I received a call from Michael Stetz, the author, because he had interviewed me years ago at a stickball tournament and knew I was from New York. Even though the great football coach, Vince Lombardi, said "Second place is first loser.", finishing second to New York City is not so bad.

Enjoy,

So just what does NYC have that San Diego doesn't?

BY MICHAEL STETZ
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2010

This is getting old.

For the fifth time in the past eight years, San Diego has placed second in a Harris Poll in which people are asked which city they'd like to live in or be near.

New York has topped us yet again.
America's Finest City can't take a bite out of the Big Apple.

What gives?

New York has Eli Manning. We, thankfully, don't.

New York has LaDainian Tomlinson. We ... oops, never mind.

New York's public-employee pension mess is actually worse than ours. That city has only $93 billion in net assets, but is liable for a whopping $215 billion in future promises.

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One of the many parts of Murphy’s Law says, “Opportunity knocks at the most inopportune time.” That seems to be the situation in the real estate market today. There’s another law that says, "If you drop a slice of bread, it will alw ays land on the buttered side.” But that’s for another story.

Opportunity is knocking.

^{Courtesy photo}

A few years ago, money was really easy to get if you wanted to purchase a home. Many loan applications were literally only one page long. The joke was if you had a pulse and were vertical, you qualified. Then it progressed to the point where you only had to be vertical. One loan program offered the borrower 125 percent of the purchase price with no down payment. Yes, that’s right. On a $500,000 purchase, the lender actually gave the buyer a first mortgage of $500,000 and an immediate second mortgage of $125,000. The lender assumed, along with the rest of the universe, that property price appreciation would never end. What did the borrower have to show the lender in order to get this incredibly generous loan? They showed…nothing. These types of loans were called “no doc” loans. The borrower’s income was “stated”, meaning he or she just told the bank what they earned. They didn’t have to show W-2 tax forms. Their assets were also “stated”, which meant that the borrower told the bank what they had in reserves. The lender did not check on this.

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The thousands of dollars in rent you’ve already paid to your landlord may be a staggering figure—one you don’t even want to think about.  Buying a house just isn’t possible for you right now.  And it isn’t in your financial cards for the foreseeable future.  Or is it?  The situation is common and widespread:  countless people feel trapped in home rental, pouring thousands of dollars into a place that will never be their own—yet they think they’re unable to produce a down payment for a home in order to escape this rental cycle.  However, putting the buying process into motion isn’t nearly as impossible as it may seem.  No matter how dire you believe your financial situation to be, there are several little-known facts that may be key to helping you step from a renter’s rut to home-owning paradise!

Initially, of course, the most daunting factor involved in buying a house is the down payment.  You know you’ll be able to handle the monthly payments—you’ve done this for years as a renter.  The hurdle, instead, seems to be accumulating the capital needed to put money down.  However, this hurdle may be smaller than you think.  Take a look at the following points and explore whether any of these scenarios may be possible for you:

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