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Who is to blame for the mortgage crisis? America, go look in the mirror! You don't pay your bills and if you do, you let interest and late fees accumulate until you can't pay them. This means that your credit score gets lower and lower with each missed payment or increase in debt. Then you whine because no one wants to lend you money anymore and the bank is taking back the house you bought with no money down and the seller paid your closing costs.

As a mortgage professional, I have seen it all! There are so many stories; I had a lady tell me she had good credit and then yell at me because I told her that she had been late every month for the last year. She said she didn't think that being slow on payments should make a difference on her credit and that it wasn't fair, at least she paid her bills.

I caused many an argument between husband and wife because they kept bad credit secrets from each other. I once had a man claim that he had excellent credit, only to learn that his credit was in the low 500's because his wife hadn't paid the bills on time and they were carrying a balance of $16,000 to Nordstrom's, not to mention the other $25,000 of debt they were carrying. I believe that was the beginning of divorce proceedings because she was only reachable at the vacation home after that.

During the 1990's, the sub-prime markets were born. This was creative financing to help those that had fallen on hard times, to re-establish credit and still be able to buy the things that those with "good credit" could buy, just at higher interest rates. Wall Street was selling these loans, in bulk, like hot cakes on the secondary market and investors were singing all the way to the bank.

It got to the point that you could file Chapter 7 bankruptcy on Monday and on Tuesday, with 15% down, could go and buy a new house. The bankruptcy laws being as forgiving as they were, you probably still had your home and could sell it and use the equity as your 15% down payment. If you still managed to keep your credit score at 580 (creditors only report to the credit bureaus every 3 months), this same deal could be done with just "stating" your income instead of actually verifying that you could make the payment.

After 9/11 the economy took a major hit and lenders once again came up with more creative financing to help struggling buyers. These programs combined with low interest rates that the Federal Reserve kept dropping, got to the point that I was able to put families into a new home with zero

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