Juggling Dynamite

Investor demand, large and small, put a floor on home prices after the housing crash and ignited a recovery. While institutional investors made up a small percentage of those home buyers, they have garnered the most attention because of the bulk purchases they made and because they are a new entrant to the housing market. The concern now is what will happen if and when they decide to pull out? Here is a direct video link.

What about all those regular folks looking for a place to call home that traditionally have provided organic demand for housing?… Well as we mentioned earlier here, stagnant incomes, crippling debt and rising rates have prompted mortgage applications to flat-line over the past 4 years to 1995 levels before the credit bubble began. So thanks to the Hedge Fund speculators and “QE liquidity” for driving prices up double digit in many housing markets over the past couple of years.  But then again higher prices only mean even fewer people can afford the rents today never mind the mortgage payments needed to take those houses off the Hedgies…holding unrewarding “investments” is unlikely to be a popular strategy for long.

Chart source: Bloomberg via zerohedge

Giving apartments to homeless people who’ve been on the streets for years before they’ve received treatment for drug or alcohol problems or mental illness may not sound like a wise idea. But that’s what’s being done in cities across America in an approach that targets those who’ve been homeless the longest and are believed to be at greatest risk of dying, especially with all of this cold weather.

They’re people who once might have been viewed as unreachable. But cities and counties affiliated with a movement known as the 100,000 Homes Campaign have so far managed to get 80,000 of them off the streets. Local governments and non-profit groups do most of the work. The money comes mostly from existing federal programs and private donations, and there’s evidence that this approach saves taxpayers money. Here is a direct video link.

Also see: Anderson Cooper: how I see homeless people now

All the talk, talk, talk, about Central Banks “saving” the economy and consumers getting stronger and “taper isn’t tighter”…one might easily get the impression that consumer spending constraints have been loosening the past year. And yet incomes have continued to stagnate, savings are stuck near nil, debt levels remain peaked and daily consumption (food, gas, borrowing costs) have all spiked higher once more on QE’ternity. Gee with “help” like this, who needs enemies?