Posted on 03/03/2009 8:21:55 AM PST by Lorianne
When Florida legislators recently struggled to balance the battered state budget, they decided to plug holes with $190 million from a $300 million affordable-housing trust fund. After all, why should a cash-strapped state shell out money for new home construction when there are tons of vacant homes just waiting to be snapped up? One of the few benefits of a housing crash, theoretically at least, is supposed to be that home buyers who were previously priced out of the market might finally be able to afford a place of their own.
But that's certainly not the way it's working in Florida, one of the states hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis. Even as a backlog of hundreds of thousands of newly built and foreclosed homes are languishing on the moribund housing market, more than 750,000 families are in need of affordable housing. Some low-income residents are finding fire-sale deals, but many more are not; just this past weekend, Fort Lauderdale police had to be called in for crowd control when 5,000 people lined up to get on a waiting list for subsidized housing.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
Who knew?
Liberal propaganda to say unless people get free housing paid for by the “rich” (Meaning everyone who doesn’t vote for liberal polidiots) it isn’t affordable.
bmflr
One real estate expert I heard yesterday said the housing market needs to go down an additional 30% yet.
The houses do need to be real world valued.
what I expect is that the insiders will be able to buy up the deals before the non insiders.
the same people who know where the highways go and are buying up the land at the future intersection locations.
Affordable housing is affordable because SOMEBODY ELSE IS PAYING FOR IT. Duh. This is one of the phrases the creeping socialists have used to get people to go along with their agenda.
... affordable housing still lacking ...
Could that be because upscale construction predominated because of the propensity to make stupid loans?
Home prices in the nicer San Francisco Bay Area suburbs, like Danville and Pleasanton, haven’t budged at all yet. I’ve been waiting and watching for them to fall a bit so I could buy there. Still over $1 million for a 2500 sq ft basic house, with no yard to speak of, built in the 80s or later.
Another reason why there should be no mortgage bailouts! I want these people who are living in homes they can’t afford to get out, let the prices drop, and then those of us patiently waiting to afford these overpriced suburbs can buy and move in. . .
Prices in Long Beach have dipped slightly, but still have a long way to go to be at equilibrium with reality.
Banks holding these foreclosed properties are sitting on them, hoping to be bailed out.
I’ve been eyeing a place in a bubble-inspired cookie-cutter development quite a distance from Silicon Valley (but advertised as “commutable” during the bubble) where a recent foreclosure went for 75% off the tippy tippy top peak there in 2005.
That’ll wreck the comps for a while. And there’s more downside to come there — more than half the sales in the past year in that neighborhood were foreclosure sales.
Your ‘expert’ is correct.
Until prices can be afforded with current salaries and fully documented applications by sanctioned underwriters...they’re too high.
IMO, we need to get back to 2001 prices. Summer 2001 prices.
I lived in Long Beach from ‘95 to ‘99. Bought my 2 BR for $170K, sold it for $190K, and wondered who in their right mind would pay that for a 980 sf house. It topped out well over $500K. Now similar houses are still in the mid $400s. Crazy. We kick ourselves for not holding on to it.
My next door neighbors moved in two years ago and paid $529,000. This is for a 60 year old, two bedroom plus an add-on totalling about 1,100 sq. feet.
The folks across the street paid $660K or so for about 1,300 sq. ft.
We don’t own. By the time we were in a position to afford a home, they were going for $400K, so we sat out. Glad we did.
Homes are going for less than $8,000 in Detroit. Lots of bargains there.
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