First, let me say this: Of course I have regrets. After all, the purchase of our family home in Hollywood with an adjustable-rate mega-jumbo mortgage closed a mere 119 days before Countrywide Financial Corp. announced that — whoops! — it had, uh, run out of money. Of all the financial horror stories of last summer, this was the one that seemed to mark the official start of what is now commonly referred to as the “credit crunch” — the symptoms of which, if you’re an L.A. homeowner at least, include weeping openly in front of CNN real estate bulletins and waking up three or four times during the night to check the tumbling digits next to the satellite image of your home on Zillow.com. 

So yeah, I have regrets. Like wishing I’d borrowed more money and bought a bigger house.