Yep, that's right, folks! That maximum of $600 or so dollars is what got people into new houses! At least on some planet this might be true! A planet on which new homes start at, say, $2,000 dollars or so and top off at about $7,500! Because on this planet, $600 wouldn't even pay for the title search and inspection. The record surge in home ownership has been due to interest rates being kept artificially low, which has allowed one of the biggest Bush campaign donors - Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to scoop up a dangerously high level of debt. Meanwhile, the rate of mortgage FORECLOSURES in the past few years has been at its worst since the Great Depression. See http://www.nhi.org/online/issues/127/homeownership.html

In an in-depth, must-read article, Winton Pintcoff tells it like it is: with the upper class mortgage market saturated, lenders, including Fannie Mae, are now intensively targeting lower income buyers. While more mortgages are being acquired, "delinquencies and foreclosures on all loans are rising steadily and reaching an all-time high in the second quarter of 2002 [they surpassed this to reach a second new high in 2003]. Foreclosures on FHA-backed loans to low-income households have risen the fastest, to a rate of nearly 3 percent, with an additional 12 percent behind in their payments in the second quarter of 2002." In Baltimore City in Bush's first year, foreclosures outnumbered new mortgages. This means that Fannie Mae, one of Bush's biggest donors, is now also one of the nation's biggest property owners, thanks to lending practices that amount almost to "flipping."" Meanwhile the median price for a family home has risen nearly 50% in some areas.