National Association of Realtors: Listen Up!

Recently while browsing the channels looking for the weather forecasts as those with breathing difficulties can only know, I came across a new ad by the National Association of Realtors promoting home ownership and its benefits and "responsible" financial reform, and as one who has been burned by a home that in the end owned me rather than having really any ownership of it, was more than intrigued by the ad, its representations and tone.

It began by representing how for every home purchased, there are 2 jobs which result, creating millions of jobs for America. But at whose ultimate cost was left out of the equation.

That's right. The homeowners.

I'd say there are a multitude more all paid for by the home purchaser or seller.

First, of course, the realtor.

Due to ever restrictive state laws and provisions, the freedom to list your home and sell your own property through newspaper ads, "for sale" by owner, and other such economical means has been taken over by "the industry."

Add to those also who earn their incomes from the home buying public are the banks, title companies, lawyers, state (all those property taxes collected) and home repair and construction companies in those repairs also now mandated by state law in many states prior to listing a home for sale.

And don't forget the newest leaches on the eventual equity in your home.

The "homeowners association," which also due to state and federal laws are mandated for all new home construction also in most states throughout the nation.

With lien and seizure rights to your property in the event your standards for upkeep and maintenance don't meet theirs, or even one of your neighbors who just might be a realtor looking instead merely for a new listing.

A British law, the "law of servitudes" is being used in order to legitimize these "nonconsensual" contracts on your home and land many times.

Especially in these economic times.

Forget also selling a property "as is" as in the past, leaving the negotiating on the eventual price and repairs then to the buyer and seller.

The market is clearly speaking regarding the "changes" in the mortgage and home buying process that has occurred within the past several decades, and is clearly affecting the realtors and construction industry big time.

As far as the rest of the ad, representations were made insofar as how much wealth Americans have in their homes (ask the recent foreclosed upon "owners" of those properties where their wealth is now, some of whom in many states were not those that bought to flip those homes, but actually to live in them).

That wealth and home that will never be passed down to their children.

Promoting financial reform in the home buying process means confronting and addressing those escalating interest rates and changing terms due to the fact that the mortgage or loan you have today may not be the same next month, or even next week due to the fact that debt is now defined as a negotiable instrument that can be sold on the open market under different terms and conditions once that loan is "assumed" by another bank or mortgage lender.

Or that your loan may not even be based on the U.S. prime and currency, as many of those in the West and Southwest were but based on the British interbank lending rates or LIBOR.

Talk about risk.

I mean in the Southwest in this boomer's experience, this last cycle was the third simply in my lifetime of the most recent boom and bust cycle.

Home sweet home is not the phrase that comes to mind anymore to the many affected during this last one.

And the lesson was not lost on most of those of their posterity and next generation, I guarantee.

Junk fees, higher and higher utility bills and costs of ownership, escalating and changing mortgage terms and conditions, and a risky investment, not home, at best is the new definition.

National Association of Realtors: More Spins on The Housing Crisis

During the last week there has been a great deal of reporting on internet sources that the mortgage crisis and home foreclosure situation is looking up, and that there has been an increase in sales for the third straight month of homes sold throughout the nation.

And just where are those figures coming from?

No surprise, the National Association of Realtors who just might have an ulterior motive in spinning or inflating the numbers due to the market conditions at the present time, and number of jobless and homeless now which has swept the nation since the manipulated "mortgage" crisis and bank bailouts which just so happened to occur during the last presidential election cycle.

In fact, the June 19-21 headline of USA Today also said it all: "Foreclosures Heading Through The Roof."

More Americans are lining up at the soup kitchen, than at the realtors offices, since the homeless now and jobless stats are really off the charts and not this high since the last great depression, also manipulated by the European owned Federal Reserve, branch bankers and Washington.

As far as my personal knowledge and reports from my former home state of Arizona, one of the states hardest hit due to the boom and bust cycle and the many retirees on fixed incomes that also were hard pressed to come up with increasing property taxes and insurance which contributed to some of what is occurring also left out by the media, and those predatory "interest only" and other "creative" loans sold mostly by regional and national California domiciled banks.

Although the State of California doesn't share the entire blame for the now mostly Western and Southwestern home situation, since most of those loans were also underwritten with extra "propert stripping riders and provisos over and above the actual loan documents themselves by the governmentally created Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. How Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae could have been "bankrupt" at all due to some of those usurous loans and terms really is quite inconceivable as one who was forced into such a refinance position and had to refinance a home in 2004 can attest.

It would appear this claimed increase in sales and "recovery" appears to be wishful thinking.

In Arizona, California, Michigan, Nevada and Florida due to also progressive overbuilding in those states for literally decades, and now thousands unable to qualify for fixed rate low interest loans with black marks on their credit records at this point, it will take literally decades - if ever - for the housing market to stabilize, from this 45 year Arizona resident.

In those western border states now in particular, due to the open borders situation and escalating drug war violence which I'm sure that also has affected the marketability of those houses significantly, since who wants to live in a state in which there is a foreign invasion and civil wars now going on due to federal negligence in "providing for the common defense," its actual primary function. Instead of now attempting to "reform" the health care industry according to a "business" model ala Soylent Green and Adolph Hitler on cost/benefit actuary "business" modes and standards.

Plus the fact that few now in this country trust the banking industry now in general. Nor are willing to go into those sliding scale and interest only loans that they are still marketing, some of which are not even based on the U.S. prime interest rate, but the European market.

Nothing essentially has changed which lead to this catastrophe to begin with. And most in the World War II, boomer generation or younger have moral difficulties paying "usurous" sums in order to purchase a home, a home which is now in many areas of the country due to the loan terms and assundry restrictive "use" restrictions and additional costs and provisions, and associated junk fees and charges tacked on for those purchases, nothing more than a foreclosure contract to begin with.

So...nice try, realtors. Since a great many of you also pushed and marketed to many of those retirees and others more home than they really could afford in order to get higher commissions also in the process, the trust in your "industry" also now is about zilch.

Especially those of us who lost ours, and who have made sure we speak the truth, rather than the spins, on just what lead to this, and the commercial and banking interests that were truly responsible - of course, along with the criminal element now residing on Capitol Hill and in our state legislatures who have been in collusion with the corporate interests and their primary "special interest" campaign backers for literally decades.

And the National Association of Realtors is high up on that list also.

Along, of course, with the bankers and their minions - the foreclosure lawyers and scam artists and their breathren in federal and state government.