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What is the real cure for the housing market? Part 3 Michael Krein

What is the real cure for the housing market?

 As we begin part three of my rant on this subject, let’s go back to the basics, supply and demand. Prices are falling because we simply have more homes for sale either by choice or distress than we do “qualified” buyers to buy them. More importantly we need the right kind of buyers if we want to preserve neighborhoods and restore values. We need owner-occupant homebuyers, those that are going to buy a home to live in it. Those that will maintain and improve that home with pride. Both of those sub-topics were covered in depth in parts 1 & 2 of this article, so we will be moving forward from here.

The fact is that we have a lot more foreclosures yet to come and with the homes already on the market, there is no way that we can ever absorb this excess inventory in the near foreseeable future. Until that inventory is absorbed – there will be no recovery in the housing markets, foreclosures will continue to increase and more and more of our tax dollars will need to be spent bailing out the banks and these foreclosures.

We need about 5 million qualified buyers, preferably owner-occupant buyers to absorb the excess demand and start prices back on an upward trend. The question that keeps coming up is where do we find them? My answer is that they are already here right under our very noses!

All of those foreclosures on the market were in fact actually owned by someone before they became foreclosures! It is these folks that were previously foreclosed upon that we need to help become homeowners once again. After all – we already know that they would prefer to own a home of their own – that’s how this all started in the first place!

Since we know how many foreclosures there have been – we know how many people have been foreclosed upon. It is pretty simple really. Take these same people who were previously foreclosed upon and let them buy another house. Demand is back – home prices stabilize and start rising again. We get owner-occupants back in homes – neighborhoods get saved, people get to start building wealth and equity again. The economy gets a boost, etc. etc. How much more could any of us ask for? There is a very simple way to do this, and it can be done relatively inexpensively and relatively risk free and in the long run would not only restore the housing markets but would also save us poor taxpayers billions and billions of dollars in the process.

Why can’t we have a second chance loan? Yes a second chance loan for previous homeowners who got caught up and in some cases victimized by the real estate market. I am not talking about investors here. I have no sympathy for them. An investment is just that an investment – you put your money down and take your chances. Where there is potential reward there is also potential risk. Most of the so called investors were not really investors – they were speculators and it was amateur hour. Most of these investors could have easily avoided their losses if they had bothered to take an hour or so and read a book on real estate investing. In reality, many could have avoided losing hundreds of thousands of dollars simply by investing 25 cents in late charges at the local library.

Enough said about investors. It was they by their own ignorance and actions that helped overinflate the housing markets and forced many ordinary hardworking folks to have to overpay fortheir home. It is these folks that we need to address. They were not out to make a fast buck, they were not using their home as an ATM. Most just wanted a place to raise their kids and have a home that they could call their own. It is this group that got taken advantage of the most. It is only in this group that we can truly say that there may have been victims. But semantics and liberalism aside, we can work within this group to restore the housing markets.

We can do so in an almost risk free and inexpensive manner. We can create a second chance loan program that is not only self-supporting but completely self-funded as well. We have millions of Americans who have previously lost their homes and would desperately love to own one again. Most of these folks do have jobs and are capable of making affordable payments. With home prices and interest rates where they are now, most can easily afford a home similar to the one they had lost. We could start moving these families back into homes of their own, where they could begin building equity again and helping to stabilize and improve our neighborhoods as only owner-occupants do. Right now there are millions of these potential homeowners out there renting instead of owning. While renting, they obviously will not be spending money improving or renovating the homes they are in as they do not own them. Nor will the landlords be renovating or improving the homes either as there is simply no motivation for either of them to do so right now. If we want to see values come back up, neighborhoods preserved and improved, then we must create more homeowners and less landlords – it is that simple.

It has been nearly 4 years since the foreclosure crisis started and it is still continuing to worsen. Why after four years has nothing been done to stop this?

The solution is quite simple – a homeownership recovery program. Right now the government is spending billions keeping people in homes who are not even paying for them. Loan modifications do not work. Nor for that matter have any of the other government programs. In reality – most of the programs tried so far have actually made it worse. By keeping people in homes who are not making their payments but also know that they are going to lose the home eventually, we have created another problem. No maintenance on the homes, and no money being invested to improve them. We end up with continually degrading properties and no money being spent on home improvement that could be a huge stimulus to the economy. More so with no end to the housing crisis in sight and prices still falling, there is no reason for anyone to pay their mortgage on an asset that is still going down in value.

Our current failed policies have so far only contributed to continued decline in real estate values are the real problem now. We need a major shift in housing policy. One that will increase consumer demand (create buyers), and do so substantially so that prices start back on an upward trend.

Restoring home values solves so many problems. It creates wealth again which would then help stimulate our entire economy. It would reduce and in some cases eliminate major losses from the banks on foreclosures, and hence save us billions more in bailout dollars. Higher home values translate directly to lower losses for the banks and especially us as the taxpayers (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, & other bailouts) It would further reduce and possibly eliminate strategic defaults, as once people realize that their house will come back in value again they will not be so quick to walk away from it.

The Obama administration has repeatedly stated that they want to get out of the mortgage business and government guaranteed homes loans and have the private sector step in in the governments place. The trouble is that the private sector is not going to step into a broken market – if the government wants the private sector to take over then they need to fix the problems first.

Once the real estate market bottoms out and the worst is over, private money will come back into the lending arena as the risks and potential losses are greatly reduced. So why don’t we halt this downward cycle – decide that this is the bottom and turn it around – it can be done quite easily.

We have the means at our disposal, the system and structure is already in place, no new legislation would be needed and the program would be completely self-funded so not only would we as taxpayers not have to spend any additional money, but by saving the housing markets and restoring values – we as taxpayers could all save billions in future bailouts as well.

The Second Chance Loan could put millions of Americans back into homes, preserve neighborhoods, restore values, eliminate and greatly reduce future bailouts and best of all it won’t cost taxpayers a dime. In reality it might even show a profit and at the same time save us billions on more bailouts and subsidies in the future!

Stay tuned for Part 4 of this article, we will explain how the Second Chance Loan program could work.

Mike Krein

What is the real cure for the housing market? (part 2) by: Mike Krein

The overall economy is a mess, unemployment is through the roof, and a true recovery is nowhere in sight. The reality is that the housing market, construction, and related services comprise one of the largest segments of our overall economy. If we want to have a true economic recovery and bring down unemployment - the housing markets must be fixed first!

So how do we solve the housing crisis and fix our overall economy?

It goes back to supply and demand. Prices will stabilize when supply and demand return to a state of equilibrium. Prices will begin rising again when and if we can increase demand past the point of supply.

There are two simple cures for solving the ills in our housing markets, - actually three.

However, the third cure;as simple as it may, be involves burning down about four million housing units and thereby bringing supply and demand back into equilibrium by drastically reducing the housing stock. Yes it would work, home prices would come back up and it would probably be a lot of fun. (Just think of all the great block parties) But not the most practical of ideas in the long run…

 There are however two very practical and inexpensive ways to restore the housing markets that are so dragging down our economy. Although both are quite practical – one will be quite unpopular with a lot of folks in this country, even though it really makes the most sense and not only will not cost us poor overburdened taxpayers any more money, it will actually generate additional tax revenue.

We’ll start with that one and it is very simple. First, Illegal Alien Amnesty - that’s right – we have somewhere between 40-50 million illegal aliens living in this country, who work here, enjoy the benefits that your and my tax dollars pay for (schools, hospitals, roads, police and fire protection, etc.) yet pay nothing in taxes and give nothing back.

Why don’t we just make them all citizens and let them pay taxes like the rest of us? If we can “spread the wealth” – why can’t we also “spread the burden”?

Before I go on here, I should mention that I am in no way a bleeding heart liberal, in reality I am an ultra-conservative, bordering on social Darwinism. To put it bluntly I considered Ronald Reagan to be too liberal..

It is not about politics - it is simply time for a reality check. Most illegal immigrants are not illegal by choice, but by nature of our immigration policies. Most would be thrilled to be able to call themselves Americans. Most would be more than happy to pay their taxes, vote in our elections, and I am sure many would even be prepared for military service if it meant they could become citizens.

In as much as some all bitch and moan about the illegals in this country, let’s be real here as well, they are already here, they are going to be here, so we might as well accept that fact and let them start paying for the services that they are already using. Again most of them would be quite happy and proud to do so.

I am not going to get into a long running debate about this as it is not the point of this article.

The subject here is how to fix the crisis in the housing markets.

The fact is that if we were to create an illegal alien amnesty program nearly half of those in that category would opt for citizenship. So with that said, an illegal alien amnesty would mostly likely create about twenty million new Americans.

More importantly one of the most common dreams and aspirations of all “new” Americans is home ownership. The “American” dream is still alive and well with those folks – they just don’t happen to be Americans… yet.

If we created twenty million “new” Americans – at least 25%-30% of them would be able to buy a home within a relatively short period of time – perhaps one to two years. That would be 5-7 million new “qualified” homebuyers entering the marketplace. More than enough to mop up the excess homes inventory in the marketplace and restore values. If we restored values – we wouldn’t have so many foreclosures and if we stopped having so many foreclosures we could stop spending billions of dollars bailing out banks!

Even more importantly these would be owner-occupant homebuyers, the kind of buyers that preserve, restore, and invest in our neighborhoods – not the investors that so often destroy neighborhoods and values.

Not only that – but all of us as taxpayers would receive a secondary benefit as well. Now that we have made them all citizens, we can also share one of our other beloved American Holidays with them as well – April 15th! Now all of these new Americans can start paying their fair share as well.

Politics and all other arguments aside, this is probably the simplest and most effective policy that could be implemented to restore the housing markets and help restore our economy.

This has been practical option number 1. In part 3 of this article we will discuss another option that will likely prove a bit more popular and in effect would likely be easier to implement.

Mike Krein

Where did all the money go?

One of things that everybody forgets is that for all the money that got lost in the real estate bust, in order for it to be lost -it first had to be spent! That means it ended up somewhere. Somebody got rich.

Ever wonder who?

Actually a lot of people did. But unfortunately it was more of a Ponzi scheme in nature. The people at the top of the pyramid made fortunes, the people in the middle of the pyramid did okay, and the people at the bottom of the pyramid got screwed. And as in all good screwings, the many typically get screwed by the few.

Every newspaper, every news station, every so-called expert all had opinions about whose fault this crisis was. They all talk about who was to blame. The real answer is everyone and no one. We live in a capitalist society - that means we all have the right to try and better ourselves as best we can. In a capitalist society bettering ourselves is really about acquiring more money or wealth.

We live in America, the land of opportunity, and you can't fault those who are just better at seeing opportunity than others.

With all that said, the biggest “culprits” if you want to call them that are the ones at the top of the pyramid, that made the most money. Most importantly some of the biggest money was made while the rest of us were still cleaning up the mess left at the end of the party.

In this case it was a Wall Street firms. Again, hundreds of articles and comments, as well as numerous editorials and even books have now been written about that. But none of which explains it as well or as simply as this one.

So here it is one of my personal favorites:

“Wall Street's Bailout Hustle” by Mike Taibbi as published in Rolling Stone magazine

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/;kw=%5B3351,95912%5D

Happy reading!

MIke

Predicting the Housing Markets

One of the questions I am constantly being asked is: “When is the market coming back?”

This is really a pretty silly question. As the response from me would need to be: “back to what?”

Most people are usually referring to the highs of the real estate market which tended to have been somewhere in 2007, depending of course on where you lived.

But back to what? - Is a reasonable answer? If the market coming back means overinflated and unsustainable? – My answer is hopefully never.

If people are asking if their house will ever again be worth what it was in 2007, the answer is probably yes but not for a very long time to come.

Other people are always asking me if I think the market has hit bottom yet? Nobody has ever been right when answering this question either. Furthermore you will never know when a market has hit bottom until after it has been coming back up for several months. Therefore you can know where the bottom was until after you have passed it. Nobody has ever really been able to time a market.

Right now the housing markets are basically unpredictable for the simple reason that they were being artificially manipulated.

For example in many markets we have no idea what the true supply or demand really is because the inventory primarily of foreclosed homes is being held back in many markets. In some of these markets when a home does hit the market it has multiple offers on it the same day.

Nobody knows how much inventory is really being held back nor when it will hit the market. For that reason even though there is a shortage of “saleable” inventory and what is available tends to receive multiple offers, the prices still aren't being bid up that much over the asking price.

Trying to gauge exactly what is going on and will happen next is pretty much impossible.

There are a few different scenarios that could play out in a few basics and patterns that are starting to emerge.

But first and foremost housing markets are no longer national, there are regional. This has to do with the massive population shifts that are starting to occur. There are some markets such as Michigan and Ohio that may never come back. There are other markets such as Nevada and Arizona which will probably not only come back relatively quickly but do so in an extraordinary manner.

We also have to remember that we are in a national recession with unemployment in excess of 10 to 15% in many areas. How local housing markets will recover will be greatly dependent not only on when but where employment comes back.

Most real estate markets when in balance will appreciate at about 3 to 5% per year or normally just above the inflation level. Markets also tend to oscillate as return to their norms, with the swings both up and down becoming smaller and smaller as they approach stability.

In my home market of Clark County Nevada the swings were some of the most severe in the country. We shot way above our historical norm and then after the bust, we fell down well past its historical norm. If all else in the economy were stable our housing market is probably 20 to 25% below where it should be.

Assuming the rest of the economy comes back and unemployment returns to normal levels we should see a 20 to 25% increase in prices assuming that our excess inventory can be absorbed. This comes back to population shift, as more and more people choose to leave other areas of the country and move to Nevada, this excess inventory could be rapidly absorbed in prices would actually shoot past and above our historical norms. This is what most likely will occur; the only question is how soon?

 The fact is that during periods of high unemployment, people become much more mobile and are willing to trade proximity to friends and family in return for a job and/or a better quality of life. In other words they are much more willing to relocate.

This is going to become particularly true for those located in high tax states.

Obviously this is just a blog of a very limited nature and there are hundreds of other factors that could be argued. But I had to make a bet, the fastest markets to “come back” are going to be Nevada, Arizona, and parts of Florida.

 

The rise and fall of the housing markets….

There’s been a lot said about what caused the real estate bubble and the subsequent crash.

There is not enough finger-pointing in the world to cover everyone who was really involved. The simple answer was greed - plain and simple -on everyone's part.

Certainly government policies had a lot of influence and possibly helped to create the scenario that allowed everyone else to jump in. Frankly I've always wondered about that, meaning the government's role not only in direct policy but almost from a political relations standpoint as well.

The fact is so many economists are always so wrong because all of their fancy charts and graphs never seem to include enough about human nature itself.

The reality is that when people feel poor they spend less money, when people are spending less money the economy slows. When people feel rich they spend more money in the economy grows. No reason to over complicate this.

Coming out of the late 90s and the tech stock boom people felt rich, and they spend money because they felt rich. The economy hummed along and everything was rosy. When the tech bubble burst and stocks came crashing down around January of 2000, people felt poor again. They stopped spending money and the economy started to slow.

It was really about wealth and wealth creation. How does one create wealth? There are several ways, but the easiest and fastest is to simply raise the value of the assets you already have.

Now the government could not re-inflate the stock market, so they did something even better in that they inflated an even larger market, they inflated the real estate market. It was simply supply and demand, increase the demand on a known quantity and the price will rise. Demand was increased through liberal lending policies that created buyers that never should have existed.

Unfortunately they did it a little too well and after that human nature took over and euphoria ensued. During the boom you couldn't walk into a cocktail party without hearing about who just flipped what, and who just refinanced for how much. Everybody was bragging about how well they were doing in real estate.

And so the abyses began, you had many people who were now financing a lifestyle that they really couldn’t afford with the increased equity in their homes. Hell - to many of these people a dollar borrowed was a dollar earned. Boats , cars, trips,  - not a problem with the way the value of our house keeps going up we can just do this again next year.

Not to mention everyone was now a real estate investor.

Investors - my ass ……… it was amateur hour at the highest levels. It was a bunch of people who had no idea what they were doing all believing they were getting something for nothing and patting themselves on the back and convincing themselves they were geniuses. Quickest way to go broke is to take credit for a market.

The reality is I have absolutely no sympathy for any of these so-called investors. First off an investment is just that, an investment you put your money down and spin the wheel like everyone else and sometimes you win and sometimes you lose - that is called risk - and the amount of return that you get is in direct proportion to the risk that you take.

The funny thing is I have spoken to hundreds of these so-called investors right up to the time I took the house back for the bank. Not one of them had a clue what they were doing. I can honestly say that with 90% of the ones I spoke to - had they bothered to even get a little education about what they were doing, they wouldn't have gotten themselves into this mess. Seriously, $.50 worth of late charges at the library and reading a book or two, most of them wouldn't have lost what they did, and many might have actually made a few bucks when it was all said and done.

So nope, no sympathy for them. Making money in real estate can be tough, but it's even tougher when you're stupid. When you choose to be completely ignorant, you deserve what you get.

But it was the investors, by the way an interesting side-note here is that about 25% of the homes that I foreclosed on and took back for the banks were owned by either real estate agents, loan officers, or sometimes both. It was the so-called professionals that should've known better and that were the biggest drinkers of the “Kool-Aid”.

Now, before you think I am completely heartless on this matter, I will tell you who I do feel sorry for. I feel sorry for the young couple who was forced to overpay and to over borrow just so they can have a place to raise their kids.

These people weren't looking to get rich, they weren't flippers, they were not investors, they just wanted a home of their own. A piece of the same American dream that their parents had. It was these younger families primarily that got royally screwed.

These were the folks that got hurt. And no, nobody forced the gun to their head and told them they had to buy a house. But the reality for many was that they were so afraid that if they didn't buy a house then, they would never be able to afford to them the future. Sad really.

So they overpaid, they over borrowed, they took teaser rate loans with adjustable rates, all because they were getting priced out of the market by a bunch of greedy fools.

I'm not a fan of all of this government intervention, frankly I don't like my tax dollars being used to reward and bailout those who refused to live within their means, while those of us who did act responsibly get nothing. Actually we get less than nothing, it is those of us who acted prudently that are being forced to pay for those that did not.

With that said I do sympathize with some people who got burned during the housing boom and bust.

 

But who really is to blame?

Who really should be paying to clean up this mess?

Where are interest rates heading?

A term many of us were not familiar with was called “quantitative easing” - in simplistic terms this was the federal government buying up mortgage bonds to keep interest rates on home loans artificially low and to make sure that there was an adequate supply of money to lend to people who wanted to buy homes.

With virtually no banks holding loans in portfolio, almost all had to be sold off through the secondary markets, in layman's terms, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the secondary markets. Your local lender or bank would make you a loan, and then sell it off to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, who in turn would bundle those loans up and sell them off to investors in the form of bonds or pools.

Throughout last year and up until March 31 of this year, the federal government was the one buying up all of these loans. This was known as "quantitative easing". This kept the money flowing and also kept mortgage rates artificially low and avoided market turmoil.

Quantitative easing is now over, it is now the investors in the private sector that must buy these loans in order to create liquidity necessary for new loans to be made to the consumer.

There has been a lot of uncertainty as to what impact this would have on interest rates for home loans. It was expected that interest rates would rise dramatically because of this. This has not yet occurred.

The private markets reacted better than expected, primarily because the perceived risk on new loans being originated today is lower than expected. This is due in part to much stricter lending standards, as well as an overall feeling that most real estate markets have bottomed out.

As default rates continue to decline due to the newer and stricter lending guidelines, we should expect that interest rates will remain stable for at least the next few months. However there is a tremendous amount of home inventory (REO shadow inventory) that will be hitting the market towards the end of this year. How much of this inventory that gets released will determine not only what there is to buy, but how many buyers will come into the marketplace needing new home loans. This could shift supply/demand curve for money and has the possibility of driving interest rates up towards the end of the year.

There are of course many other factors that will be influencing interest rates during this year, at this time it is too early to tell how much impact any of them will have.

 

Mike