(quoted from post at 03:05:07 06/12/18) > And most of the balloon mortgages were on homes that sold for 250,000 or more. The poor were not buying homes that ran 250,000.
At the peak of the real estate bubble, a starter home in Detroit Metro would have been well over 100K. That would be a 1000 square foot, two bedroom house built in the fifties. And in many cities, that house would have been much more. Yes, when variable-rate, balloon mortgages first came out they were more popular with upper-middle class buyers who understood what they were getting into. But by the early aughts, many lower-income buyers with marginal credit were opting for them, as they could more easily qualify. <a href="https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-5/what-the-consumer-expenditure-survey-tells-us-about-mortgage-instruments-before-and-after-the-housing-collapse.htm">In 2006, adjustable-rate mortgages comprised 27 percent of mortgages.</a>
I personally know a number of folks who got into trouble with their mortgages during the crisis. They all had adjustable rate mortgages, although most had other problems that contributed to them losing or nearly losing their homes. One was a self-employed carpenter who was in the National Guard and was called to active duty. Another worked for Collins & Aikman, an automotive supplier run into bankruptcy by former Reagan OMB Director David Stockman. In both cases, those homeowners had no business taking out adjustable-rate mortgages. But they did.
To give an example a little closer to home, when my stepson returned from the Marines, he took out a mortgage to buy his house back from us. (We bought it from him when he enlisted after 9/11.) We initially steered him into a fixed-rate mortgage with a reasonably reputable lender. But he walked out on that when he found that they wouldn't let him take cash out of the home's equity. (He wanted to take cash out to start a business.) So he looked around and found a shady broker, who set him up with a mortgage where he could take out cash. The broker even fronted him the "down payment", which I'm told is illegal. I'm not going to describe the outcome of all this, which has been painful to everyone in our family, but I'll note that the mortgage he took out was adjustable-rate. And the loan was for less than 50K.