a dog-eared town

was and is the mantra for the real estate agents and mortgage brokers. Sure it wasn’t a bubble. But if it wasn’t, you tell me, with a straight face how the following ever happened?

Her 29-year-old daughter, a graduate student with an annual income of less than $20,000, qualified for a mortgage of $600,000 with no money down, split into two different loans at 8.75 percent and 12.5 percent interest rates.

With income from tenants, which didn’t come right away, Beatty’s daughter thought she could afford monthly payments of nearly $5,000.

Yeah you read that right. Less than 20k in YEARLY income, some how, miraculously qualifies for a mortgage of $600,000 with a MONTHLY payment of $5 grand.

Absolutely no bubble. Just because her payments would exhaust her yearly income in 4 months. I’m sure there was some reasonable way to justify it. No really. I mean, other than completely and utterly not caring whether the mortgage would get made. I wonder if that mortgage broker had an extra special incentive for filling that mortgage. I wonder how much the “special” compensation was for the real estate agent.

But there was no bubble….