Saturday, September 08, 2012

The Window Shopping Housing Recovery

What I love about the historically low interest rates is the fact they're real, but you can't access them.

Be it banks that have overtightened lending standards

government programs that are nothing but red tape like HARP or HARP II

or the secondary market refusing to finance people because their house doesn't comply with a billion little standards,

ain't none of you going to be able to refinance because the restrictions and requirement either because of government regulation or banking idiocy.

Thus, it's like window shopping.  You can't afford those rates (well, actually you CAN), we're just not going to let you in the door.

Enjoy salivating over low interest rates!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I understand this pain - trying to take advantage of the rates with a home purchase and the underwriting investigation is shockingly invasive, with a ton of elements of my approval completely in the hands of third parties and their record keeping, none of which has anything to do with my credit worthiness or risk as an obligor.

Differ said...

We are in the process of refinancing our house. The process is indeed tedious and full of red-tape but, based on yesterday's conversation, I think we're going to succeed....However, our rate is nowhere near the sort of numbers being bandied about.

Gary Gygax said...

When you talked about meeting a billion little standards it reminded me of the way Medicare is forcing medical equipment providers to jump through hurts for fewer and fewer dollars.

Even when we do get paid for equipment legitimately prescribed by a doctor for a Medicare patient that has a genuine need for that equipment, Medicare finds it prudent to then send out an audit on that particular item and patient and when you are missing some assinine piece of info, like a narrative from a doctor saying that the patient tried pillow wedges before they tried a hospital bed and gosh darn it if those wedges just didn't work like a hospital bed would have, they'll come back and say you owe them every dime they paid on that particular patient and item.

Never do business with the government if you can help it. There are too many strings attached.

Anonymous said...

I'm currently on course to close on a house that's 1.75x salary with a 95% LTV loan @ 3.375% thru my credit union. FICO is 720, 1.5 years after finishing off a debt management plan (by a legit nonprofit). I reckon if there's inflation I'd rather have assets now, and if not, at least I have a place i can have chickens, dogs, solar, water storage, etc..