Great article written by Jeff Nielson out of Canada. It's good to find real and valid information that answers all my intuitive doubts. The "shadow inventory" is still something I can't figure out. It would seem that the Banks under the guise of helping out the Government have withheld 20 million vacant REOs from the market in an attempt to allow stablization. In that I don't have any other premise that makes any sense, it continues to bother me. The logic of it all doesn't work for me. I continue to look for the answer. In doing so, I keep finding good balanced information that does answer many questions for me. This is a MUST read.
This is a good and solid article on why we will see the "double-dip" coming in the housing markets.
Here are a couple of excepts:
The “moon-shot” in the U.S. housing market over the decade from 1996 – 2006 was nothing but the hype of the U.S. media, the easy-money force-fed into the U.S. economy by the Federal Reserve, and the endless Ponzi-schemes which Wall Street used to pump-up the market even further, through “securitizing” mortgages and inflating their derivatives-bubble to a notional value exceeding $1 quadrillion.
and another....
As Alan Greenspan pointed out in a famous essay in 1966, “inflation” is the primary means for wealthy bankers to “confiscate” all the wealth of the average citizen, and the permanent era of high inflation brought about by the death of the gold standard has resulted in the greatest collapse in the standard of living of the average, Western citizen in centuries. This collapse in real wealth has been largely concealed through three parallel phenomena. First, there was the mass-entry of women into the workforce – creating more two-income households than at any time in history: two incomes in order to be slightly better off than a one-income family of a generation earlier. Second, Westerners in general, and North Americans in particular have allowed their savings to dissipate. Meanwhile debt-levels are now at their highest in history.
I'm not going to add anymore excepts. It is a very good read and a must. It is up to each and everyone of us to get out there and find the truth of where we are and what's gong to happen to our markets (not just real estate).
I owe it to my clients, friends and family. This is a good look at reality.
