Seems to never fail… GA politicians tend to be the biggest screw ups in existence.

Well written, Pete. Covers it just right.

What goes up…must come down…this will simply delay the inevitable at best…and make the necessary adjustment harder to bear.

We just came through a time period where there was a glut in home purchases and construction. In the San Antonio market we actually had home builders coming up with contracts for their buyers to sign promising to live in the house and not sell it for a period of three years because people were mortgaging three and four houses and flipping out of them for a profit because prices were rising so quickly. This created a huge bubble because the demand caused by one person buying two and three houses wasn’t sustainable. Eventually, the number of houses exceeds the number of buyers on the market…and the inflated prices necessarily crash as the supply of homes out paces the demand of home buyers.

Keep in mind…I’m speaking od San Antonio where our board of Realtors has worked really hard at trying to keep the home market at realistic levels…we have traditionally kept the growth of home prices here at about 4% a year…

Over the last 4 years however…during the glut…home values were groing at an average of 8.5% in San Antonio. ..and our markets were conservative compared with housing markets in NY, FL CA and NV where property values were doubling and tripling over a 5 to 10 year period…

now the bubble has burst…We’ve gone from posting a listing and by the end of the day having three to five offers on the table which were all over asking price, to having in one instance a house posted for over 180 days and over 150 showings before we finally got an acceptable offer for it. There are far more houses for sale than there are buyers in the market and prices need to come back to their natural level…and the longer the government props up the market…and postpones the inevitable adjustment, the longer it will be before we restore a natural balance to the market and we all get back to work again.

The “Big Tent” analogy isn’t the correct one…the correct one is a MAGNET…we need to be a MAGNET that draws these independents in who are sick and tired of what’s going on in Washington—Fred Thompson

I agree with you that the Isakson proposal is a bad idea, but I disagree with your use of the label RINO. We shouldn’t be throwing around this term just because someone throws out a bad idea. Isakson’s lifetime ACU rating is 88.4, while it could be better, I don’t think that puts him in RINO territory (Snow is 47.88 and Collins is 49.55). Over misapplying terms tends to cheapen their value and make them less affective. This is part of what Goodwin’s Law is about. You can and should attack bad proposals without throwing around knee-jerk terms

For those of you unfamiliar with all things Atlanta, Herman is a wonderful example of the American can-do spirit.

He was the CEO of Godfather’s Pizza back in the day and turned it into a profitable business. For a while, he was a semi-regular fill-in host for Neal Boortz. That went so well for him that the local Atlanta talk radio station gave him his own show in the 7-10 pm slot. While I’m not a regular listener, I do admire Herman and his ideas.

He spoke at one of the local Tea Parties on 9/12 and did very well at it. Check out his website at Herman Cain.

Isakson voted for TARP, GIVE ACT, Serve America Act, Clinton, Holder, Solis and Napolitano.

Nice conservative leadership, eh?

Tom

I really do resent these type of programs, and the 95% plus of people who don’t take advantage of these programs do also. Not only does it distort the markets, I think they’re political losers to boot. People who don’t want to buy a new house, or trade in their “clunker”, feel cheated that they aren’t also getting tax relief. The entire reason we had a meltdown in the housing market was because the government over-incentivized home ownership through various subsidies.

Republicans really should unite and fight to make taxes low for everyone, not just play favorites for whatever industry has the best lobbyists.

Even if these programs “work” (and I’m not convinced they do, certainly not in the long term) at the end of the day it violates conservative principles, imo.

The government doesn’t have any business paying people to buy a new house anymore than it should pay people to buy a new car. I could easily see this become a new “right” that people expect $8,000 from the government everytime they buy a house.

I don’t think I’d call him a RINO. He generally votes against the majority of his constituent’s wishes, responds with form letters to emails and his staff is uniformly hostile to phone calls expressing opinions different than “conventional wisdom”.

He was an arrogant cuss back when we knew him at Northside Realty. He’s always been pro big business, to the detriment of the environment, working people and small biz. He never misses title pawn fund raiser and he has a heart of stone. I’ve seen lizards with more compassion. Other than that, he’s just fine.

As far as real estate is concerned, he’s trying to stop the hemmorage of jingle mail. Probably what he’s doing is wrong in the long term, but right now it looks like we’re trying to catch up with Michigan. Our state’s in that bad of shape and we’re facing another tidal wave of foreclosures that could ruin entire municipalities and city tax bases.

Until we start seeing a more active judiciary presiding over principle reductions as well as a “show the note” requirement, we’re going to see some interesting bills coming from our man Johnny, THE real estate expert.

to elect and appoint real estate agents. Some of the very awfullest people I’ve ever worked for and with in government had a background real estate or mortgage banking – or both. That hail-fellow-well-met crap that got you elected realtor of the year or Chamber Citizen of the Year or President of the Rotary doesn’t give you one single skill that is useful in running a government and it gives you a lot of proclivities that are really good for running a Republican administration right into the ground.