According to CNNMoney if you want to buy a new house in this down market you had better bring a lot of your own cash to the table. This is because down payment requirements, as well as up-front fees, have soared.
As with any correction, there is often an over-correction. However, it still shuts many good home buyers out of the market. Worse, it is a self-fulfilling prophesy of sorts. They cut off the reasonable access to loans to home buyers who can afford to make the payments, and then the housing market goes into decline.
It does not help that inflation is likely driving up costs that everybody from attorneys to title agencies feel they need to increase in order to keep up themselves, especially with the decline in business.
JP Morgan Chase is reported to be requesting a minimum of 10% down in most markets, and 20% down in hard-hit areas. And, in Reno, Nevada, which has been devastated by the housing crises, the bank requires 25%. Makes you wonder if the housing market was devastated by foreclosures the mortgage lenders made to people who obviously could not pay the money payments, or because they will not make reasonable loans to those who can and want to purchase those houses.
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