I’ve been avoiding “issues blogging” for the most part for the past week. (the choice in presidential candidates winnowing down to Hildebeast-ObamaWinfrey-MexiCain can do that to a guy), but one “issue” still turns my crank a bit: the Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind’s rampup of economic woes with the mortgage crisis/real estate bust as its poster child.
As a poster child for economic woes, the mortgage crisis/real estate bust has all the appeal of a broken-down whore with leprosy. Firstly, the folks hardest hit by the mortgage crisis/real estate bust are those who went into debt over their heads to buy houses they couldn’t afford. Here are my most sincere crocodile tears for such idiots:
*Boo-freakin’-hoo–yawn*
To all such folks: you reaping what you’ve sown? Good.
Next hardest hit (sorta), the mortgage lenders who shouldn’t have loaned the money to begin with. Again,
*Boo-freakin’-hoo–yawn*
My Wonder Woman asked me what I though the impact would be on our home value. My answer? Who cares? Are we thinking of selling? (Yeh, we still owe a measly couple of grand on the place. Made a 25% down on it and got reasonable rates on a 15-year mortgage–thanks to my Wonder Woman’s money management skillset.)
Rabbit trail:
OTOH, our execrably bad “neighbors” who moved in less than eighteen months ago have their place listed for sale (Yipee and Whooray!). I asked my Wonder Woman how badly I could junk up the outside of our house to drive their selling price down on ’em… *heh* Hmmm… maybe I could buy a couple of junkers from the salvage yard and have ’em dropped in our front yard, ya think? It’d be a few months before the city would ask me to remove ’em, maybe long enough to drive thr price of our “neighbors'” seller down quite a bit…
Nah. Better just to get ’em gone.
But there’s a side to the housing market/mortgage crisis/real estate bust that is getting little play in the Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind (and what play it does get is buried on inside pages or whatnot): “Some Cities Are Spared the Slide in Housing”–and this in the Neoo York Slimes, no less! Who’d-a thunk it?
In figures released on Thursday covering 150 metropolitan areas, the National Association of Realtors said that median home prices were falling in 77 markets — but rising in 73.
Real estate statistics must be interpreted with caution, especially when sales volumes are declining, as they are all over the country. But an analysis by The New York Times of three distinct data sets — mortgage data from the government, sales figures from the Realtors’ group and courthouse records from a company called DataQuick — produced a list of 17 metropolitan areas where all three sources of information agree that prices were still rising as of late last year, the most recent figures available.
For another 43 cities, two data sets, from the Realtors and the government, suggested that prices were still rising late in the year. DataQuick could provide no information on those cities.
Of course, since the article is in the Neoo York Slimes, the ariter spends quite some time making sure the reader doesn’t interpret these rosy facts positively. *heh* Still, facts are facts, and the housing market (and mortgage market) in my part of the country, for example, is strong to super-strong right now. Because of strong economic growth in other sectors, of course. Heck, it’s stating to get so built up in America’s Third World County that I might just have to answer my own question to my Wonder Woman (“Are we thinking of selling?”) with a “I want to live somewhere quieter. Wanna sell and move out into the piney woods?”
*heh*
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