Plummeting Prices Deepen Crisis in U.S. Housing Market

http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/plummeting_prices_deepen_crisis_in_us_housing_market_20110530/

Depending on the source, certain sectors of the American economy are showing signs of life, but the housing market sure isn’t one of them, especially considering the news expected to surface on Tuesday that prices have dipped under what was previously believed to be the low point since this recession kicked in three years ago. —KA

The New York Times:

Even as the economy began to fitfully recover in the last year, the percentage of homeowners dropped sharply, to 66.4 percent, from a peak of 69.2 percent in 2004. The ownership rate is now back to the level of 1998, and some housing experts say it could decline to the level of the 1980s or even earlier.

Disenchantment with real estate is bound to swell further on Tuesday when the most widely watched housing index is all but guaranteed to show that prices of existing homes sank in March below the lows reached two years ago — until now the bottom of the housing crash. In February, the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index of 20 large cities slumped for the seventh month in a row.

More at the link --

whoops! guess they didn't really own them, georgie, you murdering liar.

"On the bright side, we Republicons got MORE MORE MORE tax cuts and tax dodge loopholes. Bwaaaa ha ha ha ha. Too bad about you American suckers. Smirk. Sneer."

- xCommander AWOL (R)
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_VvWQp_OOM8s/TSYtr4gXKBI/AAAAAAAABEI/Ea5dxaVk4wU/s1600/Bush-fuckedyouall+frm+Smirking+Chimp.jpg

By no means are wealthy - go e in a 'flash'.

Oh well.

My brother, kicked from industrial sales down to working for a minimart due to age discrimination, just signed on a house near Pittsburgh for $75K. The sellers wanted it gone, and were willing to lower the price to the maximum that the bank would finance for him on his current income.

The reality is that we have an income crisis, not a housing crisis. Prices will continue to fall until average workers, whose incomes have declined since 2000, can afford them again.

stay in your home, there's a good chance your taxes have gone down. Mine went down $900.00 this year because of the depreciation.

--from property tax, so if values go down, rates automatically go up. This helps stabilize the budget, so I'm not griping.

We take a leap of faith when we sign up to buy a house. We sign up for debt like no other.

A car is a leap of faith too, but if we find ourselves unable to continue the payments, we can sell it,or trade it in on a cheaper one with payments we can afford.

A house is different.

It's where we sleep, it's what holds all our "stuff", it's what defines us as having arrived at MiddleClass (or so we tell ourselves).

Even a bargain-priced house can be nearly impossible to hold onto if a job is lost.

We all know about the McMansions of $400K "sold" to people who never should have been able to get into them, BUT even a modest home with a <$100K price tag is still a very long commitment, when jobs are not secure.

"Experts" say your house payments (including taxes & insurance) should not be more than 30% of your take home pay, and there are families all over the place now whose income fluctuates wildly these days. For quite a long time, people counted on getting regular raises, and that's just not the case anymore.

I am not a bit surprised at how people are opting-out of home-buying these days

Housing remains way overpriced. People should continue to stay out of the market for the time being.

"Ownership" is kind of a weird term for people making payments for 30 years.

No where near 66% of Americans own their homes.