(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
It’s hard to believe it, but the housing bubble has not finished bursting.
Four years after the collapse of the U.S. housing bubble, flipping homes is back in fashion.
…
The minimum bid, as set by a unit of Citigroup Inc., which had a $1.3 million mortgage on the home, was $379,900. After several minutes of bidding among investors and their representatives, some wearing shorts and flip-flops, Mr. Mirmelli won the home for $486,300. A week later, he agreed to sell it for $690,000 to a woman who moved in this month.
After all these years, and all that heartbreak, people are still trying to get back to 2006.
Just witness the failure of the HAMP program and Fannie Mae’s desperation. Everyone is trying to return to a past that was unsustainable.
I would like to refer to this chart.
Notice the “Return to normal” mark. That appears to be where we are now.
Now compare that chart to this chart.
If you want to know what happens to housing bubbles, remember what happened to Japan.
If you think we aren’t like Japan, think again.
“I thought America had studied Japan’s failures,” said Hirofumi Gomi, a top official at the Japanese Financial Services Agency during the crisis. “Why is it making the same mistakes?”
Good question. Maybe the reason has nothing to do with economics, and everything to do with politics.
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Oddly enough.
Yeah, that graph (above Mt. Fuji) is pretty stomach-clenching.
And I didn’t even buy a house.
The shock and resulting collapse was only the subprime market. This was the weakest part of the economic foundation.
Are these the only people who over levered themselves? Not even close. These were people with the lowest credit scores is all.
As home prices continued their ascent even people with credit scores in the 700’s had to go farther out on the margin.
What we are seeing now is those that missed the house rich phase now jumping in and proclaiming that “now that I am in house prices will resume their climb.” UGH!
They are in Copenhagen right now setting up bazillions of restrictions in green bullshit that are going to bankrupt all of these new homeflipping saps. I mean all you have to do is think max destruction of America and that is what you are going to get.