The emotional opposition to efforts to keep individual families in their homes through government intervention talks about homeowners who bought more house than they could afford.
My experience, as a bankruptcy specialist, is that far more of the troubled loans I see are refinances. These are people who “bought” the idea that equity in their home that wasn’t “working” was equity wasted. They mortgaged the home they already owned toward some other end.
That was the message of lenders who peddled loans to pay off other debt or enable investment. You were a chump, according to the marketing, if you didn’t borrow against the value in your home.
These were not people greedy for a grander home than they could afford: they were victims of the idea that improving your financial condition was dependent on leveraging your home to fund investment.
Unfortunate, but not “greedy”.