Words matter. These are the best Mark Zandi Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Too-easy credit and millions of bad loans made during the U.S. housing bubble paved the way for the financial calamity and Great Recession that followed. Today, by contrast, credit is too tight. Mortgage loans are particularly hard to get, creating a problem for the housing market and the broader economy.
Distressed properties are often vacant and in disrepair, and thus sold at significant discounts. As the share of distressed sales grows, home prices fall.
Our economy isn’t going to recover until the housing market finds its footing.
The average credit score of today’s FHA borrowers is higher than the average American household with a score. As it becomes more costly and difficult to get a FHA loan, loans from private mortgage lenders will become more attractive and their market share will grow.
Buying a home wouldn’t make much sense if house prices were likely to decline further; no one wants to catch a falling knife.
A housing renaissance has begun. This may be hard to believe after the dizzying, six-year-long crash in home sales, construction and house prices. But housing turned the corner last year, and it will take off in 2013.
It is easy to be pessimistic. These are extraordinarily difficult times, and the collective psyche is teetering. But we are closer to righting the wrongs that got us into this economic mess than most of us believe.
The key to house prices is the share of foreclosure or short sales in the total housing market. When that share rises, house prices will fall, because distressed properties sell for significantly less – currently around 25 percent below non-distressed houses.
The Bush tax cuts should be extended permanently for families with annual incomes of less than $250,000 and should be phased out slowly for those making more than that. Raising taxes on anyone now, when the economic recovery is so fragile, would be a mistake.
There are different flavors of recession. You can get into some pretty dark scenarios pretty quickly.
Lenders look at potential borrowers from many angles before extending credit: How much of its income will a household need to put into debt repayment? How large is the down payment? Does the borrower have a job with a stable income? What is the borrower’s credit score?
It is hard to be enthusiastic about the economy’s prospects when house prices are falling: Households spend less, small business owners can’t use homes as collateral for loans and local governments are forced to cut jobs and programs as property-tax revenue disappears.
The most important point is, in a time of crisis, there is no way out but for the government to be bold and aggressive.
Investor demand for distressed property has been healthy, as rents rise to levels that can cover investors’ costs while they wait for properties to appreciate. Giving investors a small tax break should further juice up demand, supporting prices for distressed homes and the market in general.
It is time to move on. House prices won’t rise and the economy won’t fully engage until more distressed properties are resolved and put back into ordinary use.
I only have two things in my life, my family and work. If there’s any time left over, then I play sports.
Potential home buyers have a two-step decision process. First, they determine whether they can afford to make a purchase – does their income safely cover their mortgage payment? Then they determine whether owning is a better financial choice than renting – are the costs of owning a home lower than the cost of renting it?
It’s time to pull the bandage off America’s foreclosure problem. The economy is ready to emerge from its recent dark period, but to make it happen soon we need to speed the resolution of millions of troubled home loans. Six years have passed since the crisis began, yet instead of accelerating, foreclosures have slowed.
No one should expect the value of their house to appreciate quickly – counting on your home to be a significant part of your retirement saving isn’t a winning strategy – but it is reasonable to expect that prices generally will rise with at least the rate of inflation for some time to come.
Now, I do think when we move into 2012 and ’13 when, presumably, the economy is on firmer ground, I would allow the tax rates for upper-income individuals to revert back to where they were before the cuts in the 1990s. I think at that point it makes perfect sense.
The biggest culprits in the housing fiasco came from the private sector, and more specifically from a mortgage industry that was out of control.
It has become fashionable to rail against government intervention in the economy, and the FHA is a favorite example by those trying to show the government’s overreach. In reality, the FHA shows how government action during the Great Recession forestalled a much worse economic fate.
The Tea Party was born out of the disgust many Americans felt early in the financial crisis upon learning that the federal government was even contemplating reducing the principal on some troubled mortgages.
President Obama’s reelection started the countdown for lawmakers to address the fiscal cliff and the statutory debt limit. Unless the President and House Republicans can agree on changes to current law, the U.S. economy will be in recession by spring.
We need to get rid of the debt ceiling law. It’s anachronistic and it’s a problem.
The clearest way to cut some of this fiscal drag would be to extend the current payroll tax holiday and increase it – as proposed by President Barack Obama. This would cut the fiscal drag by almost half.
They called me the sexiest economist in America, and that was years ago, when I had hair and body mass and my teeth were shiny.
The extension and expansion of the payroll tax holidays for workers would be number one on my list and key to avoiding recession.
Our biggest challenge is to eliminate the popular perception that economists don’t have anything useful to say.
Housing was ground zero for the Great Recession. Between early 2006 and Obama’s inauguration in 2009, average house prices fell by a third across the country. In certain areas, including cities as diverse as Akron, Orlando and Las Vegas, house prices fell by more than half.
In a forbearance, the homeowner pays interest and principal on a smaller mortgage, at least for a time, but still owes the full amount. The lower monthly payment helps with affordability, giving stressed homeowners a break.
The FHA’s success provides strong evidence that government can and should play a role in the nation’s mortgage finance system. It also demonstrates that although government intervention in the economy during the Great Recession was messy, things would have been a lot messier without it.
We’re getting job creation in healthcare and educational services. We’ve been getting that all along. It’s demographically driven, it’s funded by the government, and that’s held up.
