Commercial Mortgages – Ignore Your Way Through It

If you’re a commercial mortgage originator like myself, my unsolicited advice to you is to ignore your way through this giant heaping mess. “Ignore your way through it”, it’s my new slogan. Perhaps I’ll make a bumper sticker.

As the Politician’s continue to do what they do best, cover their own ass to protect their jobs, we have to continue on. To me it’s comical that no one has the courage to remind the politicians or the people that they pushed the fair housing acts, and other government sponsored program that promoted high leverage to begin with. The SBA programs are another example.

What about all this talk of the “greedy, evil and corrupt” lenders that pushed stated income loans and the like on the poor innocent borrowers. Give me a break, like the borrowers are little lambs that are complete victims. I’ve been in this business for 10 years and have seen it all, including many borrowers that have attempted to commit fraud under my license. Most borrowers know exactly what they are doing! Many of these borrowers where not “mortgagable” and should be grateful they had a shot at home ownership.

There are many people out there that lost their jobs or have had serious medical issues and the like; I’m not referring to these people. I’m talking about the masses of borrower’s that defaulted, simply because they borrowed more than they could afford. Or because they went underwater.

Guess what? If you took on a loan you couldn’t afford in the first place, than you screwed up. You’re responsible for it! If you make $50,000 a year and took on a $400,000 mortgage just because you could get a loan, you are 100% responsible for that mistake. And now we as a country are paying for it. And we don’t want to pay for it.

We are a nation that has been living on borrowed time and borrowed money and now we’re paying for it. The idea of living within our means is on the comeback. I’m confident that had the banks been left alone, they’d still be doing 80% financing max and this issue would not exist.