Media says 'Double Dip', thus we are

Housing Prices are now in double-dip...

"It's official.  Home prices have double dipped nationwide, now lower than their March 2009 trough, according to a new report from Clear Capital. " - CNBC

People have known this for awhile but it is now "official" because the good people at CNBC and other corporate media finally acknowledge it...

Continuing from CNBC..

"(The) national price drop is 4.9 percent quarterly and 5 percent year-over-year. National home prices have fallen 11.5 percent in the past nine months, a rate not seen since 2008. Add short sales, where the bank allows the borrower to sell for less than the value of the mortgage, and prices have nowhere to go but down."

The media didn't always provide this time of information as open and forthcoming...

Let's travel back in time a little bit.. to a time far far away when we were still fighting a war on terror, the economy was in really bad shape and the needs of Wall Street superseded the needs of Main Street...  2009

Reuters, April 28, 2009: Consumers, home prices boost recovery hopes -- "U.S. consumer confidence posted its biggest jump in more than three years in April while the slump in home prices showed signs of slowing in February, adding to hopes that the recession may be waning..."

~ Yes, happy days are here again...

Now let's time travel ahead a year..

Wall Street Journal, May 19, 2010:  Home Prices Projected to Begin Rebound in 2011 -- "U.S. home prices will begin a gradual recovery by next year, according to a survey of 92 economists and other housing analysts by MacroMarkets LLC... The analysts surveyed by MacroMarkets on average expect home prices, as measured by the S&P/Case-Shiller national index, to rise about 12% in the five years ending Dec. 31, 2014."

~ Either an ignorant prediction or an agenda-driven one...

continuing from WSJ...

"Excess inventories, including those from looming foreclosures, will pull prices down... (but) a rapidly recovering job market should soak up most of that supply."

Yes.. a 'rapidly recovering job market'.. Har Har

So why hasn't the housing market recovered?

For one thing, too much inventory, especially due to all the millions of foreclosures hitting the real estate market and competing with too many new homes built during the 2000-2008 period, and homeowners wishing to put their homes on the market.

The problem of housing glut could have been minimized if banks worked with underwater mortgagees to keep them in their homes by lowering the interest rate i.e. overall monthly payments or putting a moratorium on evictions... the banks chose not to.

Another reason is banks aren't lending.. they don't have to so they're not going to.  They make enough profit via the Fed's policy of Quantitative Easing to risk lending to everyday people who are more likely than not to be laid off and not re-pay.   And as we've said before, it is pretty difficult to generate enough money to put a down payment on a home or get approved for credit when you work at McDonalds or Foot Locker unless you're in management, and that's not what those job fairs were seeking.

Its slow.. its incremental.. but you're starting to see the mainstream media cover the Great Recession in a sincere, honest way... Remember, it took the newspapers of the Depression era three long years before they began acknowledging reality.  So be patient- truthful news is coming.. in drips and drabs.