Wednesday, June 01, 2011

Home Ownership Rate: $Zillions to No Effect?

Umnnhhh...

How many $Umpty-Billions were stuffed into Fannie and Freddie in the last decade or so with the promise that "home-ownership" would rise, and this would be a Wonderful Thing for All?

How many $Umpty-Billions of mortgages (good, bad, or indifferent) were ginned up by brokers and banks, then converted to jumbo-investment bonds (MBS's) with lotsa profit-bucks on every single step of the transaction trail?

OK. Then how does one account for THIS:

The Census Bureau tells us that the home-ownership rate in 1990 was 64.2%

In 2000, it was 66.2%

In 2010, it was down to 65.1%

IOW, with all those programs, all those Federal incentives, all that "opportunity" crap--with ALL that in the mix, the needle ain't going to move past ~65%.

HT: CalcRisk

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