My first house payment was about 800 bucks a month, of course add insurance, taxes, PMI, and the general cost of upkeep on a house and the cost is considerably higher. There is more to owning a house than just being able to pay the mortgage. Most calculators at mortgage websites or real estate web sites give you the total of the mortgage payment without adding the cost of insurance and taxes. That can be 500 or more added to the monthly mortgage. If the buyer is unaware of these extra costs until signing they be to ashamed or scared to back out.
Its their responsibility to be informed but if you get a poor real estate agent or a greedy one, along with the dream of owning your home can make for a disaster. Throw in a couple of problems like A/C failure or roof leak and your screwed if your in over your head.
This is all academic. Just read stories regarding Hedge Funds/CDO's/Bear Stearns/Mer/etc...
I've spoken to some Hedgie's in this business & it's scarier than u can imagine... gonna be worse than the LLP's in the 80's.
Theses modern-day Ponzi-Alchemists have used Derivitaves, Leverage, etc. to create this artificial liquidity that's coming home to roost.