Forget the tomatoes CB, look at the crop of mortgagee demands to be harvested: finance.yahoo.com
<The number of borrowers who owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth took a huge leap in the fourth quarter of 2010. A full 27 percent of borrowers are now "underwater" on their mortgages, up from 23 percent in the previous quarter, according to a new report from Zillow. Foreclosure moratoriums and falling home prices are to blame.
Adding to a slew of negative reports on home prices, Zillow found home values posted their largest quarter-over-quarter decline, 2.6 percent, since the beginning of 2009. The home buyer tax credit, which inflated home prices artificially in the first half of the year, resulted in a Fall hangover. Home prices plunged 5.9 percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2009.
With foreclosure moratoriums in place due to charges of faulty paperwork at some of the nation's largest mortgage servicers, many homes with underwater mortgages that should have been repossessed by lenders were not, and instead boosted volume in the negative equity pool. Falling prices didn't help.
"Home value trends in the fourth quarter remained grim, but the good news is that these declines, while painful in the short-term, mean we're getting closer to the bottom," notes Zillow's chief economist, Dr. Stan Humphries. ... >
Getting closer to the bottom is probably not good news for people who will end up at the bottom. For macro people like Stan, getting to the bottom is good. For individuals, not so good. The longer I stay away from the bottom of a grave, the better I'll like it, though I admit the trends are not in my favour. Time is relentless and merciless.
Stan should remember though that there is not actually any natural bottom. Things can actually get worse and worse and worse until everyone is dead, if they don't actually do things right instead of wrong. Adopting VVV with alacrity is the way out. Another dose of pixilated Quantitative Easing, Shovel Ready bottomless holes in the ground with opm, regulatory suffocatocracy and kleptocratic wealth redistribution [to Goldman Sachs, GM Unions, and friends] will not save the world, or even the USA.
Your family fortunes are looking good. It's an ill wind that blows nobody good.
Mqurice |
