In case you didn’t know – I’m in the Real Estate & Mortgage Industry. I live in Southern California. The combination of those two items means that my business closely resembles poop, after it’s been stepped in. A big, fresh, clean dookie might somehow in some sort of way look pleasing – it at least represents the relief of some living creature. Hit that pile with a sledgehammer and now it’s just a big mess. That pretty much sums up my industry over the past months. Lots of fun. But I digress…sorry to be so vividly picturesque.
I’m not sure that any of you care – but a lot of home-owners are wondering what is going on. And many who don’t own homes wonder about all of the fuss. I know more than a few who have lost their homes. I’m aware of others who will likely suffer that fate in the near future. And there are others who are wondering if now is a good time to buy a home. The House is approving plans to save home-owners and the Oval Office promises to veto those same plans. The National Association of Realtors says that prices will pick back up soon and that now is a good time to buy (actually there isn’t a moment in history when it’s NOT a good time to buy according to NAR). The Fed thinks there’s still some serious problems. Still others predict that we are a long way away from the bottom of the market.
My next door neighbor got laid off months ago – I think he finally landed a job that was worth doing this week. Another neighbor of mine who worked doing design work for Chrysler’s California Studio is suffering from their down-sizing. I know things are tight for another neighbor who is a custom home-builder as new construction is at a stand-still around here. Bummer-ness.
Anyway, I’ve heard so many crazy explanations. Listening to the regular news – it is evident that most of those talking heads have no real idea about what is happening – they seem to be content to fill the time with different buzz-words combined with sensational images. If we weren’t having so many earthquakes and tornadoes and cyclones and other disasters around the world you can be sure that we’d see endless images of people who make $400,000.00 mortgages sadly walking away from their homes because they can no longer make the payments. Unfortunately, many “real journalists” who might work for reputable publications or even tenacious public radio personalities just can’t seem to come up with answers that make sense to me. Perhaps that is because I’m in the business myself … but in California it’s like every 4th person has a real estate license anyway – so I don’t think I’m particularly unique.
I’ve spent a goodly portion of hours perusing a number blogs and subsequent commentary by a wide variety of society members. Some professionals, some not. Some representations of how we got into this current mess have been amusing. Some proposals as to how to solve it are down-right scary.
As usual – I didn’t mean to write this much. I would rather you spend your time listening to this presentation put together by This American Life (click Title of this Post for additional linkage). It is a bit longish – and you’ll need to be able to listen all the way through but it is entertaining and informative. The bit doesn’t really address the issue of how long we may languor in this recession, if it’ll lead to a quasi-depression or qualify the various proposals for resolution. However, it is a good bird’s eye view of how we got to this point – and it zooms in for a close-up view as well.
I’m regularly reviewing half-a-dozen different sites and each of them link to dozens of other resources. If you’re at all interested, let me know and I’ll post some of those links too. I find this stuff fascinating and I’m hoping that it’s a learning experience that we can benefit from while so many are going to be trying to run from the memories only to commit the same mistakes a short time from now.
