barry +2 trillion

[Butthead]

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20000576-503544.html

yeah, yeah, bush's fault.

[winmutt]

Of course it is. If hadnt relaxed regaulatory oversight on the stock markets and lending we wouldnt be in this mess.

[Troutman]

this^^^

[impalanar]

Change.

[jkhonea]

Change.

....that will bend you over and screw you.

[impalanar]

Of course it is. If hadnt relaxed regaulatory oversight on the stock markets and lending we wouldnt be in this mess.

We wouldn't be spending ourselves into oblivion if it hadn't been for W? I disagree.

[Troutman]

not just Bush's fault though, Clinton had a hand as well.

[Troutman]

We wouldn't be spending ourselves into oblivion if it hadn't been for W? I disagree.

True as well.

[winmutt]

We wouldn't be spending ourselves into oblivion if it hadn't been for W? I disagree.
Of course, O wouldn't have been elected President.

[Troutman]

hmmmmmmm^^^^^

[impalanar]

http://www.youtube.com/user/10000Pennies#p/u/7/P5yxFtTwDcc

[impalanar]

And, one more:

http://www.youtube.com/user/10000Pennies#p/u/2/70lkobYY0Hc

[Dan43]

Of course it is. If hadnt relaxed regaulatory oversight on the stock markets and lending we wouldnt be in this mess.How long is he supposed to be able to blame things on the previous administration? I figure that the budget and the debt belongs to him, his administration and the current congress after the first year in office.

[Hughduffel]

How long is he supposed to be able to blame things on the previous administration? I figure that the budget and the debt belongs to him, his administration and the current congress after the first year in office.

Somehow I thought the HOUSING crisis that created this house of cards of worthless assets (bank loans) occurred when a DEMOCRATIC congress in the early ninties decided everyone should have the right to own a home.

[MrBlah]

Somehow I thought the HOUSING crisis that created this house of cards of worthless assets (bank loans) occurred when a DEMOCRATIC congress in the early ninties decided everyone should have the right to own a home.

you would be wrong, very wrong

[wallypiper]

Blame blame blame blame.
It doesn't make any difference. The first video above illustrates the important issue. Obama's plan, by his own projections, is going to turn us into a third world country economically, swimming in debt and unable to meet our public financial obligations. I don't have a lot of confidence that any current viable alternatives will do any better. The changes we need to make are dramatic and will be painful. The politicians that are currently debating what to do are simply unwilling to tell you the truth because, like a doctor faced with telling you about the inoperable tumor in your head, there is no upside, no silver lining. In a way, you can't blame them. Even if they don't care about getting re-elected, the truth about our financial situation, as a nation, is almost too disturbing to contemplate. Congress and the president, and it certainly didn't start last year, are like a homeowner who has realized that he has no chance of getting current on his mortgage so he just goes ahead with his expensive lifestyle for whatever time is left until it all collapses on him. Except the national situation probably won't collapse on Obama and the current congress or even the next. They will be able to keep the balls in the air. But somewhere around 15 years down the road, the foreclosure process will start.

It's pretty damn depressing, actually. I recommend learning to grown your own food and live off the grid.

[Troutman]

Walley- You really think in the next 15 years it will get that bad?

[winmutt]

Somehow I thought the HOUSING crisis that created this house of cards of worthless assets (bank loans) occurred when a DEMOCRATIC congress in the early ninties decided everyone should have the right to own a home.

Go do some research on the whole process. Under Clinton there was oversight. W lifted that oversight by allowing lenders to spawn off smaller subsidiaries that did not have to submit to said oversight. That combined with W increasing the debt leverage ratio to something like 1:48 created the huge bubbling before the bust. Of course it wasn't W himself but it was his appointees and under his watch.

[Dan43]

Somehow I thought the HOUSING crisis that created this house of cards of worthless assets (bank loans) occurred when a DEMOCRATIC congress in the early ninties decided everyone should have the right to own a home.Common misconception. Engaged in a debate about this on another board right now as well. The CRA did not force lenders to loosen their lending standards. It prevented them from using location to deny a loan.

[jkhonea]

Walley- You really think in the next 15 years it will get that bad?
I think we're definitely heading down that road.

[impalanar]

I think we're definitely heading down that road.

Agreed. I don't think it will take 15 years.

[impalanar]

Go do some research on the whole process. Under Clinton there was oversight. W lifted that oversight by allowing lenders to spawn off smaller subsidiaries that did not have to submit to said oversight. That combined with W increasing the debt leverage ratio to something like 1:48 created the huge bubbling before the bust. Of course it wasn't W himself but it was his appointees and under his watch.

Link please.

[wallypiper]

Walley- You really think in the next 15 years it will get that bad?

See Citizen's Guide at the Peter G. Peterson Foundation (http://www.pgpf.org/getinvolved/citizens-guide/) for some pretty solid analysis of how the federal budget works, or doesn't work actually, and where it's headed if no changes are made. By 2025, our debt will reach the highest level it's ever been at as a percentage of GDP, surpassing it's historical peak which occurred at the end of World War 2. And following WW2, we quickly paid it back down from 122% to about 30%. There is currently no legislation on the table that or even any discussion at the federal level about actually reducing the debt. All of the noise is about slowing the rate of increase. You keep hearing about deficit reduction, not debt reduction. The deficit is the amount by which we go further into debt each year. We need to stop deficit spending altogether. So, yes, I believe that in 15 years we will be facing dramatic consequences of our current policies and I have little hope that congress or the president, this one or any I can see on the horizon, will have the courage to fix it.

[Phatmax]

Common misconception. Engaged in a debate about this on another board right now as well. The CRA did not force lenders to loosen their lending standards. It prevented them from using location to deny a loan.

It was ACORN and community organizers that forced lenders to loosen their standards.

One Organizer in particular.

[MrBlah]

It was ACORN and community organizers that forced lenders to loosen their standards.

One Organizer in particular.

no, it was capitalism, the worse the terms the more they made, the more loans made means the more profit they made, everybody lets get rich was the motto then it call crashed

if you were not writing every loan you could, you were not good at your job

[Troutman]

no, it was capitalism, the worse the terms the more they made, the more loans made means the more profit they made, everybody lets get rich was the motto then it call crashed

if you were not writing every loan you could, you were not good at your job


This is the way I see it.

[winmutt]

It was ACORN and community organizers that forced lenders to loosen their standards.

One Organizer in particular.

That is bull shit. ACORN didn't tell the SEC to create new categories of banks that could do subprime lending with no oversight and that is where most of the problems came from. That and the subprime insurance scams that had no regulatory oversight when they should have.

Biggest bullshit of all is that no one will go to jail for this. You sell crack on the street or rob a bank you go to jail. If you find a loophole and crash the economy you stay rich.

[Phatmax]

no, it was capitalism, the worse the terms the more they made, the more loans made means the more profit they made, everybody lets get rich was the motto then it call crashed

if you were not writing every loan you could, you were not good at your job

Seriously, do some more research. It was NOT capitalism. Not capitalist worth a dime is going to write loans to people who CAN'T EVER PAY. That is the absolute inverse of what capitalism is about.

Thank ACORN For Current Mortgage Crisis
From the New York Post:




THE REAL SCANDAL
HOW FEDS INVITED THE MORTGAGE MESS

By STAN LIEBOWITZ

February 5, 2008 — PERHAPS the greatest scandal of the mortgage crisis is that it is a direct result of an intentional loosening of underwriting standards – done in the name of ending discrimination, despite warnings that it could lead to wide-scale defaults.

At the crisis’ core are loans that were made with virtually nonexistent underwriting standards – no verification of income or assets; little consideration of the applicant’s ability to make payments; no down payment.

Most people instinctively understand that such loans are likely to be unsound. But how did the heavily-regulated banking industry end up able to engage in such foolishness?

From the current hand-wringing, you’d think that the banks came up with the idea of looser underwriting standards on their own, with regulators just asleep on the job. In fact, it was the regulators who relaxed these standards – at the behest of community groups and “progressive” political forces.

In the 1980s, groups such as the activists at ACORN began pushing charges of “redlining” – claims that banks discriminated against minorities in mortgage lending. In 1989, sympathetic members of Congress got the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act amended to force banks to collect racial data on mortgage applicants; this allowed various studies to be ginned up that seemed to validate the original accusation.

In fact, minority mortgage applications were rejected more frequently than other applications – but the overwhelming reason wasn’t racial discrimination, but simply that minorities tend to have weaker finances.

Yet a “landmark” 1992 study from the Boston Fed concluded that mortgage-lending discrimination was systemic.

That study was tremendously flawed – a colleague and I later showed that the data it had used contained thousands of egregious typos, such as loans with negative interest rates. Our study found no evidence of discrimination.

Yet the political agenda triumphed – with the president of the Boston Fed saying no new studies were needed, and the US comptroller of the currency seconding the motion.

No sooner had the ink dried on its discrimination study than the Boston Fed, clearly speaking for the entire Fed, produced a manual for mortgage lenders stating that: “discrimination may be observed when a lender’s underwriting policies contain arbitrary or outdated criteria that effectively disqualify many urban or lower-income minority applicants.”

Some of these “outdated” criteria included the size of the mortgage payment relative to income, credit history, savings history and income verification. Instead, the Boston Fed ruled that participation in a credit-counseling program should be taken as evidence of an applicant’s ability to manage debt.

Sound crazy? You bet. Those “outdated” standards existed to limit defaults. But bank regulators required the loosened underwriting standards, with approval by politicians and the chattering class. A 1995 strengthening of the Community Reinvestment Act required banks to find ways to provide mortgages to their poorer communities. It also let community activists intervene at yearly bank reviews, shaking the banks down for large pots of money.

Banks that got poor reviews were punished; some saw their merger plans frustrated; others faced direct legal challenges by the Justice Department.

Flexible lending programs expanded even though they had higher default rates than loans with traditional standards. On the Web, you can still find CRA loans available via ACORN with “100 percent financing . . . no credit scores . . . undocumented income . . . even if you don’t report it on your tax returns.” Credit counseling is required, of course.

Ironically, an enthusiastic Fannie Mae Foundation report singled out one paragon of nondiscriminatory lending, which worked with community activists and followed “the most flexible underwriting criteria permitted.” That lender’s $1 billion commitment to low-income loans in 1992 had grown to $80 billion by 1999 and $600 billion by early 2003.

Who was that virtuous lender? Why – Countrywide, the nation’s largest mortgage lender, recently in the headlines as it hurtled toward bankruptcy.

In an earlier newspaper story extolling the virtues of relaxed underwriting standards, Countrywide’s chief executive bragged that, to approve minority applications that would otherwise be rejected “lenders have had to stretch the rules a bit.” He’s not bragging now.

For years, rising house prices hid the default problems since quick refinances were possible. But now that house prices have stopped rising, we can clearly see the damage caused by relaxed lending standards.

This damage was quite predictable: “After the warm and fuzzy glow of ‘flexible underwriting standards’ has worn off, we may discover that they are nothing more than standards that lead to bad loans . . . these policies will have done a disservice to their putative beneficiaries if . . . they are dispossessed from their homes.” I wrote that, with Ted Day, in a 1998 academic article.

Sadly, we were spitting into the wind.

These days, everyone claims to favor strong lending standards. What about all those self-righteous newspapers, politicians and regulators who were intent on loosening lending standards?

As you might expect, they are now self-righteously blaming those, such as Countrywide, who did what they were told.

Stan Liebowitz is the Ashbel Smith professor of Economics in the Business School at the University of Texas at Dallas.




Monday, September 29, 2008
Obama - ACORN Root Causes of Mortgage Crisis? #ACORN
by Alan Gottlieb, AmeriPac: FBI Investigates U.S. Financial Crisis - Where Did $1 Trillion Go? - The high-risk subprime mortgage social engineering community service experiment by left-wing ACORN and Obama has created the largest financial crisis since The Great Depression. The full reach of the corruption and scandal may never be known but those who created it must not be rewarded. The architects, primarily left-wing Democrats, created laws, took donations, looked the other way and instead were too busy overse eing donations to their own presidential campaigns and robbing main street blind. Now these same left-wing Democrats blame everyone else and get up on their high horses and say, “we are here to save you” from the crises they created.

Yes, Mr. Obama knows a great deal about the mess. He is a central figure in the left-wing ACORN exploitation of financial institutions and pressuring them to make high risk loans. The very same left-wing ACORN was guilty of voter fraud in the last presidential election. Now these same Democrats want to do another high risk “community service,” social engineering experiment. They want to elect a high-risk, low experience, socialist one of the same community organizers that created the mess to be our next president. We cannot experiment with the office of president and learn as we go. Barack Obama is not qualified and has no history of success as a leader in government or business.

The FBI investigation - An FBI investigation is under way at Lehman Brothers and three other contributors to America’s financial crisis to determine whether they put pressure on ratings agencies to award top ratings to securities they issued. Concerns that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG or Lehman may have sought to encourage agencies to inflate their ratings — by offering higher fees or the promise of more work — form part of a broad inquiry by the bureau.

The agencies are widely regarded as having failed debt holders by attributing the top ratings to many securities that turned out to be extremely risky and have lost investors hundreds of billions of dollars. The FBI, which is also investigating whether any of the four institutions deliberately misled investors about the true health of their assets, is expected to demand that they “hold all papers and e-mails under lock and key” as it sifts through the evidence, a source said.

How did we get here? - FOLLOW THE MONEY AND CORRUPTION! A Lending Policy created by democrats for democrats run by democrats monitored by democrats enforced by community organizer democrats and profited from by democrats. Fannie and Freddie acted in response to Clinton administration pressure to boost homeownership rates among minorities and the poor. However compassionate the motive, the result of this systematic disregard for normal credit standards has been financial disaster. ONE key pioneer of ACORN's subprime-loan shakedown racket was Madeline Talbott - an activist with extensive ties to Barack Obama. She was also in on the ground floor of the disastrous turn in Fannie Mae's mortgage policies.

Obama Trains ACORN Staff in Shakedown Tactics - It would be tough to find an "on the ground" community organizer more closely tied to the subprime-mortgage fiasco than Madeline Talbott. And no one has been more supportive of Madeline Talbott than Barack Obama. When Obama was just a budding community organizer in Chicago, Talbott was so impressed that she asked him to train her personal staff. He returned to Chicago in the early '90s, just as Talbott was starting her pressure campaign on local banks. In those years, he also conducted leadership-training seminars for ACORN's up-and-coming organizers. That is, Obama was training the army of ACORN organizers who participated in Madeline Talbott's drive against Chicago's banks.

Obama Funds ACORN - More than that, Obama was funding them. As he rose to a leadership role at Chicago's Woods Fund, he became the most powerful voice on the foundation's board for supporting ACORN and other community organizers. In 1995, the Woods Fund substantially expanded its funding of community organizers - and Obama chaired the committee that urged and managed the shift.

That committee's report on strategies for funding groups like ACORN features all the key names in Obama's organizer network. The report quotes Talbott more than any other figure; Sandra Maxwell, Talbott's ACORN ally in the bank battle, was also among the organizers consulted. More, the Obama-supervised Woods Fund report acknowledges the problem of getting donors and foundations to contribute to radical groups like ACORN - whose confrontational tactics often scare off even liberal donors and foundations.

Indeed, the report brags about pulling the wool over the public's eye. The Woods Fund's claim to be "nonideological," it says, has "enabled the Trustees to make grants to organizations that use confrontational tactics against the business and government 'establishments' without undue risk of being criticized for partisanship."

Obama Aware of Intimidation Tactics - The Woods Fund report makes it clear Obama was fully aware of the intimidation tactics used by ACORN's Madeline Talbott in her pioneering efforts to force banks to suspend their usual credit standards. Yet he supported Talbott in every conceivable way. He trained her personal staff and other aspiring ACORN leaders, he consulted with her extensively, and he arranged a major boost in foundation funding for her efforts.

And, as the leader of another charity, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Obama channeled more funding Talbott's way - ostensibly for education projects but surely supportive of ACORN's overall efforts. In return, Talbott proudly announced her support of Obama's first campaign for state Senate, saying, "We accept and respect him as a kindred spirit, a fellow organizer." In short, to understand the roots of the subprime mortgage crisis, look to ACORN's Madeline Talbott. And to see how Talbott was able to work her mischief, look to Barack Obama.

[Phatmax]

Obama, a graduate of Harvard Law School then fresh from his Project Vote! experience, represented ACORN in the Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Federal Savings Bank case, in which ACORN pressed for Citibank to make more loans to marginally qualified African-American applicants "in a race neutral way."

After obtaining a settlement in the Citibank litigation, ACORN used its subsidiary organization ACORN Housing, a nationwide organization with offices in more than 30 U.S. cities, to push the group's radical agenda to get subprime home buyers mortgages under the most favorable terms possible.

[winmutt]

LOL... Redlining is discriminatory and shouldn't be allowed, ACORN was doing the right thing.

Your data is incomplete and flawed by tunnel vision. The number of foreclosures under CRA regulated mortgages is MUCH smaller than those that were issued after the SEC allowed smaller banks to issue subprime mortgages with no oversight. Those would never have happened if W's SEC had not created the loophole to escape regulation. It was only more aggravated when W's SEC then allowed the lending companies that were backing the subprime market to over extend their own leverage ratios. Lets not even talk about the sham insurance that had no regulatory oversight and was being used to get those lending companies better ratings than they deserved.

You need to do much much much more research.

[Phatmax]

LOL... Redlining is discriminatory and shouldn't be allowed, ACORN was doing the right thing.

Your data is incomplete and flawed by tunnel vision. The number of foreclosures under CRA regulated mortgages is MUCH smaller than those that were issued after the SEC allowed smaller banks to issue subprime mortgages with no oversight. Those would never have happened if W's SEC had not created the loophole to escape regulation. It was only more aggravated when W's SEC then allowed the lending companies that were backing the subprime market to over extend their own leverage ratios. Lets not even talk about the sham insurance that had no regulatory oversight and was being used to get those lending companies better ratings than they deserved.

You need to do much much much more research.


I have to go to the doc's, but bring out some articles about that. I would like to find out more.

[winmutt]

I posted this abotu 3 database crashes ago heheheh.

http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2008/11/11/The-End-of-Wall-Streets-Boom/?page=0

That pretty much covers the whole insurance / credit default swaps end of it all.

Wikipedia has pretty good stuff on CRA it and the references it cite are all pretty decent:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act

Particularly :


In 2002 there was an inter-agency review of the effectiveness of the 1995 regulatory changes to the Community Reinvestment Act and new proposals were considered.[40] In 2003, researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York noted that dramatic changes in the financial services landscape had weakened the CRA, and that in 2003 less than 30 percent of all home purchase loans were subject to intensive review under the CRA.[66]

As much as I point the finger at W, it wasn't him. It was under his watch and by his appointees and a culture of corruption on Wall St.

Every US citizen wants a house and a white picket fence, that is why it is the American Dream. Redlining is very much the downfall of that dream and at it's heart anti American. With it cities will never be great, without great cities America will only continue to lose its grip on #1. It prevents people who would qualify for a loan from ever getting one because of where they live, not because of who they are or their worth on paper. Redlining makes bad areas only get worse.

The CRA did more to reinforce our countries infrastructure than any other act since FDR. Whether or not you agree with the legacy there is no arguing against it. In the late 70's and 80's EVERY city in America was crumbling. Since CRA there has been a huge rejuvenation of most of those cities, without CRA it would never have happened.

[Phatmax]

I posted this abotu 3 database crashes ago heheheh.

http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2008/11/11/The-End-of-Wall-Streets-Boom/?page=0

That pretty much covers the whole insurance / credit default swaps end of it all.

Wikipedia has pretty good stuff on CRA it and the references it cite are all pretty decent:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act

Particularly :



As much as I point the finger at W, it wasn't him. It was under his watch and by his appointees and a culture of corruption on Wall St.

Yeah, I really think that the FED is doing a lot of sh!t in the backroom related to politics instead of just dealing with money. Trillions given to unknown places during the bailouts and they REFUSE even now to tell us who...?

Hinky shit.

The whole mortgage thing is very complex, but the act of suing banks to force them to loan to people who can't afford it? Shakedown, a'la Jesse Jackson. And quite handy to have people like Dodd and Frank pulling strings at Freddie and Fannie at the same time.

[Dan43]

It was ACORN and community organizers that forced lenders to loosen their standards.

One Organizer in particular.
ACORN and community organizers do not pass regulations. They lack the power to FORCE lenders to do a damn thing. The execs who gave in to the pressure did so ONLY because they saw an opportunity to make a huge short term gain (and the bonus check to go with it) secure in the knowledge that they would have their personal money in the bank by the time the house of cards they were building collapsed.

[Troutman]

ACORN and community organizers do not pass regulations. They lack the power to FORCE lenders to do a damn thing. The execs who gave in to the pressure did so ONLY because they saw an opportunity to make a huge short term gain (and the bonus check to go with it) secure in the knowledge that they would have their personal money in the bank by the time the house of cards they were building collapsed.


Well Said

[MrBlah]

cra loans also require full documentation and income verification, you don't qualify if you don't meet all the requirements, debt ratios and income.

the crap that got us in trouble, no doc loans, no income verification, arms that people could barely afford before resets, the worse the terms, the more profit was made. None of that is/were/are CRA loans. Once everything started to crash, then good people got caught up because of unemployment or underemployment and it domino'ed from there

[Troutman]

I was lent 160k with only a letter that I was getting a 36k a year job, think about that.

[MrBlah]

that's crazy, in my opinion that loan underwriter was defrauding his banks shareholders all in the name of his % cut

[Troutman]

that's crazy, in my opinion that loan underwriter was defrauding his banks shareholders all in the name of his % cut

Guess who owns the loan?

[Karl Hungus]

If you get paid to originate loans that you're going to sell you don't care if it ever gets paid back.

If you can package up a bunch of crap loans and get Moody's to give it a AAA rating and sell it as some kind of security you don't care if it ever gets paid back.

If you can buy insurance from AIG in case the investment goes bad, you don't care if the loan ever gets paid back.

And the taxpayers got left holding the bag.

This isn't capitalism anymore. It's robbery. People should be in jail.

[winmutt]

This isn't capitalism anymore. It's robbery. People should be in jail.
Ding Ding Ding we have a winner.

[wallypiper]

Who stole from whom?

[02ep3]

I'm guessing they're construing it as robbery in so far as there were: very shady things going on during the bubble (recently repo 105) resulting in significant profits which benefited those by "earning" them large bonuses. Those profits turned out to be mostly illusionary and as a result of the bailout, the ultimate theft was from the taxpayer. Many of these institutions were saved by and continue to rely upon the graces of the tax payer and as such, the theft may be interpreted as continuing.

One might call this theft. Regardless of what you call it, a minoirty profited, the collective paid for it, no one has gone to (or appears to be going to) jail. Pretty frustrating.

[wallypiper]

I guess it's frustrating. But, really, anybody that bought real estate in the last 5 years, maybe 10, had to know that the appreciation that was happening was not normal and a correction had to be coming. And that includes me. I bought a house in 2004. And I knew that, historically, houses increase in value at about the inflation rate. Which is what should happen, really. There's no reason why a house should be worth more next year, in inflation adjusted dollars, than it's worth this year. In fact, since it will be older, it should be worth less than a comparable new house. But we all got on the ride and now we're all getting dinged to one degree or another. I'm sure there were people out there saying that all along but they were getting drowned out by all the people that were getting fat on the fallout - lenders, investors, builders, brokers, agents, material suppliers and others. And the buyers, including me, that wanted in on the party.

[MrBlah]

meh I bought in 2001 and it's worth less now, only equity we took out, was put back into the house, unless you lived in California that bubble was not too bad back then

[wallypiper]

I'm confused. Your house is worth less on the market 8 years after you bought it and "that bubble was not too bad back then". What do you mean?

[MrBlah]

I'm confused. Your house is worth less on the market 8 years after you bought it and "that bubble was not too bad back then". What do you mean?

look at the home value charts, zillow is the easiest, it's pretty clear when the bubble here started to rise faster than it should have
http://www.zillow.com/app?chartDuration=10years&chartType=detailed&cityRegionId=-1&component=ZestimateChart&countyRegionId=553&lastSaleDate=1031122800000&nationRegionId=102001&neighborhoodRegionId=-1&page=Charts&service=chart&showCity=true&showCounty=true&showHome=false&showNation=false&showNeighborhood=false&showPercent=false&showSales=true&showState=false&showZip=true&stateRegionId=16&zipRegionId=70984&zpid=71361477

[MrBlah]

I think this graph represents what happened better, 10 years of value erased and reset to a sane value, this is in % fulton county

if you bought when I did, late 2001, your value is almost where it should be now if values increased like they should have

http://www.zillow.com/app?chartDuration=10years&chartType=detailed&cityRegionId=16733&component=ZestimateChart&countyRegionId=1020&lastSaleDate=909734400000&nationRegionId=102001&neighborhoodRegionId=-1&page=Charts&service=chart&showCity=false&showCounty=true&showHome=false&showNation=false&showNeighborhood=false&showPercent=true&showSales=false&showState=false&showZip=false&stateRegionId=16&zipRegionId=70792&zpid=65452525

[wallypiper]

Your chart shows a DECREASE in value from late 2001 to now, roughly flat to the middle of 2009 and then a little drop since then. The CPI is up about 21% over the same time. Housing is part of the CPI, however, so if you take housing out the CPI it would increase even more over that time. So the value of your house should have increased more than 20% since 2001, maybe 25%. That means the correction has "overshot", with prices dropping lower than they should have. That's almost certainly due to the huge inventory of homes on the market and prices will probably normalize one that inventory gets absorbed.

[MrBlah]

Your chart shows a DECREASE in value from late 2001 to now, roughly flat to the middle of 2009 and then a little drop since then. The CPI is up about 21% over the same time. Housing is part of the CPI, however, so if you take housing out the CPI it would increase even more over that time. So the value of your house should have increased more than 20% since 2001, maybe 25%. That means the correction has "overshot", with prices dropping lower than they should have. That's almost certainly due to the huge inventory of homes on the market and prices will probably normalize one that inventory gets absorbed.

those charts are not my house, they are the county averages

[wallypiper]

So? You said "I bought in 2001 and it's worth less now, only equity we took out, was put back into the house, unless you lived in California that bubble was not too bad back then ". Your house is worth less, in dollars, today than it was worth in 2001 and yet you say the bubble was not too bad. The charts don't go back far enough to show what was happening before you bought your house but I made 388% from 1987 to 2001. I would call that pretty bubbly. The CPI over that time only went up 156%. That was in Dekalb County but not in a particularly hot area. It was near PDK on a street changing from single family homes on big lots to McMansions on postage stamps.