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Housing market looking for a bottom. Still.
No end in sight for the decline in the housing market:
The S&P/Case-Shiller index of property values in 20 cities fell 4 percent from April 2010, the biggest drop since November 2009, the group said today in New York. From March to April, prices fell 0.1 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis, the smallest decline since July 2010.
A backlog of foreclosures and falling sales raise the risk that prices will decline further, discouraging builders from taking on new projects. The drop in property values and a jobless rate hovering around 9 percent are holding back consumer sentiment and spending, which accounts for 70 percent of the economy.
“There’s no sign of any real recovery in housing yet,” Jim O’Sullivan, chief economist at MF Global Inc. in New York, said before the report. “There won’t be a significant turn until the labor market shows sustained improvement. The level of foreclosures is still high and a lot of people are delinquent on their mortgages.”
Anyone needing to sell their home right now is in a world of hurt.
Obama’s housing market lies, chart edition
Here is your chart for the day:
Burn this chart into your brain. Revert back to it whenever you hear the line of BS coming from the Obama administration, Democrats in general, and their propaganda stooges in the media, about how they and their policies “averted disaster” during the mortgage crisis, and how they saved our lives.
[Hat Tip: Zero Hedge]
Obama Administration drops the ball on Fannie, Freddy reform
Most efficient administration evah:
The Obama administration failed to release a report today on how Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae could be reformed, despite being required to do so by the Dodd-Frank law passed last summer.
Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R., Texas), who chairs the House Republican Conference, said in a statement that the White House’s failure to meet the deadline made it “crystal clear that the President is not serious about reforming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”
“The Obama Administration’s repeated inability to propose a plan to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac calls into question their commitment to taxpayer protection and their ability to effectively govern on this issue,” Hensarling added. “After more than $150 billion in Fannie and Freddie bailouts, we can no longer afford to allow the Administration to kick the can down the road.”
Kicking the can down the road is being kind. One of the most egregious storylines of the whole financial crisis, was the implicit corruption of the GSEs. Remember Franklin Raines? The accounting scandals? The royal screwing they gave to US taxpayers?
Yeah? Well, the administration would rather we didn’t.
The housing double-dip is here
Housing prices take a tumble:
A new bout of declining home prices is threatening to hamper the U.S. recovery, just as consumers and the overall economy have been showing signs of healing.
[…]
Home prices across 20 major metropolitan areas fell 1.3% in October from September, the third straight month-over-month drop, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index released Tuesday. Many economists expect the declines to continue into at least next spring, erasing most of the gains made since prices bottomed out in early 2009.
The housing market, which appeared poised for a recovery earlier in the year, now could be heading for a second downward drift.
“This looks like a double-dip [in housing] is pretty much on the way, if not already here,” said David Blitzer, chairman of the Standard & Poor’s index committee. “Somebody who thought last year that it’s going to be straight up from here was wrong.”
[…]
Homes remain a key part of Americans’ wealth. Households held $6.4 trillion of home equity at the end of the third quarter, alongside $12.2 trillion in stocks and mutual-fund shares, according to Federal Reserve data.
Wasn’t the government supposed to put an artificial floor in the real estate market financed by taxpayer dollars implement benevolent government programs designed to reverse evil George Bush’s real estate recession? Isn’t that what we heard incessantly from the Obama Democrats in the early days of this administration?
Yeah, about that.
Who’s talking…