Bloomberg reports:
Sales of existing homes fell to an eight-month low in November, leaving the number of houses on the market at the highest since 1986 and suggesting one pillar of the U.S. economy will weaken next year.
and
The housing industry accounts for only about 5 percent of the U.S. economy and yet generated half of the growth in this year's first six months and more than half of the private jobs added since 2001, Merrill Lynch & Co. said in an August report. Price appreciation helped add $5.2 trillion to Americans' balance sheets during the current expansion, or 68 percent of all wealth creation, according to the Federal Reserve.
What will those in government and the pseudi-private sector think up to artifically prop up demand further? 100 year mortgages? Having the federal government pay off college student loans so the debt generation can get long real estate? Dollar for dollar matching of down payments by the federal government? We say all this in a joking manner but nothing would surprise us when it comes to the powerful coalition to have artifically high housing prices.Nothing.
