Sunday, April 25, 2010

A Fool's Game...

Greetings good citizen,

Apparently the ‘talking point’ of the week regarding the (to everyone else) ‘phantom recovery’ is home sales. When I saw that the local rag as well as F.A. picked up on the news, I had to ‘pile on’.

Ironically, the ‘micro’ story in the local rag is more…er, interesting than the broad brush used by the MSM, who make no excuses for the fact that the uptick in sales is directly related to the soon to expire Federal Tax break.

What I found…er, ‘amusing’ is how locally, February sales are up 50%, yup, last year they sold two houses and this year they sold three!

Hooray, the economy is roaring back to life! Or, as Mr. Panzer points out: “those who see signs of a recovery in the residential real estate market should probably be thinking about checking into rehab:”

Which isn’t the half of it good citizen.

What does the ‘housing crisis’ mean to you? It means you will be highly unlikely to EVER recoup the price YOU PAID for you home, let alone squeeze out any ‘profit’.

And yeah Bub, you WILL sink a ton of money into the stack of lumber just keeping it up…and it is unlikely you’ll ever see any of that back either! [But this is not the bank’s problem, is it ‘sucker’?]

Bad enough the ‘overhang’ (the sheer number of unsold/foreclosed properties) is enormous, it is even more troubling that incomes across the nation are sinking like a rock, shrinking the pool of buyers down to virtually ‘non-existent’. Which is to point out that in a market like this, only an idiot would buy one of these ‘losing investments’…

Oh, PS by the way…housing prices here on the upper ‘Right Coast’ haven’t fallen hardly at all…but wages sure have! Wonder just how upset the ‘Cranky Yankee’ is going to be when he realizes nobody can earn enough to pay his asking price? [Because they are still ‘asking’ for stupid money for fairly basic housing…$460,000 for a 3 bedroom cape (that sits basically in a swamp.)]

Those houses in Ohio and Illinois are selling for spit for a reason…there are NO jobs. If you don’t bring your job with you, you aren’t about to find one out there in the economic desert.

So who is buying these properties that they can’t give away?

Don’t have the answer to that one good citizen but I can tell you this, they must be some kind of stupid! (Because this goes well beyond simple ignorance!)

Well, good citizen let us proceed with tonight’s offering for a look at how the ‘American Dream’ is going to end…

9 Years’ Worth of Homes

Economic theory has it that prices tend to rise when demand exceeds supply. But when the potential inventory of homes for sale by banks -- which is aside from the properties that homeowners and builders might also be looking to unload -- is equivalent to nine years' worth of demand, as detailed by Real Time Economics in "Number of the Week: 103 Months to Clear Housing Inventory," that suggests those who see signs of a recovery in the residential real estate market should probably be thinking about checking into rehab:

103: The number of months it would take to sell off all the foreclosed homes in banks’ possession, plus all the homes likely to end up there over the next couple years, at the current rate of sales. [Understand good citizen, buyers are still ‘stretching’ to get into homes as well as putting down as little money as possible up front.]

How much should we worry about a new leg down in the housing market? If the number of foreclosed homes piling up at banks is any indication, there’s ample reason for concern.

As of March, banks had an inventory of about 1.1 million foreclosed homes, up 20% from a year earlier, according to estimates from LPS Applied Analytics. Another 4.8 million mortgage holders were at least 60 days behind on their payments or in the foreclosure process, meaning their homes were well on their way to the inventory pile. That “shadow inventory” was up 30% from a year earlier.

Based on the rate at which banks have been selling those foreclosed homes over the past few months, all that inventory, real and shadow, would take 103 months to unload. That’s nearly nine years. Of course, banks could pick up the pace of sales, but the added supply of distressed homes would weigh heavily on prices — and thus boost their losses.


Um, don’t you just LOVE stories like this one? Stories where ‘real ‘Merikun Patriots’ are damning the torpedoes and moving ‘full speed ahead’ with the dumbest thing they have ever done!

What also isn’t discussed good citizen is how without all of those idiots paying all of that interest, the banking system would collapse!

The worthless banks don’t run on ‘love’ good citizen, regardless of how much of ‘God’s work’ they pretend they do.

The whole predatory banking system operates on raping you, early and often! If the loan is stupid, it doesn’t matter…the belief is there will be another sucker along any minute, just begging to be relieved of their cash!

Except Mr. Merchant decided he didn’t need to pay his customers enough to buy his products…other employers would take care of that little ‘detail’. Until they all ‘got with the program’ and began slashing payroll…now nobody’s employees can afford anybody’s products!

Because the currency of a country that makes nothing is worthless. Don’t look now good citizen but here we sit!

We’re literally ‘eating’ I.O.U.’s (for as long as that lasts…then ‘watch out!’)

It’s even worse than it appears good citizen and you can only wonder why the MSM ‘glosses over’ these ‘little details’.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

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