[TheForge] rant concerning quality of products

[Andrew Vida]

ries wrote:
> Andy, loans to buy land, as opposed to single family homes, have  
> ALWAYS been extremely tough to get.

	Tougher, yes - but not that bad, especially for a person with pristine 
credit.
> 
> Farmers, with big cash flow, have been able to get short term, ie  
> under 5 year, business loans, but up here where I live, in the last 20  
> years or so, I have never heard of anybody getting a 15 year or 30  
> year mortgage to buy raw land- just doesnt happen.

	Perhaps WA is different - I could have gotten land in NJ years ago with 
about 25% down, no problem - I just didn't want to shell out that much.

> All raw land sales, be they farmland or woods, in the Northwest, have  
> had to be all cash, or the owner financing, for as long as I have been  
> buying real estate- since 78 or so.

	That is very different from the east.  Of course, these days, it is 
probably very much the same now, if this one example is any indicator.
> 
> Now IF its a single family home, under jumbo size, some lenders will  
> loan even though it includes more than a couple acres, and many will  
> not.

	That I have never heard of anywhere I have lived.  There was an 82 acre 
parcel out on 14 toward  maybe 30 miles Stevenson east of Vancouver I 
could have gotten a loan on with no problems.  It had a single house on 
it and one approved building lot.  In hindsight I wish I would have 
snapped it up at $480K

> When I bought my house on 26 acres, in 95, when things were booming,  
> at least half the mortgage brokers and banks immediately backed out  
> when they heard the size of the parcel.

	Must be something peculiar to your neck of the woods, perhaps?  We 
bought 100 acres with a small house and no outbuildings with 10% down 
and no problems.  The land is almost all mountainside and therefore not 
readily tillable save for about 5 acres total, a factor that would tend 
to work against the borrower, but was not a problem at all for us. 
Perhaps we just got lucky.
> 
> And, being an artist, I have ALWAYS had to "shell out" at LEAST 20%  
> down to get any kind of loan.
> Cant sympathize much there. Plus, you would be a fool to take one of  
> those no money down loans anyway.

	Plenty took them, and now they are in deep poo.
> 
> 
> So you cant blame that one on the current loan crisis.

	From the WA point of view, perhaps.  The northeast has been very 
different in my experience.