RE This Week, plus a belated election note.

11 foreclosures and 215 homes for sale. A drop-off in FCs and and increase in the inventory of person to person homes. Some prognostication: When we get into single digits for FCs and back to under 75 in existing homes, we'll be looking past the worst times, which I think we are in now, given that we are a few months past the peak selling season of spring/summer, given that the teaser rates for the exotic mortgages are in the process or resetting (a process that should essentially finish by next spring), and another couple of months (especially past the holidays) and we should see what the bailout's effect on the loan market will be). Keep your fingers crossed since it's our money that's being used in this insane trickle-up gamble. 

On the other hand, if the economy keeps tanking (with the CRE problems, the chapter 11s in retail, and the layoffs throughout the finance sector, and, locally, GM shutting down operations in Newark), I don't see how any kind of government incentives (except a massive infrastructure spending plan that actually puts people to work and generates income that could be invested in homes again) can help us speed through this necessary correction.

And by correction, I mean to indicate that it was apparent back in 2005 or early 2006 that home prices were beginning to bear little to no relationship with incomes. A correction was necessary. However, combining the correction with the other economic conditions--especially the mortgage problems tanking, mortgage problems that had a position in the causal effect of the home price-escalation, and not insignificantly, the billion a month Iraq is costing us, the tax cuts on the richest, precisely when we most need government revenues, and the huge trade deficit of Bush II--suggest to this observer that home prices will stay flat or drop another ten or so percent until the 2011 spring season when we will see an increase in sales and a decrease in inventory. 

This is fairly optimistic given the reality that the Mid-Atlantic area was not troubled too much in the price run-up and so our fall-off is less severe (if you don't have to sell your house, that is) than places in Florida, CA, AZ, etc...

Oh, congrats to the winners in the recent election. Pitts ran a fair campaign. John Lawrence tried a last-minute smear of his opponent, claiming that he was pro-legalization of marijuana because he was a defense lawyer.  Nice to see him lose Art Hershey's vacant seat.