Nobody’s Market
So I decided to refinance. My original arrangement on the first home purchase was a ‘piggy-back’ loan. That’s two loans, an ‘80-20,’ which totals 100, or 100%, meaning total financing. I’m sure this is common knowledge to most people who have gone through this, but to me, this was all new territory. For those of us not blessed with much, if any, savings, this is one popular method to compensate for closing costs. In fact, I ‘overfinanced,’ which means the total of both loans came to roughly 105% of the selling price of the house, which provided a little extra cash. There was no avoiding having to put money down. For this, I had to take out the maximum loan amount on my 401k. It took me six solid years to save enough in that account to be able to do any of this. In effect, that’s yet another loan. Good debt, bad debt, whatever, I’m in debt up to my eyeballs, but my family has a house. That’s the important thing. Enough history.
Closing on the refi took all of 15 minutes. The closing attorney came to my house. Sign here, initial here, sign here, etc. Nice enough guy. He represents over 300 banks. We talked a bit about the real estate market. He said that right now, “It’s nobody’s market.” Not even a buyer’s market. Nobody’s doing anything. He blames the government. He said something about the situation being fixable, all it would take would be for the government to raise interest rates, or something. I have no idea. I know we’re at war, gas prices are through the roof, and the president’s alienated virtually everybody. I know that house prices aren’t skyrocketing like the were a year ago. They’re even dropping in some areas, but that had to happen. Things were way out of control. Unfortunately, it’s more than a gold rush mentality that’s causing the market to ‘correct itself.’ There’s a war going on. That fact doesn’t seem to find its way into nearly enough conversations.
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