Posted on 05/16/2008 12:28:29 AM PDT by newbie2008
If you're facing foreclosure, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson wants to help. "If someone is willing to make a call to reach out," says Paulson, "there's a chance we can save their homes." But Paulson can't save these homes because the homes are not endangered in the first place. They stand to change hands, not to vanish. There cannot be more homeowners than there are homes, and if one home becomes vacant, then there can be one new homeowner. Call it the Law of Conservation of Homes.
None of these foreclosed houses is going to disappear. After a foreclosure, one family moves out, and another moves in. We see the sad faces of the people moving out, but we don't as often see the happy faces of the new homeowners moving in. Nevertheless, those happy faces are out there, and we should not discount them.
That's important, and it's important in a larger context. Often when it comes to economic policy, some effects—in this case, the genuinely moving stories of good people who can't afford to live where they've been living—are highly visible, while others—the genuinely moving stories of good people who can now achieve their dreams of home ownership—are less well-publicized. That doesn't make them any less real.
There are many people who would love to be able to afford a home but can’t because of how crazy prices became. This adjustment is good news.
The current housing “crisis” won’t end until enough people who can’t afford the houses they own sell them to people who can afford them.
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