Housing, then and now

by shamanic

I'm doing a poor job of following the news these last weeks, heavy as they've been with travel, hectic work schedules, and side projects. But I have been making an effort to follow the housing credit crunch currently rocking the markets, and my interest has been especially high as a recent first time home buyer.

When I purchased my house (actually two houses, it's a cool property) in May 2006, I didn't put a dime down. For some reason, I thought this was pretty normal, but I saw in a WaPo piece a week or two ago that lenders have mostly ditched this model. If that's true, there's simply no way I could buy a home today. I have savings, but aside from my retirement savings I tend to treat those accounts as either cushions or ways to pay for given projects.

But 10% of a house? Wow. Glad I bought what I bought when I bought it.