It seems we've talked of nothing but the mortgage crisis for a year. If you follow the news, you are aware we're cycling themes–mostly having to do with whose fault the whole scammy mess is. Today's topic is a different slant on one we - and everybody else - has covered before: greed. Not the banks' and brokers' this time, but the buyers'.

Home buyers chose to bite off more house than they could pay for. Lenders and even Realtors co-conspired. Investors funded their lust.

Subprime rates contributed to overpurchasing. People with shaky credit were able to buy homes when perhaps they should have remained renters. Adjustable rate mortgages were even more contributory. Sheree R. Curry, writing for TheStreet.com, yesterday pointed out how widespread they became:

ARMs are down this week to a 9.8% share of total mortgage applications activity, from 10.4% the previous week. That's higher than in April 2001, the lowest point this decade, when it was a 7.4% share, but that low level didn't last long then — by the same week of April 2002, ARMs had shot up to 16% of mortgage applications. The highest share of ARM applications this decade was 36.6% in March 2005, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Is that so bad? It looks like 40% of people who couldn't afford to buy a house might have been able to in March of 2005. Wait a second…weren't home prices already going airborne by then? Jason R. Hanson, author of How to Build a Real Estate Empire, explains the problem: 

"ARM's allow people to buy houses who shouldn't be buying houses. The majority of Americans are not disciplined enough to save money [to be able to] afford to pay their mortgage when the rate increases," says.

 Hanson and Curry agree ARMs, which start out low and usually go up-up-up, give people a false sense of affordability. Just like car salesmen have taught them, they buy the payment, not the entire commodity. If they can afford $1500 a month, why not try to find a $500,000 house for that?

Of course we, here at The Great Mortgage Revolt, are primarily showing you painless ways to pay off your mortgage early, an approach that saves big, big bucks on the back end. We gave you a tight article on "3 Easy Ways to Own Your Home Sooner." Following that, we offered still another painless way to pay off your home years earlier. Then we talked about the motherlode, that you can use your house to pay for your house. This latter technique uses some of the same principles as United First Financial's Money Merge Account, but without the $3500 price tag. No, UFF and the MMA are not a scam. They work. But you can do the same thing yourself with just a few pages of instructions. You only need a guidebook or someone to show you the way.

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