Local liberal gubmint feeding off the nearest host with no concern for the future and no self-control (read morality, integrity or honesty.)

It’s a distinction without a difference as far as I can tell…

Detroit Public Schools were allowed to become places that nobody wanted their kids to attend. The city government was corrupt or inept or both. Public safety was nowhere near where it should have been.

When a city is considered unsafe and its schools are undesirable, it doesn’t matter much how many jobs are available there. People will want to move back in when the social problems are under control. Then the $500 houses will find buyers, and by then they’ll probably be worth only about $500, too.

The next time you hear some moron blame “capitalism” or the “market” or “deregulation” for it, hit ‘em over the head with the book. Being leftist zombies, it probably wouldn’t do them any good to read it anyway…

It would be funny if it weren’t so sad…

One huge problem is the US is one of the few countries where the housing loan is structured that the worst the bank can do is take back the house if the loan isn’t paid, they can’t go after other assets. Some states are different, but if they changed this law alone, I think you would see a dramatic decrease in foreclosures.

What I want to know is, how do we deregulate the mortgage industry in a smart way. What the government is trying to do now is reinflate the housing bubble. I’m afraid this is going to be one of those unwritten entitlements (like agriculture subsidies) that never gets fixed.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091025/us_nm/us_usa_housing_detroit

An excerpt, and note the editorializing from “Critics” on the limits of a free market solution.

“Despite a minimum bid of $500, less than a fifth of the Detroit land was sold after four days.

The county had no estimate of how much was raised by the auction, a second attempt to sell property that had failed to find buyers for the full amount of back taxes in September.

The unsold parcels add to an expanding ghost town within the once-vibrant town known worldwide as the Motor City.

Critics say the poor showing at the auction underscores the limits of using a market-based system to clean up property tax problems. They say the system has enriched a few but failed to deliver a way for Detroit to staunch its dwindling population and could worsen the vacancy crisis.”

We closed on our house in St Augustine about a month ago. When we were looking a couple of months ago, there were a whole lot of houses for sale, for cheap. In the time it took to close (45 days, a ton of documentation even though our loan was through the same lender and for 30K less) plus a month, the amount of inventory has dropped significantly in this area.

DR Horton has actually started building houses again (other builder went bankrupt I think). I don’t know what will be going on w/r/t ARMs and foreclosures, but people who don’t *have* to sell their house, aren’t and the price has come down so much that it is enticing people, who can afford it, back into the market. That bodes well for burning off the excess inventory and prices stabilizing (seasonal fall?). Don’t know how long the market will take to come back though.

Of course the market is doing this and the government is just getting in the way (as usual).

http://www.doctorhousingbubble.com/

2. Mish’s Global Economic Analysis. He occasionally circles the Ron Paul drain, but his other data on deflation and housing is very good.

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/

They’re also running numbers off the all time lows of the market.

Real estate numbers are like polls. Don’t pay any attention to the headlines, read the internals.

One other thing of note, there are two distinct real estate markets in the US. There’s the high volume, high end markets (CA, FL, NV, AZ, + some metro areas) and there’s every place else. When I write, I’m basically focusing on the high end markets because they drive the economy as a whole. If you live in Topeka KS, most of what I talk about probably won’t apply to you except in very general terms.

Are people that stupid? Yes.

Are they that greedy? Absolutely. Their primary residence is just a line on their personal balance sheet.

Are they desperate? No. See the first two.

Anything else? Not really. The real estate industry has sold the idea that prices will keep going up forever. The mortgage industry acted as enablers.

Keep in mind that people are buying a montly payment, not a house.

Now, what about the news that came out today about Home sales being up over 9% in September? Is this spin, a new trend indicating something important, not relevant to this discussion, or what?

I’m finding it hard to believe that a lot of folks are out there suddenly deciding this is a good time to buy a house…

From the 1940 movie

Ghost Breakers, starring the late, great, Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard:

Scientist: “It’s worse than horrible, because a zombie has no will of his own. You see them some times, walking around blindly with dead eyes, following orders, not knowing what they do, not caring.”

Bob Hope: “You mean, like Democrats?”

As true today as it was then. Some things never change…

Maybe it means it will be more likely and/or worse of a fall, or maybe a big jump in interest rates will overshadow everything else so who cares about Fannie and Freddie. Disregarding the interest rate issue, it seems like the Dems are reverting back to some of what got us here to begin with. And much of their approach seems to be “let’s see if we can delay the inevitable by band-aiding it until after the 2010 elections”.