[Time Magazine] The Housing Market Is Back!
Posted by Jonathan J. Miller -Monday, September 13, 2010, 7:13 PM
2 Comments
Well, a tongue in cheek interpretation of their September 6, 2010 cover -hat tip to Business Insider who beat me to the punch(line)during this back to school, holidays every other day period of the year.
There’s that old joke, if it’s on the cover of Time Magazine, then it already happened… (I must admit that I feel guilty repeating this joke since I like the author’s work and have been an avid follower of their Curious Capitalist blog). Still it makes for an interesting message.
June 13, 2005 Home $weet Home “Why we’re going gaga over real estate”
By mid 2005 the housing market was already showing serious problems and this was nothing more than a “pile on” article consistent with everything that was being written at the time. Incidentally this cover pre-dates Matrix which I started on August 1, 2005 with this post.
September 6, 2010 Rethinking Homeownership “Why owning a home may no longer make economic sense.”
Earlier today I posted about the guilt and self-loathing we seemed to have assumed since the July NAR Existing Home Sale numbers came out last month.
I read the article and I missed the support for the Cover Page. Seems the conclusion is that since the housing market reversed, house ownership is over. Not a very sound deduction. Seems the author missed the thing that most of know. People buy houses they think they can afford. The lenders were the gate keepers and without notice many influential lenders abdicated. Little did anyone know that would happen, but they got as much of the housing equity as they could before they exposed themselves. I think they had knowledge the jobs were gone and our standard of living had to adjust. It was important to lend as much as possible and sell the loan to somebody else before the stuff hit the fan. In this case it was sort of a lender’s last fling.
I completely agree. The premise in many commentary pieces these days blames homeownership when it was simply the vehicle to achieve that end. Plus I think many seem to be in shock that housing prices go up AND down.