According to an article recently passed around the office at Empowered Investor Network, the recovery-that-wasn’t in the housing industry has been confirmed as dead-on-arrival. Cheerleaders in the Obama administration got a little giddy when they thought that slight upward trend in some areas in late 2009 portended that the housing bust was over and happy days were here again. Turns out the jigs they were dancing in the Oval Office were slightly premature, at least according to new Standard & Poor Case-Shiller national home price index, a set of statistics that monitor a 20 city composite index of house prices from around the country.
The reality of the situation is that the first quarter number for 2011 (138.16) is even lower than what was previously considered to be the low point of the rotten market (139.26) set in early 2009. Where does this leave us? Right smack dab back in the middle of a virulent housing crisis. Powered by first-time home buyer tax credits that ended in April of 2009, we thought we had the beginnings of a modest recovery but David Blitzer, spokesman for Standard & Poor, put a new spin on the situation with the following statement.
“The rebound in prices seen in 2009 and 2010 was largely due to the first-time home buyers tax credit,” said Blitzer. “Excluding the results of that policy, there has been no recovery or even stabilization in home prices during or after the recent recession.”
What’s the real problem behind this seemingly perpetually stalled American economy? Republican presidential candidate, Rick Santorum, has a few ideas that the culprit can be found hiding under a desk at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC. “When you have a president who’s just fixated on centralizing more power in Washington, D.C., making crony capitalism decisions as to who the winners are and who the losers are, that’s going to have an impact on our economic growth and those jobs,” said Santorum, a former two-term senator from Pennsylvania.
But it’s not all doom and gloom, especially to those who have been following our thoughts on the matter. The time has never been more right for income property investors to step in and buy as much property as they can afford, providing the deal is right, of course. If you want to load up on how to begin your own profitable property investing portfolio, watch for our twice-yearly educational event, the Meet the Masters of Income Property Investing.
The Creating Wealth Team
Flickr / leyla.a
