I have previously (here, here and here) talked about my aversion to the concept of mortgage debt (Old French “death pledge”). I was sort of grasping at the reasons behind it, the justifications for co-owning a home with a bank just rang hollow to me.
Now the folks at eFinanceDirectory have addressed most of these myths [...]
Rent Vs. Buy Myths That Ruined the Housing Market
Home “Investment” Comes Home To Roost
A couple of years ago, I wrote about how I wasn’t buying the idea of “good debt”with respect to home mortgages. Now, with foreclosure rates skyrocketing and the housing sector in the early stages of a pretty serious crisis, I am once again reminded of that idea.
Yves Smith, who writes the Naked Capitalism blog, makes [...]
Exercising Their Options
Mortgage-bond investors, seemingly unwittingly, sold homebuyers a put option, without properly pricing it, and now homeowners are exercising that option. Moreover, prime borrowers in many markets face the same incentives. Americans have long been able to cut their losses from bad investments and start over. It stands to reason that when the market made houses [...]
Lesson For Today
Things are not so good in Hot-lanta these days: It seems that they could run out of drinking water within a month and foreclosures are at an all-time high.
Oh, What A Difference A Year Makes
I have been musing, for the last week or so, on how incredibly different our lives are now, as opposed to a year ago. Hardly any aspect of our lives has been left untouched in that year, and I believe that I can say that the changes, as wide and as drastic as they have [...]
More Thoughts On Mortgages
After my previous entries about mortgage debt and home ownership, I have received a bunch of email on the subject, so I thought I’d reopen the topic sort of, and respond directly to some of the points raised:
Point 1) “Paying rent is just like throwing money down the drain because you don’t build equity.”
This sounds [...]
These are the ramblings of 