I’ve met Shrillary. She’s a pistol. I would like to have gotten stoned with her in the early 70s. No kidding.

For my part, when my husband and I bought our first home in the stone(d) age of the early 1970s, we applied for a mortgage at a bank…the bank held our mortgage – it was not sold nor bundled…we were required to demonstrate through employment verification that we could afford it – we were required to come up with 5% of the purchase price in cash. We had scrimped and saved to do just that, and bought a home we knew we could afford and we invested our own hard earned money towards its purchase .

Fast forward to 2012. The buyer of our “vulture capitalist investment home” has been provided, through the USDA, a loan in which there is NO down payment required. NO SKIN IN THE Game. The only “loss” that this buyer will have if she walks away from the house payments at a future time: appraisal cost and $500 binder [.0029 of the sale price]. So this buyer committed less than $1000 of her own funds – less than many pay in a monthly rent – and she buys a home in the lake area of Franklin County….

The USDA IMO, should be requiring a minimum of 3 – 5% down payment by purchasers – which may make it less desirable to just walk away and leave the taxpayer on the hook…and would allow buyers to have some personal responsibility [cash] towards the purchase of their own home…saving for that down payment should not be viewed as a negative.

“You just will not admit the bad actors in your industry and the market because it does not fit your paradigm. It is still the truth.”

You will not admit that personal responsibility is the root cause because it does not fit your paradigm. That is still the truth.

John, I never have said that “EVERYONE IS ENTITLED TO OWN A HOUSE”. I don’t think it, never said it, not once. However, home ownership is very much a stabilizing effect in neighborhoods and to families. There is nothing wrong with government guaranteed loans so that qualified but cash poor people like veterans and lower but stable middle class families can purchase a home either. NO ONE EVER forced or even coerced banks and mortgage sharks like Country-Wide to loan to people who were not qualified. NO ONE.

The “highly competitive mortgage market” has never been taken away from the banks. On any unqualified buyer loan they should indeed have to risk their own money, but who is it you are trying to kid here? They do not want to do that.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did not write Gramm-Leach-Bliley and create the weapons of financial mass destruction. Banksters did. The CRA, the HUD/State HDAs, FHA and other loan programs worked just fine until the banksters managed to create customers out of thin air and bet on and against them, make bad loans and sell them for a profit etc. You just will not admit the bad actors in your industry and the market because it does not fit your paradigm. It is still the truth.

67.”Unless Hillary bought the home out from under a family living in it, evicted them…”

There are rules against this already. Short sales, which is likely what a purchase on a home going into foreclosure would be, then a rent-back is not allowed. But I don’t have to tell you this being the market pro that you are.

Sandi, NOT EVERYONE IS ENTITLED TO OWN A HOUSE and the highly competitive mortgage market should be turned over to the banks where it belongs, but they should have to use their own money just like the rest of us. That works everywhere else and will work there if the politicians would stop manipulating it to buy votes.

Federally guaranteed loans with adjustments for down payments as administered by HUD/VHDA and the FHA are the only hope many veterans, young couples and lower middle income families have to own a home and for many of them, it works well due to the standards and regulations involved. Turning it all back over to the banksters will only mean that many deserving and capable home buyers are locked out of the market.