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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tradelite who wrote (1144)	12/10/2001 2:02:33 PM
From: MSI	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

You imply an interesting thesis here, Tradelite, similar to the KEOGH pension objectives, the idea being an increase in equity for the average Joe, which bolsters the economy from the ground up. The result of the KEOGH is ownership of production. The result of homeownership programs is ownership of equity and capital, not to mention upgrading of neighborhoods dramatically, which as you say benefits us all. Both help mitigate the gap between haves and have-nots, to some extent. Not as much as better education, tho'.

To: Tradelite who wrote (1144)	12/10/2001 3:25:54 PM
From: yard_man	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

it comes back to an honest means of exchange and whether the market is allowed to function so that the living standards can rise for everyone. Underlying your thesis is an assumption of continual inflation -- why is housing so expensive in the first place as a part of a working man's wage? How much labor and materials are really in a house? In a way we are all collectively beholden (debtors) to the system of fiat perpetrated upon us. Centralized economic control -- such as it is -- requires a system of peonage. How is transferrring the fruits of your labor to a bankster much different than transferring it to a landlord -- do you really own something if you don't have the title to it? Where did the "tax advantages" come from in the first place? I don't think your ideas or any more radical than the current socialist system that we live under ... >>If the government had not been aggressive in this manner, then we would have a growing proportion of renters everywhere we looked. << That surely is a hypothesis impossible to test -- too many things to control for -- if the government did not dictate who lent money to who and at what rate -- we would have a very different economy -- that is for sure, but I am not entirely convinced that it would be worse.

To: Tradelite who wrote (1144)	12/11/2001 10:41:49 AM
From: Oblomov	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 306849

>Economic growth would be substantially slower, as there would be fewer purchases of goods and services from Home >Depot, furniture/carpet stores, appliance stores, roofing contractors, lawn services, and so on. Every time a home is >built and sold, workers in (probably) thousands of different occupations participate positively in the >purchase. This is an assumption. If economic activity were not directed toward building houses and buying shop-vacs at Home Depot, then it would be directed toward other efforts. Without the government guarantee of credit quality, credit would be established for these other activities at the market price of credit. The economy would be different, but it would still function, likely even more efficiently and faster-growing than the current one. If the FHA/VA programs were simply halted tomorrow, it would undoubtedly result in slower economic growth - for a while. The economy would absorb the change and would reorganize. In the end, the housing market would go on, and the economy would go on. There might be fewer REALTORs (TM) after the pain is over.