eolesen
Veteran
- Jul 23, 2003
- 15,939
- 9,366
Housing started to tank in late 2006, so there's no question whose watch it happened on, but you don't wind up in foreclosure overnight.NewHampshire Black Bears said:
But I think you're simplifying the foreclosure issue. It wasn't because people had more house than they could afford. It's because their home values went underwater. When it came time to move or sell because of a job change, divorce or other circumstances, people couldn't sell except at a loss. At one point, there was a three year inventory of homes on the market largely because people couldn't sell for what they owed. For those who had no choice but to move, they had to either seek permission from the banks to do a short sale, or they simply walked away to force the issue and go into default. Once the loans were in default, the banks would finally agree to a short sale, but almost never before the loan was in 90 day default.
The truth is that the White House didn't determine lending standards, but they certainly did screw things up with HARP. It, like "cash for clunkers" was a failure. What would have fixed things better would have been loosening up FHA's ban on anyone with a shortsale or foreclosure being locked out of the market for 3-7 years.
HARP delayed the inevitable -- people who should have been foreclosed in 2009 and 2010 simply wound up being foreclosed in 2012 and 2013.
It's also no coincidence that the market started to recover as a huge number of people who'd been foreclosed on with 8% mortgages at 2000-2006 prices were able to re-enter the market at 2012-2014 price and 3-5% interest rates.
That's reality.
Please, do keep trying to blame Bush for all the negatives while trying to take credit for all the positives that happened on Obama's watch.
