In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up!
NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wholeheartedly endorsed a constitutional amendment to limit campaign spending on Thursday, putting the Senate on course to vote on the matter as early as July.
Reid said that the Senate Judiciary Committee will take up the amendment on June 3, which allows Congress and the states to limit fundraising and spending on federal campaigns and gives lawmakers the ability to regulate outside groups. From there, the amendment will go to the Senate floor, where it has little chance of passing due to broad GOP opposition to meddling with campaign finance laws.
But Democrats believe the failed vote on the amendment, which needs the backing of 67 senators, will still pay dividends in the run-up to the midterm elections, painting Republicans as supporters of big money in politics and Democrats as on the side of ordinary voters.
Retarded to waste tax payer money sending this to vote just so that you can point at the opponent and say "look we tried, but they blocked it".
Politics for the sake of politics, and it's downright retarded.
In the realm of US politics, there are far more retarded things than gesticulatory campaign finance amendments. Seriously, of all the things to take issue with......
I would argue that the amount of money being pumped into campaign finances is actually a major problem in US politics.
It absolutely is, and that's not what I take issue with, rather that of all things retarded in US politics, a shot in the dark amendment that amounts to little more than a gesture pales in comparison to many things.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wholeheartedly endorsed a constitutional amendment to limit campaign spending on Thursday, putting the Senate on course to vote on the matter as early as July.
Reid said that the Senate Judiciary Committee will take up the amendment on June 3, which allows Congress and the states to limit fundraising and spending on federal campaigns and gives lawmakers the ability to regulate outside groups. From there, the amendment will go to the Senate floor, where it has little chance of passing due to broad GOP opposition to meddling with campaign finance laws.
But Democrats believe the failed vote on the amendment, which needs the backing of 67 senators, will still pay dividends in the run-up to the midterm elections, painting Republicans as supporters of big money in politics and Democrats as on the side of ordinary voters.
Retarded to waste tax payer money sending this to vote just so that you can point at the opponent and say "look we tried, but they blocked it".
Politics for the sake of politics, and it's downright retarded.
In the realm of US politics, there are far more retarded things than gesticulatory campaign finance amendments. Seriously, of all the things to take issue with......
Yeah voting 50+ times to repeal something the president would never sign sounds like a bit better of an example. Republicans have literally spent millions of dollars on 1 pointless vote in particular let alone the cost of their generic obstruction
A long-awaited Senate report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation program likely won’t be declassified until this summer, the Department of Justice revealed in court documents on Thursday.
The DOJ also raised the issue that the release of the 500-plus-page executive summary of the report could pose a threat to Americans overseas. In the documents, the government stated that the White House will need “sufficient time” to implement “security measures to ensure the safety of U.S. personnel and facilities overseas.”
The new details about the status of the voluminous report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence were disclosed in a court filing in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed against the CIA last January. That case is seeking a copy of the so-called Panetta Review, which Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and several other lawmakers have characterized as the CIA’s own internal study on its torture program that matches up with the Senate panel’s report. Leon Panetta is a former director of the CIA.
“While the CIA is working expeditiously to complete its declassification review, this review requires coordination with classification experts, subject matter experts, several other agencies, and senior level government officials that will likely be completed this summer, although an exact time cannot now be determined,” the DOJ court filing stated.
“In addition, once the review process is complete, the Administration will have to undertake a number of security steps to protect the safety of U.S. personnel abroad. Thus, several aspects of the declassification review and release are outside of the CIA’s control,” it added.
FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet
The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday voted in favor of advancing a proposal that could dramatically reshape the way consumers experience the Internet, opening the possibility of Internet service providers charging Web sites for higher-quality delivery of their content to American consumers. The plan, approved in a three-to-two vote along party lines, could unleash a new economy on the Web where an Internet service provider such as Verizon would charge a Web site such as Netflix for the guarantee of flawless video streaming.[...]
Wow... so now there going to allow providers to blackmail individual websites? Sounds like the script for a bad mafia movie. "Hey if you don't pay us more then your website might not always be available."
Nothing is allowed yet. It's going into the comment period and will likely be changed during.
The fact that it is even moving forward at all is an insult and shows a total lack of reason (or an attachment to high "donations") by the members of the committee.
Would you go a step further and say the possibility of insensible committee members is proof enough that they should not have had this power in the first place? Or, should there be a transgression on defined limits to their power, they should be fearful of removal?
A firing squad should do the trick nicely.
In all seriousness, how can anyone find this a good idea worth exploring?
I don't really want to play devil's advocate on this one, since most of my arguments on social issues are already construed as the same. My only point is that I think these appointed positions with great power cannot be trusted to act responsibly and should have greater checks than already present on abuse of power. No citizen in a free country should be required to pay attention to 4 month comment periods on a referendum of free speech ... none should take place at all! It was parodied with Adam's Hitchhiker's and the planning committee. But I still find well-meaning types arguing that the problem is just getting the right people in the position, and not simply the position itself paired with human fallibility. But hey maybe I'm a negative nancy and companies paying for faster pipelines will never trend towards slower traffic speeds compared to what I'm experiencing now.
Your right and I would probably point the finger to the power of lobby in the US. Its easy to forget your morals and "abuse" your power when people keep shoving large piles of money into your lap if you "represent" there interests.
You're right about the lobbying angle. To a certain extent, it represents an ever-present flaw in giving power to the few, because it's easier to influence a few levers than a great many. But even lacking kickbacks or the related praise from big important news publications, sometimes a man or woman gets into these positions by political calculation (Presidential appointees generally are) that has no business being there, and sometimes comprise a majority on these sorts of committees. Even well-intentioned people might make all the wrong decisions for all the right reasons. I don't want to wait for some Congressional force or even direct popular pressure on the Presidency for these types to be gone (and just another lobbyist) with the damage already done. It ought not to be in the hands of the few, and if a committee may indeed make recommendations, they should be referred to the people's legislature, the people's representatives--people who could be out of there in the course of two years or less. FCC regulations with the force of law that are this sweeping in change shouldn't be 5 dudes in suits and a 4 month waiting period, and I'm saying any 5 dudes at all.
On May 15 2014 19:57 IgnE wrote: Americans are tapping their 401ks at unprecedented rates since the great recession. Maybe that is why debt-load has gone down. Housing lost a ton of value so people don't have access to home equity loans and instead are tapping their 401ks to keep their standard of living. Young workers are tapping at very high rates.
You also have Bloomberg reporting that home prices and sales are only going up on the richest homes, over $1M dollars. Low-end homes, that account for 2/3 of the market have seen a 12% drop since last year. So talk of a housing rebound seems to be illusory, as only the richest, who are the ones who have reaped the benefits since 2008, are the ones who are actually buying houses in this market.
Luxury-home sales are climbing as an improving economy and stocks that have almost tripled from 2009 lows bolster confidence among affluent buyers. At the same time, slow wage growth, tight credit standards and escalating prices are putting homeownership out of reach for many Americans. While investors drain the market of lower-end properties, builders are constructing more expensive houses that generate bigger profits.
I haven't looked into the 401(k) numbers yet but the housing story sounds fine:
Transactions for $250,000 or less, which represent almost two-thirds of the market, plunged 12 percent in the period as house hunters found few available homes in that price range.
New home sales have been doing well. March wasn't a good month (how much do we want to look in to one Month's data?) but if low inventory levels played a role there than we should see increased building in response.
Is it a question of inventory or of builders who know where the demand is?
“With the mortgage headwinds and the lack of job growth and everything else that we dealt with through this housing cycle and now into the recovery, the typical first-time buyer got kneecapped,” Jeff Mezger, CEO of the Los Angeles-based company, said on a conference call in March. “So there is no demand there, and we found a way to go flex up and change product and move as quickly as we could to where the demand was.”
The housing recovery seems to be doing fine. Inventories aren't bloating, prices are rising and last winter was pretty shitty so it is reasonable that sales slumped a bit. Vacancy rates have been low so I'd be surprised if demand didn't recover.
In the last cycle people had been buying homes with little money down. Credit standards have since tightened and home ownership rates have fallen. Is that bad or prudent? It's kind of open to interpretation.
Credit standards have tightened is that bad or prudent? Really jonny? You seem to be avoiding this issue by saying, well we could loosen credit to boost the housing market or we could be prudent to avoid a bubble, but that shouldn't be interpreted as a housing slump, because . . . we could loosen credit if we wanted. You are missing the deep structural problem here.
I don't think you are right. Housing is not "recovering" very well. And I don't expect it to magically change either. It appears that investor speculation fueled the initial recovery. We have already reached peak demand for 95% of the population. Now the "experts" are going to be left hoping and waiting for "organic demand" from traditional home owners to come in.
“The very-low-rate environment and the high level of investment activities really masked how weak the housing market was,” says Sam Khater, deputy chief economist at CoreLogic (CLGX). “Once it goes back to the normal owner-occupied purchase market, you really realize how weak the market is.”
Buyers, already handicapped by tight credit and weak wage growth, felt a hit to their purchasing power when mortgage rates jumped last year. The average rate for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 4.33 percent in late April, according to Freddie Mac, up a full percentage point from a near-record low last May. That raised the cost of a $200,000 mortgage 13 percent, sending monthly payments to $993 from $881.
FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet
The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday voted in favor of advancing a proposal that could dramatically reshape the way consumers experience the Internet, opening the possibility of Internet service providers charging Web sites for higher-quality delivery of their content to American consumers. The plan, approved in a three-to-two vote along party lines, could unleash a new economy on the Web where an Internet service provider such as Verizon would charge a Web site such as Netflix for the guarantee of flawless video streaming.[...]
Wow... so now there going to allow providers to blackmail individual websites? Sounds like the script for a bad mafia movie. "Hey if you don't pay us more then your website might not always be available."
Nothing is allowed yet. It's going into the comment period and will likely be changed during.
The fact that it is even moving forward at all is an insult and shows a total lack of reason (or an attachment to high "donations") by the members of the committee.
Would you go a step further and say the possibility of insensible committee members is proof enough that they should not have had this power in the first place? Or, should there be a transgression on defined limits to their power, they should be fearful of removal?
A firing squad should do the trick nicely.
In all seriousness, how can anyone find this a good idea worth exploring?
I don't really want to play devil's advocate on this one, since most of my arguments on social issues are already construed as the same. My only point is that I think these appointed positions with great power cannot be trusted to act responsibly and should have greater checks than already present on abuse of power. No citizen in a free country should be required to pay attention to 4 month comment periods on a referendum of free speech ... none should take place at all! It was parodied with Adam's Hitchhiker's and the planning committee. But I still find well-meaning types arguing that the problem is just getting the right people in the position, and not simply the position itself paired with human fallibility. But hey maybe I'm a negative nancy and companies paying for faster pipelines will never trend towards slower traffic speeds compared to what I'm experiencing now.
Your right and I would probably point the finger to the power of lobby in the US. Its easy to forget your morals and "abuse" your power when people keep shoving large piles of money into your lap if you "represent" there interests.
You're right about the lobbying angle. To a certain extent, it represents an ever-present flaw in giving power to the few, because it's easier to influence a few levers than a great many. But even lacking kickbacks or the related praise from big important news publications, sometimes a man or woman gets into these positions by political calculation (Presidential appointees generally are) that has no business being there, and sometimes comprise a majority on these sorts of committees. Even well-intentioned people might make all the wrong decisions for all the right reasons. I don't want to wait for some Congressional force or even direct popular pressure on the Presidency for these types to be gone (and just another lobbyist) with the damage already done. It ought not to be in the hands of the few, and if a committee may indeed make recommendations, they should be referred to the people's legislature, the people's representatives--people who could be out of there in the course of two years or less. FCC regulations with the force of law that are this sweeping in change shouldn't be 5 dudes in suits and a 4 month waiting period, and I'm saying any 5 dudes at all.
It seem like the problem is not the power in the hands of the few, but the fact that what they do is often not considered illegal and unacceptable. In well functioning democracies it is ok to put even a lot of power in the hands of the few (within reason) as long as there are laws and cultural norms that consider misusing that power to be a bad thing. Public pressure and justice system should do the rest.
Problem I see in US (and other countries) politics is that conflict of interest is defined too loosely and a lot of what common sense would consider conflict of interest is not treated as such.
On May 15 2014 19:57 IgnE wrote: Americans are tapping their 401ks at unprecedented rates since the great recession. Maybe that is why debt-load has gone down. Housing lost a ton of value so people don't have access to home equity loans and instead are tapping their 401ks to keep their standard of living. Young workers are tapping at very high rates.
You also have Bloomberg reporting that home prices and sales are only going up on the richest homes, over $1M dollars. Low-end homes, that account for 2/3 of the market have seen a 12% drop since last year. So talk of a housing rebound seems to be illusory, as only the richest, who are the ones who have reaped the benefits since 2008, are the ones who are actually buying houses in this market.
Luxury-home sales are climbing as an improving economy and stocks that have almost tripled from 2009 lows bolster confidence among affluent buyers. At the same time, slow wage growth, tight credit standards and escalating prices are putting homeownership out of reach for many Americans. While investors drain the market of lower-end properties, builders are constructing more expensive houses that generate bigger profits.
I haven't looked into the 401(k) numbers yet but the housing story sounds fine:
Transactions for $250,000 or less, which represent almost two-thirds of the market, plunged 12 percent in the period as house hunters found few available homes in that price range.
New home sales have been doing well. March wasn't a good month (how much do we want to look in to one Month's data?) but if low inventory levels played a role there than we should see increased building in response.
Is it a question of inventory or of builders who know where the demand is?
“With the mortgage headwinds and the lack of job growth and everything else that we dealt with through this housing cycle and now into the recovery, the typical first-time buyer got kneecapped,” Jeff Mezger, CEO of the Los Angeles-based company, said on a conference call in March. “So there is no demand there, and we found a way to go flex up and change product and move as quickly as we could to where the demand was.”
The housing recovery seems to be doing fine. Inventories aren't bloating, prices are rising and last winter was pretty shitty so it is reasonable that sales slumped a bit. Vacancy rates have been low so I'd be surprised if demand didn't recover.
In the last cycle people had been buying homes with little money down. Credit standards have since tightened and home ownership rates have fallen. Is that bad or prudent? It's kind of open to interpretation.
Credit standards have tightened is that bad or prudent? Really jonny? You seem to be avoiding this issue by saying, well we could loosen credit to boost the housing market or we could be prudent to avoid a bubble, but that shouldn't be interpreted as a housing slump, because . . . we could loosen credit if we wanted. You are missing the deep structural problem here.
You seem to be mixing up the home ownership rate with the housing market. Credit standards tightened which makes it harder to buy a home. If you can't, you rent and that contributes to the housing market as well.
I don't think you are right. Housing is not "recovering" very well. And I don't expect it to magically change either. It appears that investor speculation fueled the initial recovery. We have already reached peak demand for 95% of the population. Now the "experts" are going to be left hoping and waiting for "organic demand" from traditional home owners to come in.
“The very-low-rate environment and the high level of investment activities really masked how weak the housing market was,” says Sam Khater, deputy chief economist at CoreLogic (CLGX). “Once it goes back to the normal owner-occupied purchase market, you really realize how weak the market is.”
Buyers, already handicapped by tight credit and weak wage growth, felt a hit to their purchasing power when mortgage rates jumped last year. The average rate for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 4.33 percent in late April, according to Freddie Mac, up a full percentage point from a near-record low last May. That raised the cost of a $200,000 mortgage 13 percent, sending monthly payments to $993 from $881.
Last month's numbers were bad, but how much should I read into that? If you're going to take a stand over one month's data you're a fool.
Housing has been recovering slowly for a few years now. Sales are up quite a bit over the low and prices are higher too. It's not a boom, no one is claiming that it is, but it does seem to be recovering.
The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday announced a proposal to tighten oil refinery emission standards for the first time in nearly two decades.
Environmentalists hailed the proposed changes as a first step toward reducing rates of cancer and other diseases in “fenceline communities,” the often-impoverished neighborhoods that abut refineries.
“The rules look pretty strong, but it’s a solution that’s long overdue,” said James Goodwin, senior analyst at the Center for Progressive Reform. “It was pushed back and pushed back. Every day [the changes] were delayed, more and more people are getting sick.”
The proposal is part of a consent decree that resolved a lawsuit filed by attorneys with nonprofit organizations Earthjustice and the Environmental Integrity Project on behalf of Americans directly affected by oil refinery emissions in Louisiana, Texas and California.
The changes would compel operators to monitor benzene emissions, upgrade storage tank emission controls, ensure waste gases are properly destroyed and adopt new emission standards for certain kinds of oil heating units. Operators would also have to make public the results of emissions monitoring.
"The common-sense steps we are proposing will protect the health of families who live near refineries and will provide them with important information about the quality of the air they breathe," EPA administrator Gina McCarthy said in a statement.
Oil refineries have been repeatedly accused of underreporting accidents that cause emissions of toxic substances, and of underreporting the emissions they release in the course of normal operations. The EPA’s two-decade-old regulations did not require that refineries monitor their emissions at the fencelines of their plants, leading activists to charge that plants were allowed to pollute their surrounding communities without running afoul of the law.
On May 16 2014 10:53 JonnyBNoHo wrote: You seem to be mixing up the home ownership rate with the housing market. Credit standards tightened which makes it harder to buy a home. If you can't, you rent and that contributes to the housing market as well.
On May 16 2014 10:53 JonnyBNoHo wrote: You seem to be mixing up the home ownership rate with the housing market. Credit standards tightened which makes it harder to buy a home. If you can't, you rent and that contributes to the housing market as well.
On May 15 2014 19:57 IgnE wrote: Americans are tapping their 401ks at unprecedented rates since the great recession. Maybe that is why debt-load has gone down. Housing lost a ton of value so people don't have access to home equity loans and instead are tapping their 401ks to keep their standard of living. Young workers are tapping at very high rates.
You also have Bloomberg reporting that home prices and sales are only going up on the richest homes, over $1M dollars. Low-end homes, that account for 2/3 of the market have seen a 12% drop since last year. So talk of a housing rebound seems to be illusory, as only the richest, who are the ones who have reaped the benefits since 2008, are the ones who are actually buying houses in this market.
Luxury-home sales are climbing as an improving economy and stocks that have almost tripled from 2009 lows bolster confidence among affluent buyers. At the same time, slow wage growth, tight credit standards and escalating prices are putting homeownership out of reach for many Americans. While investors drain the market of lower-end properties, builders are constructing more expensive houses that generate bigger profits.
I haven't looked into the 401(k) numbers yet but the housing story sounds fine:
Transactions for $250,000 or less, which represent almost two-thirds of the market, plunged 12 percent in the period as house hunters found few available homes in that price range.
New home sales have been doing well. March wasn't a good month (how much do we want to look in to one Month's data?) but if low inventory levels played a role there than we should see increased building in response.
Is it a question of inventory or of builders who know where the demand is?
“With the mortgage headwinds and the lack of job growth and everything else that we dealt with through this housing cycle and now into the recovery, the typical first-time buyer got kneecapped,” Jeff Mezger, CEO of the Los Angeles-based company, said on a conference call in March. “So there is no demand there, and we found a way to go flex up and change product and move as quickly as we could to where the demand was.”
The housing recovery seems to be doing fine. Inventories aren't bloating, prices are rising and last winter was pretty shitty so it is reasonable that sales slumped a bit. Vacancy rates have been low so I'd be surprised if demand didn't recover.
In the last cycle people had been buying homes with little money down. Credit standards have since tightened and home ownership rates have fallen. Is that bad or prudent? It's kind of open to interpretation.
Credit standards have tightened is that bad or prudent? Really jonny? You seem to be avoiding this issue by saying, well we could loosen credit to boost the housing market or we could be prudent to avoid a bubble, but that shouldn't be interpreted as a housing slump, because . . . we could loosen credit if we wanted. You are missing the deep structural problem here.
You seem to be mixing up the home ownership rate with the housing market. Credit standards tightened which makes it harder to buy a home. If you can't, you rent and that contributes to the housing market as well.
I don't think you are right. Housing is not "recovering" very well. And I don't expect it to magically change either. It appears that investor speculation fueled the initial recovery. We have already reached peak demand for 95% of the population. Now the "experts" are going to be left hoping and waiting for "organic demand" from traditional home owners to come in.
“The very-low-rate environment and the high level of investment activities really masked how weak the housing market was,” says Sam Khater, deputy chief economist at CoreLogic (CLGX). “Once it goes back to the normal owner-occupied purchase market, you really realize how weak the market is.”
Buyers, already handicapped by tight credit and weak wage growth, felt a hit to their purchasing power when mortgage rates jumped last year. The average rate for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 4.33 percent in late April, according to Freddie Mac, up a full percentage point from a near-record low last May. That raised the cost of a $200,000 mortgage 13 percent, sending monthly payments to $993 from $881.
Last month's numbers were bad, but how much should I read into that? If you're going to take a stand over one month's data you're a fool.
Housing has been recovering slowly for a few years now. Sales are up quite a bit over the low and prices are higher too. It's not a boom, no one is claiming that it is, but it does seem to be recovering.
As a former Realtor who still has plenty of friends in the business, I can assure you the market, is by the most optimistic estimates in the field, no longer getting worse. I guess you could call that recovering? But no Agents I know would actually suggest it's anywhere near what was normal pre boom and bust but it's not as bad as the 80's either.
But it's really market to market. As has been said before most of the numbers are reflecting homes above $250,000 significant amounts of the homes under that value are being snapped up by investors, many of them foreign. (I've seen this most with land deals).
What you see reflected in the numbers while similar to previous numbers are built on very different platforms.
On May 15 2014 19:57 IgnE wrote: Americans are tapping their 401ks at unprecedented rates since the great recession. Maybe that is why debt-load has gone down. Housing lost a ton of value so people don't have access to home equity loans and instead are tapping their 401ks to keep their standard of living. Young workers are tapping at very high rates.
You also have Bloomberg reporting that home prices and sales are only going up on the richest homes, over $1M dollars. Low-end homes, that account for 2/3 of the market have seen a 12% drop since last year. So talk of a housing rebound seems to be illusory, as only the richest, who are the ones who have reaped the benefits since 2008, are the ones who are actually buying houses in this market.
Luxury-home sales are climbing as an improving economy and stocks that have almost tripled from 2009 lows bolster confidence among affluent buyers. At the same time, slow wage growth, tight credit standards and escalating prices are putting homeownership out of reach for many Americans. While investors drain the market of lower-end properties, builders are constructing more expensive houses that generate bigger profits.
I haven't looked into the 401(k) numbers yet but the housing story sounds fine:
Transactions for $250,000 or less, which represent almost two-thirds of the market, plunged 12 percent in the period as house hunters found few available homes in that price range.
New home sales have been doing well. March wasn't a good month (how much do we want to look in to one Month's data?) but if low inventory levels played a role there than we should see increased building in response.
Is it a question of inventory or of builders who know where the demand is?
“With the mortgage headwinds and the lack of job growth and everything else that we dealt with through this housing cycle and now into the recovery, the typical first-time buyer got kneecapped,” Jeff Mezger, CEO of the Los Angeles-based company, said on a conference call in March. “So there is no demand there, and we found a way to go flex up and change product and move as quickly as we could to where the demand was.”
The housing recovery seems to be doing fine. Inventories aren't bloating, prices are rising and last winter was pretty shitty so it is reasonable that sales slumped a bit. Vacancy rates have been low so I'd be surprised if demand didn't recover.
In the last cycle people had been buying homes with little money down. Credit standards have since tightened and home ownership rates have fallen. Is that bad or prudent? It's kind of open to interpretation.
Credit standards have tightened is that bad or prudent? Really jonny? You seem to be avoiding this issue by saying, well we could loosen credit to boost the housing market or we could be prudent to avoid a bubble, but that shouldn't be interpreted as a housing slump, because . . . we could loosen credit if we wanted. You are missing the deep structural problem here.
You seem to be mixing up the home ownership rate with the housing market. Credit standards tightened which makes it harder to buy a home. If you can't, you rent and that contributes to the housing market as well.
I don't think you are right. Housing is not "recovering" very well. And I don't expect it to magically change either. It appears that investor speculation fueled the initial recovery. We have already reached peak demand for 95% of the population. Now the "experts" are going to be left hoping and waiting for "organic demand" from traditional home owners to come in.
“The very-low-rate environment and the high level of investment activities really masked how weak the housing market was,” says Sam Khater, deputy chief economist at CoreLogic (CLGX). “Once it goes back to the normal owner-occupied purchase market, you really realize how weak the market is.”
Buyers, already handicapped by tight credit and weak wage growth, felt a hit to their purchasing power when mortgage rates jumped last year. The average rate for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 4.33 percent in late April, according to Freddie Mac, up a full percentage point from a near-record low last May. That raised the cost of a $200,000 mortgage 13 percent, sending monthly payments to $993 from $881.
Last month's numbers were bad, but how much should I read into that? If you're going to take a stand over one month's data you're a fool.
Housing has been recovering slowly for a few years now. Sales are up quite a bit over the low and prices are higher too. It's not a boom, no one is claiming that it is, but it does seem to be recovering.
As a former Realtor who still has plenty of friends in the business, I can assure you the market, is by the most optimistic estimates in the field, no longer getting worse. I guess you could call that recovering? But no Agents I know would actually suggest it's anywhere near what was normal pre boom and bust but it's not as bad as the 80's either.
But it's really market to market. As has been said before most of the numbers are reflecting homes above $250,000 significant amounts of the homes under that value are being snapped up by investors, many of them foreign. (I've seen this most with land deals).
What you see reflected in the numbers while similar to previous numbers are built on very different platforms.
The only part I'd disagree with is the idea that it's not recovering. Sales and prices have been up. What other definition of recovery is there? If you want to qualify it as a weak recovery go ahead, I wouldn't argue with that.
I'd like to take some time to introduce the candidates for this important debate:
First up, representing the left on issues like gay marriage and not very Republican in his own words, biker and former Vietnam Veteran:
Harley Brown! Quote of the debate - "I was living in fat jack's cellar, because my ex-wife had given me trumped restraining orders... for three years I had the credibility of chicken little..."
Next up, representing the extreme right on all issues and jailed for homeschooling his kids:
Walt Bayes! Quote of the debate - "You remember Chernobyl? Chernobyl, when you translate that into English, it comes out wormwood, and wormwood is mentioned in the Bible a whole lot... and it's radiation..."
Next, we have the current governor up for re-election:
Butch Otter!
And finally, we have basically the same guy as above, with a different face:
![[image loading]](http://s24.postimg.org/fe2ip0bfl/pic4.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://s30.postimg.org/4gwhzkjot/pic2.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://s28.postimg.org/dmn8c4te1/pic3.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://s14.postimg.org/h1htt319p/pic1.jpg)
EPT
