[quote author="Soylent Green Is People" date=1255142970]What we're seeing in the trenches goes like this:
SS Accepted sales price: $425k
Loans: $400k 1st, $150k 2nd.
Appraisal: $390k
The 1st TD is still somewhat in the clear. They knuckle down and accept the $390k appraisal so they can get out of Dodge.
The 2nd counters saying they want the buyer to take the $390k price, but pay $10k towards the sellers payoff. The 2nd holds the entire deal hostage. Most buyers walk.
House eventually sells for $400k or so to all cash or goes to foreclosure because of the unwilliness of parties to realize they are hosed with no great way out of this. Thats how things are now. What might happen in the future is capitulation on the part of Jr lien holders or 1st TD holders in the same predicament. "Capitulation" at the point of Government intervention. The only other path then are BK Cram Downs which would open up a land rush evironment within our court system.
My .02c
Soylent Green Is People.</blockquote>
Soylent - May I respectfully suggest that government intervention will not help, and in reality will only cost more. It will cost the taxpayers instead of the banks or the borrowers, and the end result will be more harmful than helpful and more expensive than the original write down.
For example, consider the $8,000 tax credit. It costs approx $50,000 for each home to be bought that otherwise would not have been bought, because all the folks who would have bought anyways also get the $8,000. That $50,000 is reflected in a false appreciated price of the homes being sold/bought and is actually borrowed money. It does nothing to relieve the problem which is debt, not foreclosure. Home prices would be less and more affordable without the $8,000/$50,000 tax credit. The government solution is exacerbating the very problem it purports to solve, and it will result in more foreclosures.
There is no government solution to these problems. These problems were created by government intervention in the marketplace, ie. fed manipulated interest rates and fractional reserve banking. The more folks rely on the government to solve a problem that the government created, does not know how to solve, and does not exist to solve, the worse these problems will get and the longer the pain will last.
There is <strong>NO</strong> government solution. The solution is foreclosure, bankruptcy, and the free market.