Why Washington and Wall Street are so concerned about Main Street USA. Over the past decade home values have rose far beyond anything that was logically expected. We all can look at real estate charts of home values and the average gain in value is somewhere between 2% and 4% per year averaged over many years. Over that many year 
period home values have gone up and down during short term periods but over the long term have always showed a gain in value. In the last decade in many areas of the United States property values have doubled and even tripled in value. Build the picture of a home that was purchased for $200,000 going up in value to $600,000 in under a 10 year period and in some cases even less. A gain like that should take 20 to 40 years to accumulate.
If you paid $200,000 for a home and then sold it for $600,000 and put the gain in the bank and rented a home you would be very happy right now with your decision. Unfortunately this didn’t happen for most Americans. Many things drove the home values up over the past decade and some of them include, low interest rates, 100% financing, no money down loans, stated income loans, lack of government regulations in the industry, real estate investors, every day people becoming investors, the hype of buy now or you just won’t be able to afford a home are just a few. All that being said, we’re here now in this market at this time and the hand we’re dealt is a 2 and a 7 not suited in a game of Texas Holdem. For all of you who don’t know poker this is the worst hand you could be dealt. I have won with this hand many times but it’s not the cards I would choose to hold in my hand.
The picture I’m going to build is simple and is honestly quite scary. If you don’t want the truth stop reading. I’ll use a neighborhood that I am very familiar with in an area of San Diego County that had ridden the wave of home gains to unprecedented levels. It was a new home community which many of the areas most affected by the foreclosures are. The sales office had lines outside wanting to buy the homes in the next phase and there were only 10 to be released for sale and the list had over 200 names of people who wanted to buy one on it. The builder specifically stated no investors are allowed to buy and that a home buyer would have to sign a contract stating it would be their primary residence and they would live in the home and not rent it out. This deterred very few buyers that were investing in the new home community because many believed it was unenforceable. Well I guess that’s another subject let me stick to this one. The year was 2005.
Because of the frenzy the new home community raised the prices much higher then the last phase that they had released. This also would in turn raise the values in and around the neighborhood. The buyers didn’t care because they had already pictured themselves and their furniture in the new home and had already drawn up plans for the pool in the back yard. They had also told all of their family and friends they were buying a new house and couldn’t turn back now. This should seem familiar to some of you. Most buyers who bought that day would pay on average 1,000,000 for this new home after adding up all the nice options they had picked out and got the lender to finance the yard and pool too. Wow life was great. It was so easy. Many took the equity from their current home as a down payment for this new one and financed the rest while renting out their old home as a modest real estate investor. After all money was everywhere and it was at low interest rates and everyone else was doing it.
Then it all started unraveling. Interest rates started going up. Loan programs were shriveling up and going away. Loan programs that allowed buyers with no money and low paying jobs to buy homes were gone. Slowly this chipped away at the euphoria that was going on in the housing market. Buyers could no longer get loans, escrows were failing because buyers could no longer get financing and the charts started turning from up to down – and down they went. This isn’t doom and gloom for those of you with the “Have a Positive attitude or you’re a mean person” crowd. It’s reality.
O.K. so what now with this neighborhood I was using as an example. All of the 10 homeowners who purchased in that phase now have an average home value of $650,000 and falling. Some have short sold their home and others have been foreclosed on. There are new homeowners in this neighborhood who bought one of these homes at $630,000 and $680,000. They have already lost money and just moved in within the past 6 months and will continue to lose money until the market levels out. When will that be? That’s the question that has homebuyers sitting on the sidelines fearful of buying. I would be – wouldn’t you? The buyer on the street who paid $1,100,000 for their home and came in with $400,000 of their own money is looking at this situation from a perspective of; I’m loosing my $400,000 I put into this home and I’ll never get it back unless I live in this home for 15 to 30 years, who knows maybe more. What if he or she wants to move to another area or take a job in another state in the next 10 years? He or she will have to 
short sale the home or walk way and have the bank foreclose on it. I guess they could rent it out but is that something that most homeowners want to do, have a rental and all the headaches that go with it that’s way below market value in another state?
Now if all the homeowners that are upside down decide, I can’t do this, it was a mistake and it’s financially breaking me, and move on the financial institutions are in BIG TROUBLE. And if they don’t have money to lend – EVERYTHING STOPS. Except for the depression – that will start.
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