Do you ever find yourself screaming while watching the news or listening to talk radio or reading the headlines? By Vito Simone
If you're anything like me, you just scratch your head and wonder where they get this stuff from. I wonder what questions they are answering when the answers seem so far from the questions people are asking.
We NEED people to buy homes - the ultimate buy American product.
When it comes to cars - we convinced people to buy SUV's because we made it easy and cheap for people to do so. Let's do the same with a more energy efficient car - result is more car sales!
Keep it simple and to the point: We need people to buy homes and cars again.
In order to help people buy, you have to help sellers to sell. Why are we so convinced we should shoot ourselves in the foot and derail buyers because we think certain sellers ‘do not deserve' to be helped?
Why do we care if we end up helping lenders or sellers we don't want to help in order to protect the rest of us? In order to give the rest of us a chance to make the best purchase of real estate and lock in the lowest interest rates in generations?
The government and other institutions have us convinced that we cannot afford to have banks or other institutions fail. Whether you agree with that or not is not the point. Don't be distracted by this public discussion. We need to focus on helping the people who need help instead of looking for ways to get people to help the institutions by paying more and more taxes and doing with less and less, while convincing us that it is in our best interest to do so.
5 Steps that make a difference to people:
1. Help people who want to sell and get out from under a house they cannot afford - even if it means a Short Sale and having the lender forgive (write off) a portion of their loan.
2. Provide cash at time of closing for people who buy homes that do not exceed 30% of their gross monthly income and who get low fixed rate mortgages.
3. Government to offer "bailout" money to mortgage insurers, lenders and sellers in order to share the loss (instead of giving away billions to institutions).
4. Offer tax credits for people who buy energy efficient cars while preventing auto manufacturers from excessive profiteering.
5. Impose new Usury limits (lower interest rates) on credit card companies to remove the incentive for them to give credit cards to people who should not get them and to promote more responsible use of credit cards.
These steps will lower everyone's cost of living while keeping buyers in the market for houses and cars. We need the average person to be able to take advantage of opportunities to buy smart in a buyer's market...we need to stand up for each other during a time when our country's leadership is grasping at straws.
NEXT POST TO DISCUSS SHORT SALES
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