Archives for Category "Economics"
August 13, 2007
Housing Panics and Such
I don't pretend to understand at all what is going on in the real estate sector and associated hedge funds and over-leveraged banks and so on and so forth. I do, though, understand that a whole mess of ARM rate resets are coming, and that this is likely to wreak havoc well beyond the subprime mortgage market. This comment at MeFi seems informed.We were offered an ARM when we first bought our house and we said, "hell no" even then. We've refinanced twice since and are at a nice low 30-year-fixed.
And here we will sit and sit and sit. Because even though we're talking to our real estate agents about selling/buying, given what I'm reading right now, that is just not going to happen anytime soon. Sitting tight seems to be the order of the day - and perhaps the order of the next couple of years.
What I don't know, though, is how bad it is or how bad it's going to get. And reading too many blogs such as Housing Panic and The Housing Bubble Blog really mess with one's peace of mind. I suspect things could get very ugly out there.
Add in peak oil and the lunatics running the U.S. asylum like it's the last days of the Roman Empire, and ... hmmm.... I think I need to go run a nice warm bath and crawl under the covers...
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