Yes, I say greedy because they wanted something they could not reasonably afford and they speculated no differently than the banking industry or the so-called ‘investors’. I do not mean just the non-homeowners but those who were purchasing homes for themselves. They also were speculating because they wanted to believe the lie propagated by the real estate industry since the late 1960’s that your home is an investment (not simply the basic need of shelter in which will earn equity as you responsibly make your payments).

My wife and I do not currently own a home because we did not have the responsible down payment and cash flow to afford one. Now we are being asked to not only bail out the financial services industry but also the greedy homeowners who bought what they could not afford based on the speculative mind-set quoted in the blog.

So my wife and I are expected to pay for the greed and stupidity and self-desired head-in-the-virtual-sand of those homeowners who are now facing foreclosure. So because we were responsible in our housing and others were not, we must now pay for them – and further delay being able to responsibly buy ourselves a home!

My parents bought their first home in 1959 for $14,500. They sold that home five years later for $14,900 – a whopping $400 profit (from which to pay the real estate commission). They then bought a larger home to serve the needs of our now larger family. And that is how housing worked ‘way back when’ people understood it to be a basic human need, not an ‘investment’.

So please put the responsibility EVERYWHERE it belongs and stop supporting those who cry ‘Alas, poor me’ – for they put themselves in that position.

Mike Harmon