Obama's new mortgage plan = rent control

true. it's too expensive of a program but the beauty of it in the eyes of washington is that the expense doesn't need to be accounted for in a lump sum. so the attention is only on the cost of the 1st year even though is gonna cost the taxpayer year after year. that is supposed to be one of the advantages of the 1 time tax credit on the year you buy a home.

if i were in washington (LOL) i would not subsidize housing in any way, it's already over-subsidized. i'd shout to those that want to give incentives for naive 1st time home owners to make the plunge in a plunging mkt. every f*k up homeowner has to be foreclosed on, otherwise the long term message is "you cannot go wrong in real estate, if it does the gov bails you out". it plants the seeds for the next big bubble.

better to foreclose on them so that they take the hit credit wise (and probably offer financial literacy courses, i'll be happy to subsidize those). then if the banks don't want to dump the FC on the mkt, there should be an easy way to make them renters on the same house and liable if they vandalize it. ask FNM and FRE to do that with the future foreclosures. then you save the money and headaches to the counties of having vacated homes and ghost shanty towns. the previous "homeowner" still has a roof on his head, a life pretty much like he knows it and can start over instead of going through a long nightmare.

admin, that's exactly what I've been saying. Foreclose on the houses that never should have been bought or built and work out a plan to have them rented back to the people living in them so we don't have people on the streets. Maybe they can figure out a rent to own situation as an incentive for upkeep.

This plan has WAYYY to open to abuse.. I mean once someone claims the hardship, they will no ZERO motivation to better themselves because they want to 'keep' the subsidy.

I just hope its a ONE-TIME 1-2 year subsidy, after which you are on your own PLUS you have to pay x% back to government if you ever sell for a profit. This I could probably swallow and shows compassion without creating a welfare state...

We already have a welfare state. Banks, autos, checks from the govt for the middle class, checks to state and local govts, subsidized mortgage rates, ...

10105.......really when did all this happen? Did I fall asleep? TOTO I guess were not in Kansas anymore...........

>We already have a welfare state. Banks, autos, checks from the govt for the middle class, checks to state and local govts, subsidized mortgage rates, ...<

Exactly. It's amazing that in a period of six months the US economy has been transformed from a free market economy to one that's dependent to tax payer hand outs & support. The result, private and venture capital have been frozen out, Washington is the new Wall Street and the financial markets have lost confidence and are crumbling.

The Federal Government is basically in the process of taking over large sectors of the economy and spending trillions of tax payer dollars in the process it does not have. The financing of these massive deficits require an enormous amount of private sector capital that could have otherwise been invested in the real economy. It's a historic transfer of private sector savings to the government sector and where this story ends, no one knows.......thus far, the financial markets have voted in a very pessimistic fashion.

"Exactly. It's amazing that in a period of six months the US economy has been transformed from a free market economy to one that's dependent to tax payer hand outs & support. The result, private and venture capital have been frozen out, Washington is the new Wall Street and the financial markets have lost confidence and are crumbling."

Ever read Atlas Shrugged? Scary how close the parallels are.