01-17-2009, 04:47 PM
Oh cmon Kathy, I don't mean to sound non sympathetic but as Glen so eloquently put it "And no, you aren't the only one affected." I'm sorry but I'm just a little jaded or board, probably both, by this subject. It sux all over and I feel for people but the truth is that people tend live at the edge of "our/their" means and us Americans are extra good at it.
Unlike lostboys opinions, "the real estate agents that allow people to even look outside their means" Real Estate agents (The person that handles most peoples largest transaction of their life) don't control what price range people look in. If someone calls me and wants to see 500K ranches and I show them 700K and up they usually don't call me back. They call up ask us to show them places between 400-500K with 10+ etc etc.. We look, sometimes a week sometimes a year, they find something they like, make an offer in which case we ask for a pre-qualification letter, "from a bank" to accompany the offer. Does this sound vaguely familiar to any one?
I'm the first to admit that the lenders were out of control but why blame it on the Realtors? Granted we wanted to get people qualified, so we didn't waste everyone's time showing them something they couldn't afford. Doesn't sound that sinister to me. Unfortunately people tend to buy as much house as they can afford. Seldom do I see people say "we're overqualified for 400K but we only want to see properties in the 200s". As well there were the 0% "no docs" loans but again this was not the Realtors fault. I've never promised anyone a profit (I was a realtor through the eighties) to do so would be illegal by the (TREC) Texas Real Estate Commission regulations.
LOL.. I guess I ranted at lostboy in a reply post to Kathy [:0] Oh well such is life..
Radioguy, I will say this, if you can hang in there I think you should, but again, I don't know the details. I think the market will recover at different levels in different areas in the next two/three years (My opinion for what it's worth) The good thing about Real Estate is that it never gets reduced to being a "penny stock" that eventually goes off the NYSE board to be worth nothing. If you can hang you may even get back in the green on that house faster than you expect. The one thing you/we have going for us is that our society is pretty spoiled on credit so one could assume that we'll have money/credit/worthless paper flying around in no time.
And lastly, I don't have a clue who these hosts are on Saturday Night Live (I hate that [
!] makes me feel old. Opps that's another thread.
Unlike lostboys opinions, "the real estate agents that allow people to even look outside their means" Real Estate agents (The person that handles most peoples largest transaction of their life) don't control what price range people look in. If someone calls me and wants to see 500K ranches and I show them 700K and up they usually don't call me back. They call up ask us to show them places between 400-500K with 10+ etc etc.. We look, sometimes a week sometimes a year, they find something they like, make an offer in which case we ask for a pre-qualification letter, "from a bank" to accompany the offer. Does this sound vaguely familiar to any one?
I'm the first to admit that the lenders were out of control but why blame it on the Realtors? Granted we wanted to get people qualified, so we didn't waste everyone's time showing them something they couldn't afford. Doesn't sound that sinister to me. Unfortunately people tend to buy as much house as they can afford. Seldom do I see people say "we're overqualified for 400K but we only want to see properties in the 200s". As well there were the 0% "no docs" loans but again this was not the Realtors fault. I've never promised anyone a profit (I was a realtor through the eighties) to do so would be illegal by the (TREC) Texas Real Estate Commission regulations.
LOL.. I guess I ranted at lostboy in a reply post to Kathy [:0] Oh well such is life..
Radioguy, I will say this, if you can hang in there I think you should, but again, I don't know the details. I think the market will recover at different levels in different areas in the next two/three years (My opinion for what it's worth) The good thing about Real Estate is that it never gets reduced to being a "penny stock" that eventually goes off the NYSE board to be worth nothing. If you can hang you may even get back in the green on that house faster than you expect. The one thing you/we have going for us is that our society is pretty spoiled on credit so one could assume that we'll have money/credit/worthless paper flying around in no time.
And lastly, I don't have a clue who these hosts are on Saturday Night Live (I hate that [
!] makes me feel old. Opps that's another thread.
Blessings,
dave
"It doesn't mean that much to me.. to mean that much to you." Neil Young
dave
"It doesn't mean that much to me.. to mean that much to you." Neil Young