Real Estate Outrage - Real Estate, Property Taxes and the Bailout

Where is the moral outrage? Both presidential candidates are filled with lobby money, one with a quasi Marxist agenda, the other with quasi free market agenda and both sleepwalking through a financial dilemma that attacks every property taxpayer and American.

Selling an expensive assets such as a homes to those who are unprepared financially to deal with making mortgage payments, insurances and property taxes is foolish. But that is exactly what president Jimmy Carter did by passing legislation encouraging such loans. This started the disconnect between reason and reality and utter foolishness. Political meddling into economic issues and sound lending practices kills the golden goose every time.

With the Clintons in the White House, the problem skyrocketed. They passed legislation punishing the mortgage companies if they did not lend to high-risk borrowers. They put laws with penalties in them thus encouraging easy credit with eyes shut to risk. Sound lending practices were thrown out the window.

Who bought these artificial high risk loans? Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac. They, furthermore, became a source for sending political contributions to politicians encouraging this bad credit homeownership cancer to keep growing. Mortgage company lobbies' handed over hundreds of millions of dollars to politicians' greed in order to perpetuate this circus even as residents of high-foreclosure neighborhoods suffered additional pain from high property taxes.

Insurance companies insured these bogus loans. AIG and others evaluated this risk. Their leverage was originally set at 12 to one. They too threw million in lobby money at Congress, then the asked for a 30 to 1 leverage and further increased risk. This pumped up and dramatically increased their profits by large proportions while the real estate market was going up.

This fraud was given the stamp of approval by chief economists Greenspan and Bernanke and the ship of fool's balloon took off. Socialist organizations such as Acorn (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) and other related groups pressured banks into giving even more misguided loans.

SEC Chairman, Banking Committee Chairman, The House Finance Chief and scores of public official's rubber stamped this cancer because of the easy lobby money directed at them. Greed for lobby money tempers sound judgment it seems. The only way to end this type of self perpetuating system is to put anyone who accepts lobby money into prison and banish them from government service.

Hot air balloons have a way of crashing when their fuel runs out. When the rise in real estate prices came to a halt and the value of real estate assets declined combined with a foreclosure explosion, the market imploded. The government created the problem and a 700 billion dollar bailout (laden with funding for pork projects) is meaningless. The credit boom is finished. But, where is the outrage?

The other news: Lower real estate prices has many towns raising tax rates to compensate for lower assessments. If you compare your home's value to comparative values of recently sold homes there is a good chance you qualify for a property tax appeal. At least, you should investigate whether you have a case.