Originally Posted by elchivito

In my immediate area during the bubble, investors were PART of the problem, but not all of it, or even most of it. I watched family after family refinance and pull their inflated equity out of their properties with nearly free-interest teaser ARMs. They did this on the advice of mtg. brokers, who convinced them the sky was the limit on their values. Being able to almost magically pull say 150K equity out of a house valued at 250 that you owe 100K on was pretty hard to resist for somebody making 20 bucks an hour.