Free Republic

For the most part, people share common goals. Most of us want poor people to enjoy higher standards of living, greater traffic safety, more world peace, greater racial harmony, cleaner air and water, and less crime. Despite the fact that people have common goals, we often see them grouped into contentious factions, fighting tooth and nail to promote polar opposite government policies in the name of achieving a commonly held goal. The conflict is centered around the means to achieve goals rather than the goals themselves. The policies that become law often have the unintended consequence of sabotaging the achievement...

While rising treasury yields may be music to the ears of savers who have been crushed by low interest rates over the past 7 years, they're a bit of downer for the overwhelming majority of Americans that have been funding their lavish lifestyles with cheap debt. Yes, sadly the days of upgrading to the $65,000 luxury car despite a $40,000 annual salary, because you can "afford it" so long as you can cover the low monthly payments courtesy of 7-year terms and low interest rates, may finally be coming to an end. But auto OEM's aren't the only ones about...

In hopes of promoting the narrative of a US housing recovery, one recurring thesis has been that as Millennials get older and start families, they will eventually leave their parents' basement and buy a house or shift from renting to owning. So far the facts have refused to corroborate this, and according to the latest "Housing Vacancies and Homeownership" report released on Thursday, the dream of owning a home just became even more distant. The reason: after staging a feeble rebound in late 2015, the US homeownership rate just tumbled from 63.5% to 62.9%, tied for the lowest print going...

Editor's note: This column was co-authored by Stephen Moore. We are going to reveal the grand secret to getting rich by investing. It's a simple formula that has worked for Warren Buffett, Carl Icahn and all the greatest investment gurus over the years. Ready? Buy low, sell high. It turns out that Donald Trump has been very, very good at buying low and selling high, and it helps account for his amazing business success. But now Hillary Clinton seems to think it's a crime. Campaigning in California last week she wailed that Trump “actually said he was hoping for the...

Housing: Seemingly everyone applauds the recent surge in home prices as a positive sign for the economy. But, in fact, it isn’t. If anything, it’s a sign the federal government still hasn’t learned its lesson about excessive regulation. While prices for homes have surged in recent years, they’ve done so thanks mainly to federal regulations put in place after the financial crisis. Low interest rates engineered by the Fed to stimulate the economy have fueled a surge in demand, driving prices up sharply. And federal regulations continue to require mortgage lenders to make risky home loans based on race and...

The Miami real estate slowdown is becoming a meltdown — with the most expensive areas getting hit hardest. The number of sales and prices in posh Miami Beach — home to many of the city's most expensive and highest-profile properties — fell during the first quarter, according to a new report. Meanwhile, inventory soared by roughly a third compared with the prior-year quarter. The report, released Thursday by Douglas Elliman and Miller Samuel Real Estate Appraisers & Consultants, found the average sale price in Miami Beach and the nearby Barrier Islands fell 7.5 percent year over year to $905,252. The...

Fannie Mae, the federally sanctioned mortgage giant, has just announced a new program that shows that they learned absolutely nothing from the last real estate meltdown. This new program, called "HomeReady" in a fit of hopeful and wishful thinking, reduces loan underwriting standards. It's designed to allow "underserved" individuals the opportunity to buy a home - focused primarily on low-income and minority borrowers. Other than the last group of under qualified borrower-friendly loans and regulations from the mid-2000s, it's the stupidest real estate loan idea that I've ever seen. The new loan "features" reduced credit score requirements and allows borrowed...

They're doing it again! When the last housing bubble burst, politicians blamed "greedy banks." They said mortgage companies lent money recklessly, making loans to people with dubious credit, for down payments as low as 3 percent. "It will work out," said the optimistic bankers. Regulators didn't disagree. Everyone said, "Home prices will keep going up." And home prices did -- until they didn't. The bubble popped in 2007. Lots of people were hurt, and politicians took more of your tax money to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac along with reckless banks. They also gave the Federal Housing Administration...

CoreLogic chief economist Dr. Frank Nothaft says Strong Economic Growth To Propel US Housing Market in 2015. The U.S. economy is poised to grow by close to 3 percent in 2015, generating a 3- to 3.5-million-person gain in employment. This job growth, coupled with very low mortgage interest rates and some easing in credit access, is expected to propel both owner-occupant and rental housing activity this year. This heightened level of housing demand should translate to the best home sales market in eight years, a projected rise of about 5-6 percent in the national CoreLogic Home Price Index (HPI) and...

There were more than 2,300 homes and condos in the foreclosure process last month. That is up 104 percent from December. Statewide that increase is 109 percent from January 2014. The jump in foreclosures comes as the Phoenix housing market tries to shake off a slow 2014 where low demand for homes and tough mortgage qualifications stymied sales. Foreclosure activity was also up in states such as Ohio, New Jersey, Maryland and California and metropolitan areas such as St. Louis, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The worst cities for foreclosures include Atlantic City, Las Vegas and eight Florida markets including...

What caused the financial crisis? How can we prevent another one from happening again? The answers you most often hear to those questions are (1) greed and deregulation and (2) the Dodd-Frank law. But they're patently inadequate. Greed -- or the desire for monetary gain -- has always been with us and always will be. And no one has convincingly linked financial deregulation to the crisis. Dodd-Frank, enacted to increase regulation, confers too-big-to-fail status on very large financial institutions, which incentivizes unduly risky behavior and penalizes smaller competitors. The real problem was housing finance, argues my American Enterprise Institute colleague...

Supply of homes at the bottom-third of the market is down 17 percent from a year ago. Meanwhile the top-third home supply is up 15 percent while the middle is up a modest 3 percent according to Redfin. The bottom third is anything priced below $198,000. But $150,000 or $200,000 does not buy in terms of size and location what it did just a few years ago. Overpay or Be Shut Out So once again, first-time buyers face the question "overpay or be shut out?" And once again it appears many make a very poor choice.

Would-be home sellers across the country are grappling with a once-in-a-lifetime problem: They have mortgage rates so absurdly low it would hurt them financially to sell. Doing so would mean giving up an irresistible rate in exchange for a new mortgage carrying a rate up to a percentage point higher. Their monthly payments would be larger even for a house of the same price. That’s discouraging some people from selling, thereby limiting the supply of available homes and contributing to slower home sales. …

In a further demonstration of the socially destructive and ever widening gap between the haves and have nots, we see that the affluent are buying second homes at an ever increasing clip (up 30% last year), while first home buyers recede into the abyss as private equity and Chinese buyers make purchasing a home unaffordable for the average American. Specifically, a recent study from Zillow showed that more than half the homes in seven major American cities are unaffordable based on historical standards. Those cities are: Miami, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Denver, San Jose and Portland, Ore. Nationwide,...

More African-Americans are being squeezed out of the housing market. Not only are they less likely to apply for a mortgage than any other ethnic group, but African-Americans are also 2.4 times more likely to get denied a mortgage than Whites, a recent study conducted by Zillow and the National Urban League found.

As Congress restarts conversations about the federal budget and deficit reduction, the immigration reform debate is still front and center for many. As that debate unfolds, it is important to put some hard facts on the table. What are the costs and benefits of reform? What impact will reform have on economic growth and wages? How will immigration reform affect the federal budget? A new study by the Bipartisan Policy Center Immigration Task Force found the evidence suggests that immigration reform can produce significant economic dividends for our country. -snip- A major finding of the study is that immigration reform...

The sheltered existence of hundreds of desert tortoises will come to a sad and tragic end in early 2014. A lack of funds at The Desert Tortoise Conservation Center, located outside Las Vegas, Nevada, will cause the sanctuary to close its doors and euthanize about half of its 1,400 tortoise residents, reports the Associated Press. The facility was created in 1990 when the overdevelopment—namely McMansions, solar plants, and strip malls—of the turtles' native habitats caused the critters to be put on the endangered species list. The center previously upheld a $1 million annual budget, mostly fueled by "raking in funds...

The economy today, in this Fourth of July week for 2013, waits in breathless anticipation of our newest declaration of dependence. Sometime this week, jobs data, housing data and some other data export manufactured by the federal government will result in someone, somewhere- perhaps even in the stock market- doing something. And when that happens regulators, media mavens, talking heads, politicians, special interests, and Mayor Bloomberg, will all say with the pride of a collective: “See? We did that,” as if “nothing” would happen without the beneficent government first allowing it. So it goes today in the United States Senate,...

What U.S. Housing Market Recovery? Percentage Of First-Time Home Buyers Falls Again Housing-Market / US Housing May 29, 2013 - 10:59 AM GMT By: Profit ConfidentialMichael Lombardi Michael Lombardi writes: It’s almost as if the mainstream media is defining the U.S. housing market as being “hot,” while some economists are calling for robust growth ahead. But the reality is that we are far from a recovery in thehousing market and more troubles could follow. As I have discussed in these pages many times before, institutional investors are running to buy homes for rental income, because the yields elsewhere are getting...

Author's Note: If you don't get this, then you aren't reading enough Walter Williams. Of course, one can never read enough Walter Williams.I used to be caring and compassionate and liberal. I supported gun control and the “right” of the government to seize a large chunk of my paycheck in order to plan my retirement for me. But, somewhere, somehow, along life's twisted way, I became a greedy capitalist pig. And, truth be known, it's affecting my entire neighborhood. It all started on New Year's Eve when my friend Adam came by to help me with a small project inside...