunt in law knows. She actually told us that a lot of Realtors do this. They show people really bad houses that are in the low end of their budgets just so when they show a house in the highest possible value they can afford, the person is blown away with how nice it is. The realtor makes more money the more expensive the house is. Some realtors even work with Mortgage brokers just for this reason.

Mike

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Sonogram says it's a girl, so we will have one of each. :happy dance:

This is all somewhat confusing to me right now as my kids are waking up and distracting.I know a few yrs ago,we refinanced to get out fron underneath government housing..I think it was called FMHA.They would not let us make any changes to our home with out any majior BS.We did get suckered into the 2 yr fixed and then we got comfortable with it and then had some credit problems with being 30,60 days late on our payment here and there plus there was the CC issues.We were always told we would be stuck underneath this loan because of the issues we had.We had planned to refi once again to avoid the variable rate.So we dealt with it for 6-7 months and about lost our home 2 times!That is when we DID find someone who would help us.That was when we found someone who would take us at 10%.I remember how excited I was b/c we had a fixed rate altho it was a rather high rate...the important thing was that it was FIXED!We had complete control over our home.It is suck an uncertain feeling to not have any control over your home nor the money you are paying just to try to live there.
We,up untill recently,was thinking about doing another refi once our credit improved.We were thinking it would help us pay down the house some more and improve our score some and then try another refi to get a better rate.Now it looks like we will be sitting at this 10% rate for a while regardless....at least we have a fixed rate!I am so thankfull we did this in Jan. and not wait any longer...even if we did just wing it to have a home to live in,there is no guarentee...lol I can not spell..we would still have a home tomorrow with the variable rate.I feel very blessed right now and I do not take anything for granted.I just say,"Well,we will have a house to live in for another month anyway".

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~~Sharon...wife to Bill for 17 yrs and mom to Kevin,16; Stephanie,14 and Tyler,8~~

I don't disagree with any of you but we also have to see how the subprime market helped out most if not all of us. By having so many more buyers on the market bumped up all of our home values and allowed many of us to borrow or sell our homes and make much more then what would be economically correct. It is truly an issue that many of us will have to deal with one way or another. I am from MA but now live in coastal ME and I can see how the ridiculous housing market has hurt people in every income level. Just another way to look at a serious issue we are dealing with here in the US.