If President Obama and the Democrats had allowed nature to take its course and stood back while the self correcting mechanism of the market worked its way through the industry, it is very possible that housing would already be rebounding.
But mortgage cram down schemes, blundering by the FHA, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac, and trying to prop up dead beat homeowners - programs that ended in spectacular failure - have assured the US housing market of continued trouble for the foreseeable future.
Wall Street Journal:
Home values fell 3% in the first quarter from the previous quarter and 1.1% in March from the previous month, pushed down by an abundance of foreclosed homes on the market, according to data to be released Monday by real-estate website Zillow.com. Prices have now fallen for 57 consecutive months, according to Zillow.Last year, the housing market showed signs of improving as price depreciation slowed in some markets and stabilized in others. In response, a number of economists began forecasting that housing would hit a bottom in late 2011, then begin to recover. But the improvements, spurred by federal programs that gave buyers up to $8,000 in tax credits, proved fleeting. Sales collapsed when the credits expired last summer, and prices in many markets have been falling ever since.
While most economists expected sales to decline after tax credits expired, the drag on the market has been greater than many anticipated. "We expected December and January to be bad" as the market reeled from the after-effects of the tax credit, said Stan Humphries, Zillow's chief economist. But monthly declines for February and March were "really staggering," he said. They indicate "a reflection of the true underlying demand, which is now apparent because most of the tax credit is out of the system, and it's being completely overwhelmed by supply."
Supply and demand. These are foreign concepts to the White House and Democrats who seek to overturn the most fundamental of free market economic laws by their blundering interference. It hasn't slowed foreclosures appreciably, nor has it helped housing values recover.
Just blatant ignorance for which we will be paying for years.
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