I don't either - and I'm not giving her a hard time. I'm also not
talking about asking a work colleague or neighbor. But if a person
(especially someone from another country) asks an American realtor or
mortgage company rep something to the effect of, "Does it matter how
much we put down?" I find it astounding that none of those people would
mention PMI. I don't know what else Anne could reasonably have done to
drag the information out of them if she didn't know the information was
there to be dragged.

Clisby, don't worry about giving me a hard time, I certainly didn't
think that of you and I doubt toypup did either. But you're right,
knowing what I know now I do find it quite stunning that we really
didn't manage to drag it out of anyone, I don't think we even managed to
get a hint of 20% being a cut off point of getting a better deal, let
alone it being a point where we could find we actually couldn't even get
a mortgage - which is essential knowledge and could have completely
changed our plans, I do feel as if everyone we were involved with was in
it for what they could get out of it and that as my husband's employer
offered us significant benefits to use one of two loan companies and one
real estate agency, we felt that they had failed in there
responsibilities to new hires.

I think the company has grown so large that it's lost some of the
oversight that a smaller company has, it's very easy for something very
significant to happen a lot of layers down from top management. For
example, today, I got an email saying that if I had used the health
website to do anything that I needed to print it all out because they
were changing providers in 3 weeks time, I haven't really used it, but
we've been bomarded with encouragement to set up individual profiles and
health records and take questionnaires and what not, I suspect that the
two clashing things have come from them being things dealt with my
seperate areas and no one person having oversight - the encouragement to
fill profiles and what not in probably comes from the financial side,
with the idea of education and health living cutting insurance costs,
but what the engine behind the website is is probably a different
persons resonsiblity with different motivating factors - which is all
getting rather off topic, but it illustrates some of the challenges of
working for a large company that pretty much drives the economy of the area.

Cheers
Anne