Well, I guess just because I figure that I understand it, I assume that most others will and I guess that may not be the case.
AmCan, has painted the perfect senero for exactly what is going on.
I left the US in late 2006 and then decided to come back and make the best of it so Hubby and I decided to buy a home and we were offered like $100k MORE than we wanted and I remember thinking that it was very odd that they would do that, but we settled on a $250K home, which was in our budget, instead of going for the max. like the banks WANTED us to do.
The lender was reckless and the borrowers that took more than they knew they could afford was just as reckless.
Edit: I also remember that the banks were sending me brightly colored flyers monthly and it was one of them that caught my attention and we went to them. We closed and had the deal on a newly built house in RECORD time (17 days) and I’m self employed. All they wanted was 2 years of tax records and six months of my bank statements.