Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Even Worse

I can remember when Irvine Renter was making his "crazy" predictions about falling home prices.

I don't think I had a strong belief back then about whether home prices would level off/decline a bit or go bust. The reason was that I had no idea that lending standards had gotten so bad. I knew people were taking out loans with shitty terms which would come back and bite them in the ass, but I didn't know banks had basically tossed out "ability to repay" as something to be concerned about. I did know that there was no way continued appreciation was sustainable because I knew that not enough people in the country had that much money.