Home equity extraction at record levels in 06

Forget about the flippers and first time buyers who got stuck at the top.
What about all the equity extraction?
I myself was tempted to go this route in 04, but sold instead. This resulted in my leaving the state of Hawaii, which was a hard decision. Prices were rising so fast that by the closing date I could not buy back my house back for the same price.

It is my guess that many people watched from the comfort of their increasingly valuable homes and came to a similar conclusion, but decided to go equity-out instead. How many of these equity loans are ARMs or Pay Option-ARMs?

Vern

Here is a clue:

This little diddy is from The Housing Bubble blog. http://thehousingbubbleblog.com/

“Since January 1999, according to figures compiled by Alan Greenspan and James Kennedy, a Fed staff economist, more than $2.62 trillion has been extracted by homeowners through refinancing and home equity loans.”

“But as rates have gone up, the extraction has continued. In the first six months of this year, even with interest rates rising, more than $511 billion was extracted from homes through cash-out refinancing and home equity loans, and that was more than the amount taken out for all of 2005, a record year for mortgage equity extraction.”