Testify For My Victims

There are 29 new foreclosure listings in our local Elk Grovian newspaper today, alongside 44 others amongst the 6 pages of legal notices. All listed right behind the local sports coverage. I wonder -- how many prospective major league athlete's families drove away from Elk Grove over the past three years? But I digress...

The striking difference with these new listings is that many are now for housal units sold in 2007 and 2008; that is, after the initial crash. These people at least had the sense to wait out the manic equity boom, yet still they find themselves now 2-3 years later underwater, or for whatever reasons they choose they are deciding to drive away from their mortgages.

Another thirty odd units will soon be available here in our fine city. Wonder who will snatch these up, huh? Investors? New, newer entrants into the housal unit shell game? Will they find themselves foreclosing in 2013/2104 if unit values happen to fall another 10/15/20%? If prices continue to fall why wouldn't they? They got upwards of $18,000 in credits to move in to a new unit this past year, credits that were used against their down payment requirements, but there's no reason to think they'll ride out a price drop. Wouldn't they also consider driving away?

Isn't it at all possible, at all, that we might not see any property appreciation for a decade? That we might still see a decrease? Granted, I am personally wishing for such an outcome for reasons previously stated here on my Monologues but truthfully, I don't expect it. The wish for economic disaster, not for disaster's sake but for the resulting change in American behavior is what I'm after, and as a consequence I seek out news stories/blogs/articles that reinforce this wish. This is just like religion, where people group together under a common belief system as it reinforces their own faith. Testify.

But I'm wise enough to understand this phenomeon. I wish for it, yes, but I'm wise enough to take in all viewpoints. In that regard I must say that I think we are well off the mark for any true economic collapse and I will have lost, in that my depression I so longed for will probably fail to materialize, and my hope for a renewed post-depression America will soon get drowned out by the thrum of a thousand bulldozers when we resume our Elk Grovian suburban sprawl building to the Consumnes River.

29 new "victims" who've lost the American Dream of housal unit ownership with a patch of grass and a two/three car garage.