Yea, and facelifts make people look younger.
The number of vacant homes, in my opinion, probably tops 25 million and could approach 30 million. I arrived at this by taking the NAR data point of 18.6 million and extrapolating a "Liars Loan" figure of at least 6 million mortgages where the applicant lied on their application that they intended to live in the home, when in fact they were speculating. I would be willing to bet that between Florida and California alone that the number of empty home owned by speculators that lied about their intentions tops 3 million units.
None of these homes are going to sell anywhere close to their mortgage debt.
WHAT IF:
Oil pricecs rise, the economy contracts further, the 25,000,000 homes are foreclosed on, each for $100,000 loss.
Hmmm... 25,000,000 x 100,000 = 2,500,000,000,000 or $2.5 Trillion!!!
Yea, I know it won't work out in such round numbers, maybe the average loss on the 25million vacant homes is only $50,000... then again, maybe they cannot sell them at any price and the write down is $250,000 per home.
Don't beat me about the gross oversimplication of this, I got it, I got it, already! But sometimes simple models really do work rather well....
Just a thought....
Mentatt (at) yahoo (d0t) com
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