The Real Estate Bloggers

Obama on Housing – Recovery at Least A Year Away

Posted: 17 Aug 2011 06:11 PM PDT

Obama Obama on the housing situation. He thinks now that the recovery is at least a year away.

“I’ll be honest with you, when you’ve got many trillions of dollars’ worth of housing stock out there, the federal government is not going to be able to do this all by itself, government is not going to be able to do this all by itself,” Obama said. “It’s going to require consumers and banks and the private sector working alongside government to make sure that we can actually get the housing moving back again.”

“It will probably take this year and next year for us to see a slow appreciation again in the housing market,” he added. That prediction is in line with most economists and housing experts, who say it will take at least another year before home prices start to rise.

Home prices have fallen 32 percent since the housing boom in July 2006, according to the Standard & Poor’s/Case Shiller home price index. But the industry remains in the doldrums despite historically low mortgage interest rates that during better economic times would encourage home-buying. via the AP

We have had 4 years of tinkering trying to find a government solution to the housing crash. Both the Bush and Obama administrations have tried to fix the problem instead of letting the markets correct themselves. And because the that we have been in a malaise as buyers have no confidence that the home they buy will be worth more tomorrow than it was the day they bought it.

I am taking comfort in the phrase “the government is not going to be able to do this all by itself” if he means that government will stop changing the playing field and let the banking and business community know the rules they will be lending into. But with pending regulations such as the Dodd Frank Act still to be announced banks have to be prudent to their shareholders and not take on additional risk to their assets.

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Obama on Housing – Recovery at Least A Year Away