Posted on 09/23/2010 9:46:19 AM PDT by Kaslin
The same thing happened during the Hoover/Roosevelt catastrophe in the 20's/30's/40's. Home prices/values cascaded to 1/3 of their former pre-crash values. Same scenario in play today on a much larger scale.
For every moron that paid $500,000 for a $250,000 home there is some lucky bastid that walked away with that $250,000.
For every moron that maxed out his equity and is now upside down some $250,000 there are others who benefited from the foolishness of that moron.
If you think of your house as a place you live and not as an investment there is no “crisis.”
The “crisis” resulted from people buying more house than they could afford and then hoping to flip it — and left holding the bag when the flip would result in a loss.
Unemployment is still around 10% so that means employment is around 90% so the “unemployed through no fault of their own” meme is generally inaccurate and, more importantly, innaplicable.
Not if one lived within one’s means. Too bad Dave Ramsey wasn’t on the air in the 80’s and early 21st Century days!
Those of us like minded and conservative did not fall into the “I Want it all, and I want it now!” mindset.
Why Canada did not have a Housing Bubble
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2441083/posts
“No Fannie Mae. No Freddie Mac. No Barney Frank. No Chris Dodd.”
15 posted on Saturday, January 30, 2010 8:00:37 PM by Brilliant
oops! 90’s
A quick rediscovery of and return to the Founders' Principles is what Thomas Jefferson recommended in his First Inaugural Address:
"These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and the blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety."
For too long, our public discourse has been based on "issues" and short-term political goals, with not enough emphasis placed on how this or that question relates to a principle absolutely essential to our very liberty as a nation. We must return to the "road" described by Jefferson as he took office if liberty is to survive the assaults by both major Parties over the past 100 years.
“However, 40 percent of households do not have a mortgage on their home,...”
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/homeequity.htm
It’s the life’s work of the Progressives in America to trash private ownership.
One could be very frugal and responsible and still be 100k underwater on their house in these times. If you painfully sacrificed and saved to put a 20% down payment on a house in 05 or 06, you could easily be in this situation. It would have taken a lot of economic awareness and market smarts to have been wise enough to hold off buying. And even if you were that wise, the temptation to then buy after prices went signficantly down, thinking they had bottomed out, would have been overwhelming.....and you would have gotten stuck anyway, though for less.
There was a tragic incident in Durham, North Carolina yesterday. A father snapped and killed his four year old son and attempted to kill his other two children who managed to escape. He then attempted suicide. As it turns out, the father fell apart after several years of financial problems related to their 3500 square foot home in a plantation community. The mixed race couple by all appearances were very devoted, friendly, and participated in community activities. The father was an unemployed EMT and the mother sold Avon products. He was apparently distraught after finally realizing he was going to lose the home. They did not belong in that house. I think part of the problem is HGTV which promotes luxurious offerings like granite countertops and stainless appliances and a bathroom for every bedroom. These young people need to be taught about starter homes or rentals. Thank you Barney Frank for making banks give loans to people who cant afford them!
When the Democrats managed to force bad home loans by the tens of millions on the U. S. lending industry, it nearly destroyed this nation. It nearly destroyed a number of nations. It was an insidious plan.
You cause an undue burden on these lending institutions. They pass off the bad paper to other entities, spreading the exposure and immenent failure far and wide. The damage wasn’t limited to the United States either. The Western World was destabilized.
Then ours and other governments stepped in to rescue their nations, spending us all into oblivion in a matter of months.
When the loans defaulted, massive property vacancy rates caused home values to plummet. In some areas the cities are actually bull-dozing properties.
Then you get the media to trump up the failure of the Bush (A CONSERVATIVE’S) administration. “Look what he (THEY) brought upon us.”
We are trillions in debt. We have lost trillions in equity. Homes are devalued. Business vacancies are plentiful, those properties devalued.
You really have to hand it to the people who want to destroy this nation and the Western world. This one initiative was as brilliant as it could be. The best part for them, nobody who contributed to this mess has been taken to task for it. No, they’re hastily fixing it with still more ideas that will come back to haunt us in short order.
Nobody who saw it coming and didn’t do diddly squat to prevent it was seriously taken to task for it either.
Now they’re free to move on to bigger and better things, as if something bigger and better by this standard were possible. Well, handing off power to the United Nations would qualify, so I shouldn’t be too hasty.
No crisis here. I bought my home about 20 years ago with a 15 year mortgage, which I paid off in about 11 years. I know what I paid for it but have no idea what its market value is today nor do I care, it's my home, not an investment..
My home is owned by my wife, me and the tax assessor.
And as for this, from the article:
secure shelter for the children, along with access to a good free education.
What a ridiculous statement, about 90% of my real estate taxes pay for that "free" education.
When one adds the regulatory liabilities of ownership such as taxes on rainwater runoff, protection of "endangered species" such as wolves and mountain lions, or the threat of eminent domain, it is little wonder why the demand for housing becomes increasingly inelastic. The only value it had beyond shelter was as an inflation hedge or tax shelter. The former is gone, and the latter greatly diminished.
bttt
That is so true. I couldn’t believe when I heard in 1967my neighbor talk about selling the house that they had just bought a couple of weeks before. The house was built 6 month after ours. As a matter of fact, when we moved into ours there was just an empty lot with some trees on it.
Nothing that can’t be remedied with a bulldozer.
Good points. Especially with young people today, they seem to feel entitled to a McMansion. We have friends of the family whose have kids who bought a few McMansions. Each one was custom built. They lived in each house for a few years, built up some equity, then moved on to another custom built house. I can’t imagine being 30 years old and expecting to live in a custom home with granite counter tops and all that. But for the “yuppies” out there, they can’t imagine living in a house similar to the house they grew up in. They prefer a McMansion instead.
And it’s funny to see McMansions with so many bedrooms occupied by a childless couple. Young couples with no intention of having children want that McMansion anyway.
The problem is that most of those "lucky bastids" took their $250k profit and used it as a down payment on a million dollar house that's now worth $500k.
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