Who should own a home? From the late 1960s to the mid-1990s, the answer in the U.S. was surprisingly consistent. Homeowners were savers who could muster significant down payments, with incomes solid enough to enable them to start repaying mortgages right away. During war, peace, boom times and recessions, the national rate of home ownership remained steady at 64 to 65 percent of households.
Starting in 1995, a home-ownership craze began. The belief took hold that rising home ownership meant a better society, no matter how fragile new buyers’ finances might be. Down payments started to matter much less; the same was true of income, which came to be ignored through no-documentation “liars’ loans.” By late 2004, a record 69.2 percent of American households owned their homes.
The U.S. housing market’s subsequent collapse has shown ubiquitous ownership to be a costly delusion. In the past nine quarters, more than 2.1 million homes have been foreclosed on. Lenders have lost countless billions of dollars in mortgage defaults or modifications. Yesterday brought news that the S&P/Case-Shiller index of urban home prices fell 3.6 percent in March from a year earlier, to the lowest level since 2003. The American housing slump isn’t finished yet.
A decade ago, three of the European countries with the fastest-growing rates of home ownership were Spain, Ireland and Greece. All three had boosted their rates above 80 percent, compared with a European average of 64 percent. Since then, each of those countries has become ensnarled in defaults, recessions and struggles to manage national debt. By contrast, Germany, with a home-ownership rate below 50 percent, has come through the upheaval essentially unscathed.
I would like to hear more information from your side.:))
ReplyDelete