Elizabeth Warren, chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel in an interview on BNN said US reposessions to date have resulted in 2+ million families losing their home, even more disturbing is that she said a further 6 - 11 million families may also lose their homes during 2010-11 - a rather staggering amount wouldn't you say ? there's already what - 20 million homes for sale, where do 6-11million Families find new housing ? - in the vacant 'for sale' homes - rent to be paid by TARP ?
60 Minutes did an expose on this about 3-4 months ago. Their claim was that a large # of ARM's are coming due in the 1st Q of 2010, which will precipitate a major new wave of foreclosures. I would think that with rates at historic lows, this may be mitigated somewhat, but I'm sure the "rate change" will have an adverse impact overall.
The outlook is quite grim: http://activerain.com/blogsview/822302/arm-loan-reset-schedule-2007-2008-2009-2010-2011-2012- Martin Weiss, who markets a number of financial newsletters, actually advised clients earlier this year to sell their homes and rent for a year or two until the real estate market bottomed, then buy an even nicer home for the same amount of money. I recently attended a conference on using a self-directed IRA to buy a variety of different investments. There were people there buying foreclosures and REOs for 10-30% of market value, then fixing them up for a few thousand dollars and selling or renting them. Everybody thinks that the real estate market has bottomed because the government's $8000 tax credit for first time home buyers increased the sale of homes in the last few months. Don't believe it. We are in for a double dip recession (depression?) starting in the spring due to another large wave of foreclosures.
Weiss is a Permanent Perma Bear much like Schiff. There hasn't been a time when he was bullish except maybe on gold.
Option ARMs typically recast after five years, so right now and 2011 there will be Hundreds of billions worth of these option arms recasting which will cause foreclosure rates to skyrocket, once this occurs they will leave in place all the programs created over the last year so that people who could not afford to stay in their house continue to do so. Free handouts yet again to everyone, oh and I also hear cramer screaming again that the commercial real estate collapse would have happened already and that everything is fine and perfect in that sector of the economy.... all bulls have no fear as bubble ben bernanke will be able to help the economy with everything he has with his easy money policies.
Hmmm. Maybe someone should have listened to him before the market crashed and gold soared. Maybe they should also be listening about the next market decline to come in 2010 and 2011 due to the worsening residential and commercial real estate market. He has said that there will be a buying opportunity of a lifetime in low-priced quality stocks after the next crash. By the way, he is currently long a number of stocks and has a number of newsletters that are long in a variety of sectors. So much for the perma-bear theory. It is easy to criticize someone when you have not actually looked at their recommendations. He backs his statements up with facts and has been remarkably accurate, protecting many people from the market crash and growing their wealth with gold and other investments. His recommendations are not always perfect, but to accuse him of being permanently bearish simply shows that you have not truly investigated his work. I am not associated with he or his company in any way, but do respect his knowledge.