From CNBC:
U.S. home values fell in the first quarter at the fastest rate since late 2008, real estate data firm Zillow said on Monday, suggesting that a bottom will not be seen until 2012 at the earliest.
Zillow said its home value index fell 3 percent in the first three months of the year from the previous quarter, and was down 8.2 percent year-over-year…
The kicker is that we would have hit the bottom in housing in 2010 – if Obama and Bernanke had not tried to stop the crash with money printing and idiotic purchasing credits. We could have done something back in 2009 or 2010, but it would have taken (a) a bit of vision and (b) a little less concern for the views of the idiots who got us in to this mess. We did exactly what we shouldn’t have done, and now we’re going to pay for it.
A recovery of housing prices – meaning a return to 2007 prices – is entirely out of the question; but if we had just let things take their course, the crash would be long over and we’d at least have stabilization, with maybe a little uptick, possibly leading to a genuine economic recovery. Instead, we got government efforts which ranged from useless to counter-productive. And I don’t think we’ll see the bottom in 2012 – because in 2012 we’ll have the “ARMs” (Adjustable Rate Mortgages) from 2007 coming due, and to 2013 will probably see the bottom. Pretty much anyone buying a house right now is making a bad decision – except in a few markets, you will lose money, and lose quite a lot of it…and it may be a decade or more before you get back to par.
While he wages of sin is death; the wages of folly is poverty – we followed the fool course of fake money, debt and government-subsidized failure. We’re now going to get a lot poorer than we were. But, as I’ve said before, poverty is not necessarily a bad thing – and America can and will endure this, and come out stronger in the end. Provided, of course, we get the liberals who wrecked the country out of power.
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