san luis obispro

Back in 2005, my wife and I bought our first condo. We live in the Central Coast of California, in San Luis Obispo, where the property values were skyrocketing, and were not supported by the wage base, similar to Monterey and Santa Barbara. It was the top of the market and I knew it, but we had a very slick mortgage broker who got us qualified (it wasn’t a no-doc loan, but it was a 100% finance, 80/20 with a first and a second, the first was a 6.5% 2/28 ARM, the second a 9% fixed.) We were assured at the time and up to as recently as this Summer, that we would have no problem re-fi-ing that loan (and even paying off our lower-interest student loans by taking some cash out in the process=wtf???) by the same broker. Of course that didn’t happen…