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msb-0329 Housing Is bout To Change

Page history last edited by Charles-A. Rovira 15 years, 9 months ago

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msb-0329 Housing Is bout To Change (Back!)

Direct Link to episode -> http://media.libsyn.com/media/msb/msb-0329_Housing_Is_bout_To_Change_Back.m4a

McCain, Obama Differ on Housing Crisis

. .

Intro

Disclaimer! Disclaimer! Disclaimer!

Survey

FeedBack comes first, so...

"This" [ http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/18/business/18econ.html?ref=business ] article in the "New York Times" points out that people can't see what's going on with the housing market.

They're looking in the wrong direction...

Its not in front of them but behind them, as the calendar goes.

---- "Songs from The Bilston House" by: "Manning" http://www.myspace.com/guymanning

FeedForward

---- "Square With The House" by: "The Soupbone Throne" http://www.myspace.com/thesoupbonethrone

FeedMe

---- "Ghost In My House" by: "Mean Gene Kelton and The Die Hards" http://www.genekelton.com/

Thesis:

Something has struck me as this housing crisis becomes, uh, a crisis.

The term "real estate" is being shown up for the fiction that it is.

It is not, and never was, "real".

Some of you might have parents who were born "pre-Boomer" and some of those might me able to tell you what it was like "pre-W.W.II".

Yup, listen to your 'rents and gran-'rents. But really "listen". Listen for what you need to hear...

---- "Slaughterhouse Blues" by: "Maria Daines" http://www.maria-daines.com/

Synthesis:

The real estate crisis is a crisis of imagination and self-esteem.

Its born of ignorance and steeped in refined oil.

The cause of the crisis is the lack of predictive ability to see what could/should/would happen when it all went "pear shaped" and you were stuck somewhere you "didn't" wanna be..

If you live in the 'burbs, make that, if you live more than a thirty minute private commute between where you sleep and where you live/work/play/meet 'n greet, you're just waking up to a new reality.

Now that you're looking at your house more like a millstone than a touch stone, every body else is too.

Ergo, your desirable house is not so desirable anymore and lack of desirability means plunging prices.

There is no "real" in real-estate. It all boils down to "comparative advantage" [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage ] or, more to the point, comparative "dis"-advantage.

Our house valuations are subject to enormous changes. (Witness the simultaneous "Fanny Mae" [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_may ] and "Freddie Mac" [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Home_Loan_Mortgage_Corporation ] debacles.)

One of the things that affects those changes is transportation (In the United States the "Department of Transportation" [ http://www.dot.gov/ { hey, I just noticed the site is called dub, dub, dub, dot, dot, dot, guv. :-}] has annual budget US$58Billion. Okay, its still only about one ninth of the estimated US$490+Billion Defense "budget", [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States ] but our bridges "are" [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Mississippi_River_bridge ] crumbling)

And instability but, trending inexorably onward and upward, in the "cost" of transportation is putting the structure of the "American Way Of Life" under severly distorting stress and strain.

Now its not so bad if you live somewhere in the Boston to Washington DC "North East Corridor", the West Coast pockets of Seattle and Greater L.A. but if you don't live in the two narrow areas, you're home values are about to "take it in the shorts".

Remember what the AmerIndians said about the value of land: "You don't own the land, it own you."

Not having vested interests in real-estate, they meant it in a nice holistic way. But as you watch your supposed equity vanish in the current and deepening shift, you'll find out that the statement also can have a nasty side.

---- "The House Is Burnin" by: "Calvin Owens" http://topcatrecords.com/

Conclusion:

We have a great deal to listen to i we can just shut up long enough to hear it.

This has all happened before; but not to people who lived centuries ago and/or who you couldn't possibly have met.

Sit down and talk to your 'rents or grand-'rents about "what" went down and "how" it went down.

They survived pre-oil boom.

Now you have to learn how they managed it.

Since you'll be using the latest in technology so you don't have to fight the energy wars, and rape the planet to the extent that they did.

And that's a good thing because there isn't enough affordable oil left.

---- "House of Cards" by: "Citizens Of Contrary Knowledge" http://www.arielpublicity.net/clients/2437

Outro

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