Pop Goes The American Dream

2 weeks ago I applied for a home mortgage with LendingTree. I did it mostly because I'm curious what a teacher is worth. I know roughly $46K is a dollar value but it's just a number this year, it goes up every year thanks to the union and DOE regulations. Now a teacher is considered one of the big three professions. You always hear Doctor Lawyer Teacher as the gold standard of professional status. Throw in the fact that this is going to be my first home, my FICA is over 700 and I have 10% down. I also own my car and have no student loans (I am carrying a large balance on my credit card but it is coming down now that I'm working.) One would think that I could get a loan for whatever I asked for. Not so. I asked for $300,000 which is the low end of the price for a single family detached within 10 miles of the school I teach at. There were fewer then 20 houses on MLS to choose from. I got two calls, not the 3 advertised. One offered me $94,000 and the other never called me back.

Now I know there are lots of complaints about LendingTree but I thought they'd be a good ballpark estimate. Perhaps if I went to the bank I'd have a better idea of my financial prospects. I'm going to leap to conclusions anyway.

A teacher, considered one of the pillar of the community jobs* can't get a loan on their salary to purchase a home in the community they work in. That's fucked up. It's not like there's no money in the system to loan, $400 billion dollars is a lot to inflate the currency supply with. That's pretty damn close to half a trillion. So I should be getting that loan right?

Who's going to give a loan now? It seems that there are no mortgage houses left standing. All that money with no one willing to hand it out.

A couple years ago Lisa tried to get in with some bankers to handle their forclosure listings. Nothing came of it. Now you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a house in preforclosure and Lisa is still only representing buyers. Looks like the banks have to come to her now. There are some folks who will survive the market and end up with a lovely home. They'll never get back what they paid for it but people pay 3 times in mortgage interest anyway. What they sell it for will just be a number to boast about. Only Baby Boomers who bought a house for $15,000 in 1970 will actually make money on top of what they paid in mortgage interest. It's too bad the dollar they sell their house for isn't worth what it was in 1970. The rest of us are screwed. In the mean time, there is no middle class left when a married, college educated, pillar of the community professional can't get a loan to purchase a 2 bedroom house on 10,000 square feet of land.

American dream? I'm dreaming about moving to Croatia. By the way, that house would have cost $60,000 a year ago, it works out to $120K today.

What kind of job prospects can I expect in Eastern Europe? It turns out that Croatia is desperate for teachers that speak english. I'll bet the banks there would be happy to give me a loan especially since I'll have a 35% down payment. And for those Americans who don't know where Croatia is it's two countries north of Greece on the coast of that splash of water just behind Italy's knee. And for those Americans who think it's dangerous there. The civil war is over. Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia are all joining the EU. They've got no place to go but up.



*(not my words, one of the mortgage brokers called it that.)