Given "Expert" Advice, Brains Shut DownThe title is self-explanatory enough that your probably don't even need to read the actual entry. So why did I say that's my husband, in a nutshell? Allow me to tell you this story. It's on house-hunting, back long, long time ago where the myth of real estate is still the best investment to put your money was still unbroken....
So shortly after we moved to this area, my husband wanted to buy a house. It was entirely inexplicable -- we were not certain that we wanted to settle down in this area; my job situation was definitely unsettled; there no reason to think that was a great time to buy a house. Not to mention that house prices in this area is arguably only for the wealthy. Regardless, we started looking at houses. "Just browsing," he said.
Let's just say we started at our budget x. Shortly thereafter, we were looking at an amount that exceeds our original budget by 25%. Remember this was the era when your agent will lie through their teeth to get you the biggest loan remotely possible? I was utterly amazed that when the agent called and told us this house that exceeds our original budget by 35% was "a steal," my husband actually paused to think about it. WTH???
Not only that, the agent showed us the price that the seller bought the house for, and the asking price then. Mind you, the asking price was LOWER than the purchased price that the seller paid. When Buying Price > Selling Price, the price has GONE DOWN. One doesn't need a phD degree to figure that out, yet my husband continued to chant "House prices never go down. House prices never go down," like a brain-washed zombie the entire time while staring at the figures in front of him. "But the asking price is LOWER than the buying price!!" I tried to break the spell but failed miserably.
Luckily, this symptom seemed to only affect the male gender, so it's up the the intelligent and rational wife (me) to put her foot down and said "no!" It's funny; it would appear that these agents have a sixth sense -- when Hubby called to decline, they would continue to try to talk him back into it; when I call, they knew instinctively that it was over, and that it's not even worth their time to try to convince me otherwise. ;) We really dodged a bullet there.
And a side note, during this entire fiasco, a different agent told us that he can get us a loan that exceeds our original budget by 60%! I have NO idea where he learned to do this math, because any way I crunched the numbers, the ONLY way we could afford that is to give us a few luxury items such as food, gas (biking or walking to work is good for health, I guess), electricity, water, and pretty much everything else.... But who needs all those when you can put a large check in the agent's pocket and a monthly donation (interest) to the bank!
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