Posts Tagged ‘foreclosures’

Article of Note on the Foreclosure Crisis

Monday, July 6th, 2009

I found the following article to be of interest.  It is titled “New Evidence on the Foreclosure Crisis” and is found in The Wall Street Journal, p A13, July 3-5, at this link:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124657539489189043.html

While I can’t verify his analysis, the article is worth reading.

I don’t agree with all of his conclusions, especially his remark that housing prices are likely to stop declining soon.  

However, his analysis and other conclusions are important in that they further support the idea that many of the policy efforts currently enacted to mitigate the foreclosure problem may be misdirected.  

It is important to remember that much of the total intervention effort is aimed toward averting further weakness in residential real estate.

SPX at 888.65 as this post is written

 

Copyright 2009 by Ted Kavadas

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Foreclosures

Thursday, June 4th, 2009

Here is an interesting New York Times editorial regarding foreclosures.  Please note that I don’t necessarily agree with many of the recommendations, but the editorial does a nice job of summarizing some of the problems:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/opinion/02tue1.html?_r=1

“Solving” our residential real estate problems is going to be most difficult, in my opinion.  It is a very complex issue with realms of complexity that are not understood.   Once you add politics, as well as the emotional factors inherent in residential real estate, the issue becomes frightful.

Recently I read someone say that the only way for the housing market to recover is to let prices fall to a point where the market would “clear itself,” so to speak.  It might well come to that – but I’m afraid that the “market clearing price” (on an all things considered basis at some point in the future) would be much lower than anyone would care to imagine.

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