Just yesterday my wife was telling me about a house she has her eye on, but I just can’t risk the possibility of job loss or further financial meltdown. I’m hoping in a few years things will get sensible again in the housing market and we can give it another go.

Cheers,

- max

So after 10 years and 2 kids we had no debt outside of the house. We started to consider buying a larger home. We were not saving for a larger house, but had enough in savings for 10% down plus a few months of incidentals, but doing so would take away the financial comfort we had grown accustom to if something was to happen. We owed so little on our current house that we decided we would rent it out instead of sell and would make a nice monthly profit. While we were uncomfortable with the possibility of 2 mortgages we did the math and like you had enough other investments that if we lost our jobs we could liquidate and would be ok for a while. In the end the market persuaded us to take the risk. You very rarely find housing prices and interest rates down at the same time. We found our dream home worked it to the price we wanted, moved in and rented our old house a month later. Everything was going to plan until 3 months after closing I lost my job. We spent 10 years building up our financial security cocoon, stuck our heads out for 3 months and got slapped. Fortunately I was only off work for 2 months and didn’t have to dip into our savings, but life could have gotten bad. Looking back I think we made the best decision at the time and knowing what I know now would probably make it again, but you just never know.

It is amazing how business and political policies go to the extremes. In this case, lenders are overly cautious, even though they received a ton of money from the government.

I guess, without their neat derivatives, lenders are not interested in no-money-down buyers, like yourself.