Mortgage Myopia and Housing Hardships...

Two of the top builders in the Nation have recognized this area as offering excellent potential for growth. In just our county alone, the population over the next ten years is expected to surge.
And all of the people moving here are retirees who don’t represent the norm.

Most were high earners, now retired seeking a relaxing easy life.

But already they and others are seeing the effects of unlimited growth with overtaxed highways and straining infrastructure.

For the rest of the country, it is a different matter.

Many, like myself, have rode through other storms, seeing our equity fall away as the banks raised those flexible mortgages that sound great in the beginning but can rapidly turn into a nightmare.

But there is something different going on here…

If anything, I would suggest that this particular housing market is the result of a confluence of factors that will further depress the market and the fortunes of most of us who manage to get by but don't live in the lap of luxury.

And there is a reason for it.

To begin with, we are the only generation to see an exodus of good paying jobs to third world nations. Whereas we’ve been told that the service sector job replaces manufacturing job on a one-to-one basis, that is patently untrue. Most of the service sector jobs not associated with
Manufacturing are part time and usually low paying.


When the higher paying jobs fled offshore, people still had options: they could in a bind turn to their credit cards as a ready source of cash or their homes.

Today, most of the equity has been removed by needy homeowners and the value of homes have not increased barring homes, per se, as a source of equity.

On top of this depressing development, most people have tapped out their credit cards on such mundane things as gasoline and food, leaving themselves with no place to turn. To add insult to injury, banks have been allowed to increase borrower payments creating additional pressure on the middle class home-owners who have been struggling to get by, pay tuitions and meet their monthly bills.

with housing equity and credit card allowances exhausted, most people with incomes that haven't risen in some time, are being forced to do the only thing they can, sell their homes. However, with slowing demand, sales are only being made to buyers who demand lower prices. This is a double whammy for the oppressed home owner.

In the meantime, the government sits idly by offering no palatable solution to the problem; instead, it is preoccupied with its war mentality; nor has it demonstrated a side indicative of compassion or concern for the homeowner laid low by a convergeance of bad news and rising prices.

The sad thing is that this has overtones like a skimmer sending ever widening ripples out on a pond, the failure of the housing market to recover in short order, inhibits and affects other markets which can only depress business over the intermediate term leaving a growing number of homeowners seeking a foothold in a market that is rapidly getting away from them.


What we need in a nutshell is solutions that address those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder instead of more help for those at the very top. when will our government understand that a Middle Class savaged on all sides cannot long endure and understand that we don't inhabit a vacuum.

In the end, even those who have profited from the hardship of others will find that a depressed market offers few promises…

Les Aaron