How we got our mortgage. Or: Why so many people bought houses they couldn’t afford.

Our loan officer was insistent: we’d be nuts not to get an adjustable rate mortgage. It was October of 2007. We’d met with this SunTrust loan officer—I’ll call him “Jim”—a couple of times so far, and we were moving ahead with a construction loan to be rolled into a permanent loan when our new house …

Fannie Mae renting out foreclosed homes.

I’m happy to see the news that Fannie Mae will be allowing renters to continue to rent homes that have been foreclosed on. But I think it’ll be better if this is expanded to include renting back owner-occupied homes, too. It seems to me that this is just smart business—I imagine most lenders would be …