[yamazee]

This is a great topic with respect to what is going on today. Its an amazing thing how we all react to the media like sheep and follow along exactly how the media and everyone above us want us to. I own a small mortgage firm in central florida, and yes while lending and qualifying for a loan has changed, what you are hearing and seeing in the media is not all true. To this day, we are still funding loans for people with less than perfect credit, and little to no money down. In fact we have done quite well at in the past 12 months as opposed to our competition. Money is still available in most circumstances, what is not available is lending where there is zero means of ability to repay the loan. While I agree the landscape of the economy is challenging much of it is not going to effect everyone in the same manner. Also regardless of the state of the ecomomy, there will always be opportunities that will surface and allow the people who stay focused and positive to make money. I have found it best to ignore many of the reports on how bad it is, focus on the things that we can see as postives and carry on our day to day business of making money and paying for the things we really want to achieve. There are plenty of good things happening right now that are not getting any attention at all. The major shift now is that homes have become affordable again, we are seeing the first time homebuyers come back into play, with the help of Gov insured financing we are able to get the great interest rates with fixed terms in many cases with no money down. Many of these people are no where near perfect credit, its actually the opposite. Guess what, they are still getting thier loans. Guess what, the fact the media tells you every day that you cant get a loan without lots of money down and great credit is total BS. The problem we have today is that none of our political leaders have any clue of what's really happening. The other problem is that we have all been duped, none of the bailout funds are really being used domesticly, in fact most of who we are bailing out are overseas investors, countries, and foreign entities. If I had it my way, all 435 people running congress would be fired ASAP and replace with new officials. The economy will take some time to recover, so will housing, soooo what!! While its doing all that, stay sharp, sieze the new opportunities and keep plugging away. If I gave into what everyone is saying about the economy and all the doom and gloom going around I would be a broke schitzophrenic maniac. Screw what everyone else is talking about, its still ok at my house and always will be as long as I have something to say and do about it.