Thursday, May 13, 2010

Bob Corker, mortgages and down payments: I wish the Republicans had won this battle

I think Sen. Bob Corker has the right idea with his proposal to require home buyers to put 5 percent down on the purchase of a new home in order to qualify for a mortgage. And I can honestly say I'm disappointed with Democrats for defeating the proposal.

Opponents of Corker's measure apparently say it disproportionately affected minority communities. Seems to me that it really affects people who simply cannot afford to buy a house. And that's unfortunate: In my perfect socialist world, everybody would have the resources to own their own. That's not the world we live in, though, and it seems Corker's proposal would have gone a little way toward saving potential homebuyers and banks, both, from their own worst practices. The alternative is bailout culture and/or massive rounds of foreclosures. That can't be good for anybody, can it?

4 comments:

Aileen said...

Is this where I tell my own tale of woe? $30,000 to put down on a $140,000 house and still not able to get a mortgage? That I'm a "ghost" to the mortgage system because I have no credit score?

yeah. Probably not. I dug myself into this hole, I'll dig myself out.

Joel said...

Well, and that also seems very weirdly wrong, Aileen. You shouldn't have to use credit for EVERYTHING in order to get credit for anything. Very weird, and I'm sorry.

KhabaLox said...

How odd that it's the Democrats who are defeating Republican attempts to regulate the markets. Did someone dial the clock back 50-75 years?

Joel said...

Heh. I briefly had a similar thought, K. But I thought it might distract from my point if I started talking about Bob Corker's paternalistic nanny state tyranny.