Every day we're bombarded with more "bad" news about the mortgage industry: "Foreclosures up 27% ..." and so forth. The problem I see is one of perspective. Did you know that 99.5% of the mortgages in the Houston area are performing? 99.5%! Since when is a foreclosure rate of 0.5% a crisis?! Even Indianoplis, reported by RealtyTrac as having the highest foreclosure rate, reports a 98.55% acceptable performance on mortgages (a foreclosure rate of 1.45%). To me, it seems worth mentioning that over 98.5% of all mortgages, nationwide, are WORKING!
I guess it really is a matter of perspective. It's the old question of "Is the glass half full or half empty?". It seems the media really is biased -- toward the pessimist side of things. I prefer to look at what's working, what's going right in our industry, rather than concentrating on the "problems".
It's true that obtaining financing has become more of a problem, but aren't we as Realtors partly to blame for this? We have always had a fiduciary responsibility to our clients -- to "watch out for their best interests." Things were super-easy in the last few years - if you could fog a mirror you could get a loan! But was it always in the best interest of our clients to encourage them to buy houses, take on mortgages and overextend themselves when we knew problems were likely? Now we're seeing a return to common sense -- if you can't afford a house, you can't buy it. Period. This is hardly a bad thing or a "crisis".
Given the very small percentages of mortgages that wind up in foreclosure, this isn't a crisis, it's a return to common sense. And in the long run, that helps all of us.
P.S. - numbers for foreclosure rates were from RealtyTrac:(http://www.realtytrac.com/news/press/pressrelease.asp?pressreleaseid=112)
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