"Millions of middle class people with jobs and good credit could have been saved by simply letting them refinance the first and second at 120% of appraisal. Just give them a steamlined refinancing."
Yeah, right! 120 percent of already faulty appraisals.
Again, making anything easier to acquire and/or easier to keep, drives up demand and artificially increases prices, but only for as long someone or something can throw more fuel on the fire. At some point, you run out of coal, or dollars, or whatever.
In the words of P.T. Barnum, "The only reason why every family in America doesn't own an elephant is that they haven't been afforded the opportunity to buy one for a nickel down and a nickel a week."
Well, Congress saw to it that every family in America had at least the opportunity to buy a home without qualification for, figuratively, a nickel down and a nickel a week. What happens to the value of elephants once everyone has one? Then a lot of people keep buying because they've seen the prices rising, but that kind of demand is always unsustainable.
It's the bigger fool theory in which most everyone knew what was happening but they were all thinking they can get out with their fortunes intact before everything fell apart. And, in this case, real estate brokers/agents are naturally complicit, selling elephants, as it were. [Not singling you out, of course.]
All your plan would do is hold the line on falling prices for a period of time only, as overhanging market forces (the absence of hysterical investor-buyers) have to be satisfied before a healthy demand can be reintroduced, and that will not happen until the market finds it's bottom.
...........Uh, sorry. Lecture over. |
