All this house talk is bringing up bad memories for me.. Lol.. I got caught in the last housing crash!! I was 25 in may 2005, bought my first house here in redlands, stake in the ground I thought, wrong time to buy I found out when shit went south! I bought a medial 3 bed 2 bat 2 car with a decent lot on a double cultesac, cool pad, till a few years in when I got my bill and the mortgage jumped huge! I hit them up and told them you guys made a mistake they said no that's your new payment! I said I'm sorry but fuck you I can't pay that, they said figure it out or we'll forclose,, well eat shit forclose on me.. Mind you, I paid 316k for this house and with the payment I was making I was gonna pay back 612k by the end of the 30 year loan, I told them leave my payment alone and I'll pay you , nope they wouldn't do it, so I short sold the house. And those assholes took 145k for the house, instead of just letting me pay the bill I was paying when they would have come out way ahead, I got a 2 year short sell on my credit and they lost a lot of money.. And that happened a lot between 07-11,, it's gonna happen again soon I'm sure..
Same thing happened to us.
Bought my home for $420k. Put another $40k in it, we were going to be out of here or refinance before the adjustable mortgage changed, unfortunately the economy crapped its pants just a year before.
Adjustable mortgages are the devil.
My wife crashed her car real bad at about the same time, totaled a very nice Chrysler Pacifica at 70mph.
She hurt her back pretty good, the required surgery required her to quit her job as an RN and surgery tech.
Woohoo, one income family.
Credit cards were the only way we could survive for a while.
I worked extra shifts, the house was worth about $375k, I owed $470k. My house payment was $5,000 a month folks. It is an 1,100 square foot 3/2 tract home, on a cul-de-sac, 8,000 foot lot on an awesome hill. Not a mansion by any stretch of the imagination.
I did side work, overtime, sold some toys, everything I could think of.
We survived.
Built three boats in the process. Right now I have three unfinished projects I'm just itching to get started on.
I am refinancing right now until I can buy my forever home (hopefully very soon), payment went from $5000/mo. to $2250/mo. When I cash out and buy the next house, the payment should be closer to $1,600/mo. and we are both working again. Happy times. Lol
It can be done, but I will never do an adjustable rate loan again, lesson learned.
The banks were betting this was going to happen. It was supposed to happen this way. It was literally orchestrated to happen this way.
My home is now worth $700k plus.
My credit score is incredible.
Keep in mind I got my daughter through college and there are four of us living here. And the retirement I had built up to nearly 3/4 of a million dollars fell to just over $40k because of the stock market crash.
Now you know why I haven't made many Socal meets. Lol
I took it upon myself to learn about how it all works. Buying a home is still a great idea if you will be in the same area for a long time. I have been in the same area all of my life, so it was a no brainer.
Keep the home price sensible, buy the smallest/shittiest house in the best neighborhood possible, you can remodel a home, you can't do a whole neighborhood. This is the one thing I got correct.
I thought I was going to be out of this house in 2012-13, so I guess I didn't do terrible, comparatively speaking. I have always wanted a small piece of property with close to zero neighbors. I'm on my path now, just a little later than I wanted.
And by the way, when they short sold your home, they didn't lose a damn thing, they took the write off, sat on your house for as long as they could, sold it for about what they had in it and walked away. They made money on it. It's such a corrupt system it's scary.
The reason I still say buying a home is a good idea is I still stand to make a little scratch on the sale of my home, I could do literally anything I want to it, my taxes didn't ass pound me as bad and I put money away without discipline.
It's definitely not for everyone though.
If you guys haven't seen it, watch the movie "The Big Short". It's a true story y'all. It will make your blood boil.
https://g.co/kgs/k8UJqsGT
