Obama: Another year or more for housing turnaround

[Freddie Stubbs]

Source: Associated Press

ATKINSON, Ill. (AP) -- President Barack Obama said Wednesday that it will likely be another year or more before the housing market picks up and home prices and sales start rising.

But he said Washington, lately the target of public ire, can't make that happen on its own. He said consumers, banks and the private sector will need to help, too.

Obama spoke at a town hall in the western Illinois town of Atkinson on the third and final day of a bus tour of politically important Midwest states. His comments were in response to a question from the owner of a local real estate company, who said she had begun to see a turnaround in late spring. But her phones stopped ringing after last month's "debt ceiling fiasco," when the government came close to defaulting on its financial obligations.

"We have no consumer confidence after what has just happened," she told the president. "I should be out working 14 hours a day and I am not."

Read more: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Obama-Another-year-or-more-apf-747899245.html?x=0

[Earth_First]

1. I like the "or more" caveat...

Just like the troop withdrawl.

[county worker]

2. What a freaking joke!

Home prices are at a 5 to 6 year low. Interest rates are at historical low levels.

Yet consumers can't buy because of unemployment, the economy or lack of down payment or credit.

[RKP5637]

5. Similar thoughts here too, now we want prices to go up, so what, so the

banks and speculators can make even more money off of the disadvantaged. What a F'en joke of an economy. Maybe we can monetize bullshit and use that for currency.

[RKP5637]

3. IMO when an economy depends on buying and selling houses to each other, it's

in deep doo-doo. At one time we had real jobs and houses were for shelter and a home, not an instrument of monetary value for buying and selling.

[KansDem]

4. Which "turnaround?"

The "housing turnaround" when "the housing market picks up and home prices and sales start rising?"

Or the "housing turnaround" when hundreds or thousands of foreclosed properties will be sold in bulk to investors that agree to rent them out?

:shrug:

[Fearless]

6. Could he come across any weaker, I don't think Republicans have their fill at the table yet.

[RKP5637]

8. He really needs better advisers or something. He just does not get it, he just

does not get what many Americans are going through, he just does not get it IMO.

[Fearless]

9. And what's with him touring the midwest touting free trade exactly?

Is he trying to lose?

[RKP5637]

10. That's what I've been thinking since it was first mentioned, it's been one WTF to me. Everyone

knows what the problems are in this country, more hand waving speeches are not needed. And we all know where free trade has taken us, what NAFTA/CAFTA have done. We were saying here the other night, all very strong old-time democrats, he must really be trying hard to be a one term president.

I hate to sound like an Obama-basher, but after awhile one just has to think/say, WTF. I'm starting to cringe each time he talks now. I know other strong democrats that won't even listen to him anymore, and these are NOT far out left-wing democrats, as the administration would like to think.

IMO we're in deep trouble for 2012. Someone IMO is going to appear out of the republican party, push the loonies aside, look good, and possibly take 2012.

[Fearless]

11. Let's hope not!

To me, my thinking was just these are a lot of people who LOST jobs to outsourcing... You can't just go tell people that it was for the "greater good" or whatever. I'm thinking some of the Republican crazy is seeping into Democratic campaign managers!

Good grief!

[RKP5637]

12. It's all getting really weird to me, really weird. n/t

[Fearless]

14. Indeed. n/t

[jtuck004]

7. According to the data at this link it might be a decade, or more.

Here.

From the link:

"I think the psychology in bubble states keeps prices inflated even longer because people want to believe that somehow the rules of economics do not apply to their own area."


Among other things is a graph in the middle with over 600,000 homes in foreclosure, have paid no payment in 2 years. Banks are too full to even pursue them right now.

5-7 million foreclosures ahead, (and as the job goes, so goes the mortgage).

And the "good" loans on the books are inflated by some unkown percent via accounting rules.

"or more"...yeah.

Never gonna fix anything if they keep talking happy talk instead of acknowledging the problem.

[russspeakeasy]

13. Dear Mr. Prez..Really ? Do you honestly think we are that stupid ?

:hide:

[Loge23]

15. 2014, at least

Fromm Hanley-Wood's ProSource lumber-trade magazine:

"Over the past 50 years, we averaged 675,000 new home sales per year. But during the past decade, construction of new homes shot up even faster than the apparent sharp rise in demand. We topped out at 2.4 million more new homes than normally would be needed. Now, with the pace of home sales at about 300,000 per year, HWMI estimates it will take until late 2014 to work through the excess."

[on point]

16. Delusional nonsense. No turn around until there is a jobs turn around

Wishful thinking. Propping up the price of houses, or hoping they return to the old prices isn't going to happen.

Housing was over priced in the first place, but the median price of housing MUST fall to match the median income. If wages are falling, or people aren't working, then housing prices must fall too. Sorry for those underwater, but this is reality.

Trying to prop up the prices is a waste of resources. It may help the banks but it isn't going to work. Better to use resources to give people selling short a tax break so that their losses are not treated like a capital gain and is treated like a loss (the same break corps get by the way). That would give them a deduction instead of having to pay additional taxes on the gain.

If the idea is that those wealthy people we have been pushing excess money into their pockets will buy up the excess property inventory and then rent to the rest, well welcome to feudal world. That is not what the average person wants and why he was elected.

[LiberalFighter]

17. My sister just sold our parent's home.

It was on the market for about 2 weeks with 3 offers. It was close to what it was listed.

[eridani]

18. What planet is he from? The continuing impoverishment of the bottom 98%

--means that most peoples' incomes simply cannot support current home prices.

[No Elephants]

19. His comedy writers are not that great, as we learned from the Jonas bros./drone remark and

the more recent AARP remark.

They seem to think along the same lines as Bush's comedy writers, with the "funny" futile search for WMD's.

This real estate stuff of theirs is also really not funny.

[LetTimmySmoke]

20. If we could only just re-inflate that housing bubble.

What an idiot. What we have is a lack of demand, not a need for another housing bubble.

[melm00se]

21. it'll be the

"or more".

My brother works in the foreclosure business and according to him, Fannie and Freddie are sitting on more than double the number of REO properties than they currently have on the market (he claims that is a political decision and they will be either held or released depending upon who wins the election in 2012) and until that backlog is cleared the housing market will continue down.