Home as Castle

The subprime lending market is headed down the road. I was discussing this with a friend of mine today who said that there's millions to be made here, provided the right buyer comes along and knows how to dance this one. This is the same friend who is applying for the empty chair at Berkshire Hathaway. As an economics professor once told me "The greater the risk, the greater the reward". We've just finished all of the paperwork that goes into the finance of our home. Now that this whole restoration is complete, we have to start paying for it. Somewhere out in America, some guy is sitting at a windowless office drinking bad coffee and poring over my credit report. He'll make a decision on this point or that and pass it on to another desk where someone else will earmark my mortgage application for the final judgement. With any luck, we'll beat the current interest rates by a few points and maybe even get in under 6%. But in regards to the news today of companies like New Century, there are a couple of items worth noting. What we learn from the current upset of the lending markets is circular at best. More people are jumping onto the American Dream (whether they can afford it or not). Of these people who are jumping, the ones who can't afford it have been told that they most certainly can. Oddly enough, these house-hopefuls are now defaulting on their loans that at one point looked so manageable yet were offered to them by lenders who are now defaulting on their own payments and might subsequently be floundering by lunch tomorrow. A man's (or woman's) home should be their castle. In this moment now unfortunatly, the home appears to be a millstone tied around the necks of the many who have been lured the deep waters of real estate by lenders who failed to measure the risks properly. The other half of the equation from that economics class is "the greater the risk, the greater the loss".

Tua news. Slow steady growth expected this week. She finally has her cold beat, as do I. Bug is still going strong on 5 hours of sleep per night.