We interrupt BAC execs whining about stock-heavy bonuses to point out that Charlotte housing remains in deep trouble.
Composite housing prices dove faster in the last quarter of 2009 in Charlotte than the national 10-city average drop of 1.4 percent. Charlotte’s fall of 4.4 percent was one of the steeper drops among large urban areas.
In fact, the Altos Research data set unmistakably points to a double-dip in housing prices, with a new bottom coming in the months ahead.
Elsewhere, looking back on housing price info suggests that we have another 22 percent to shave off of housing prices nationally before we return to a sustainable price-point. But what are our dopey government officials trying to do? Stop this correction in its tracks.
Michael David White, a mortgage broker in Chicago, explains in detail:
The general feeling is that foreclosures are terrible and should be stopped because of the distress they bring both to a family and a neighborhood. The more important truth, widely ignored, is that foreclosures promise to bring back cheap prices. We know from the first chart in this story that lower prices are natural.
In our post-bubble world, foreclosures are the surest mechanism for creating affordable housing. Consumer advocates should now welcome this method of price correction. Those true to their mission will embrace a mass-foreclosure remedy.
White also notes that higher housing prices really do not help us, the consumer. But he does not mention who does benefit from higher housing prices — bankers, developers, Realtors, and local governments. All see more zeroes added to the checks made out to them with a massive housing price bubble in place.
They do not mind that America’s overall debt capacity is tapped out. Borrowed dollars are chasing borrowed dollars and round and round we go. And we are surprised that December retail sales fell?
With real unemployment stuck at 10.5 percent nationally — and 12 percent locally — there is no real reason to believe this is going to change any time soon.
