Housing Doom

On April 5, Jeff Miller in a Seeking Alpha article indicated that recent data indicates:

The doom-and-gloom scenario for mortgages and housing is overstated.

Miller cites as evidence a summary of  Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Richard Fisher’s speech in Austin last week where Fisher states:

  1. The damage from the subprime market is mostly contained.
  2. The U.S. economy is strong enough to weather this storm.
  3. Consumption continues to pump the economic engine.
  4. Alt-A mortgages may also have imprudent loans.
  5. Subprime problems may be a blessing in disguise.
  6. Mortgage market discipline will reassert itself.
  7. Pending home sales data may be a sign that lower prices are spurring purchases.
  8. The Fed is treading very carefully in response to housing.
  9. Regulatory agencies are working hard to avoid overreaction with credit standards.
10. Problems are mainly in the ARM segment of the subprime market, which is only 8.5% of total mortgages outstanding.

We here at Doom have views that are not completely in accordance with Fisher’s opinions, but how about you?  Is gloom and doom overstated, understated, misstated?
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Realtors- they are the guys that bubbleheads love to hate.  Face it, while you cannot make derogatory remarks in polite company based on race, religion, gender or sexual orientation, it’s open season on realtors, and there’s a lot of people out there with their guns blazing.

It has been my experience that virtually any prejudice breaks down under close scrutiny, as every group has its good and bad apples.  That said, we all know that a lot of the bashing of real estate agents has not been entirely undeserved.  I appreciated an April 5 Realty Times article by George W. Mantor [himself a long time agent] entitled, Can Ethics be taught?  As to the criticism, he states:

There is, unfortunately, a valid connection between the consumer’s less-than-stellar perception of us and the reality of our conduct.

The article is well worth reading- Mantor describes a number of reasons for the NAR’s poor public image.  I thought he got to the heart of the matter though when he said:

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