I think the biggest problem is, that 30 years ago, you'd go and see your building society manager and ask for a mortgage. He'd ask what you earned and multiplied it by 3. Then you could go and buy a house at 90% LTV.

That all changed over the last few years purely because of GREED. Everyone wanted more more more money for their house so they could have a bigger one, needed or not. So lenders started letting folk borrow more than 3x their salaries. Whereas before if you wanted a bigger house, and hence a bigger mortgage, you got a better job. Not now. I work with folk with 300k mortgages on the same salary as me. I know I can't afford that over 25 years. So how do they? Easy... Extended term mortgages. All based purely on house prices going up.... Now america has stopped lending our banks money, the whole system is crashing down. And it's all the regular joes who don't have a mortgage thats 7 times what they earn, that will pay for it through their taxes as we pump money into these banks to keep them afloat....