It is possible for the house to be destroyed. Perhaps the area becomes contaminated in some way so that it is not possible to live there. What is Chernobyl real estate going for nowadays? What about Fukashima real estate? Presumably the local real estate lost 100% in 1 day, beats Bear Stearns!
Hard to see oil producing countries accepting the dollar if US Military were not instantly ready to "find" weapons of mass destruction, terrorists, and other things that justify invasion... as soon as a gold backed currency is attempted.... or was the "Gold Dinar" and subsequent invasion just a coincidence? How very interesting that the first thing the "rebels" did after toppling Ghadafi was to set up a "new" central bank....
Maybe not. Plenty of big banks were forced to pick up C, D and E paper (assuming the borrowers skin color was correct) starting in about 2002 when the gov't decided that not enough minorities had mortgages. Because of Basel III and some of the Dodd Frank regs, many lenders are scared to go below 720 FICO or deal in anything with less than 20% down for the bulk of their loans. What do you think the minority participation rate will look like in five years? 2002 will look like the golden years of mortgage diversity after another few years down this road.
Nope...The government owned all the real estate, so there was no real estate market to collapse in chernobyl.
don't know about New Orleans. Detroit is a very bad deal. Nobody was accountable. Good deal for smart thinkers. Bad deal for banks and homeowners. For instance, a house listed at 269k was owned by a guy who lost his job. So he just lived there for a year or more without paying the mortgage. Finally, he got the eviction notice from the sherrif. So he is going to lose his down payment. Now the house is vacant. I saw one go from 169k to 50k. So some smart guy trying to get ahead in life actually bought it for 25k, and immediately put it up for sale at 50k. But it had a lot of structural problems. Probably about 40k to get it liveable again. Where was the bank? They owned the house, and could have worked out a deal with the guy who got foreclosed on. Now he would still be living there, and the bank would have come out better than letting it go vacant. Now it is just a house they unloaded at 25k. It is still vacant with many problems. The guy that bought if from the bank at 25k and is trying to sell it at 50k has a chance, but not until all the structural problems are fixed. And for that he needs another 40k. all this could have been avoided if anyone at the bank was accountable, and could work out a deal. They claim they had a program, It was called the affordable home mortgage act, or something like that, but it didn't cover people with no income who had lost their jobs. lose a job, lose a house, lose a neighborhood, lose a bank
and the thing is, we all know everybody needs to live somewhere, and in most cases, it is better for people to live in safe neighborhoods with schools and fire departments, rather than in some homeless shelter like economic refugees.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/12/us-poverty-census_n_1877197.html U.S. Poverty: Census Finds 46.2 Million Impoverished As Median Income Drops all time high since 60's. so much for recovery and all that BS. but..markets are all time high!
You didn't say anything about Fukushima... The point from my earlier post is that real estate has risks and the price can go to zero just like a stock price can and can do it even faster!
Home ownership for personal use is a losing proposition unless you have a substantial rise in value between buying it and the time to sell. I've been there... a number of times. Fees, property taxes, commissions, maintenance, yada yada yada. New houses are built with matchsticks. They can't even put a switch plate on straight! Old houses can be a bargain but a maintenance money pit. And please don't give me the tax deduction argument. It's like the tax deduction for a child - the total cost of raising a child by far outweighs the piddly deduction you get. I love the privacy it brings, but at my age, my TIME is way more valuable. I've spent way too much time mowing, weeding, wacking, shoveling, digging, patching, fixing, furnishing, decorating, cleaning, and replacing!