Another argument to privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

"In other words, the private-label market might have rebounded more quickly in the absence of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac," according to the CBO.

If Congress was to take the step of privatizing the GSEs, the transition would have to be done carefully and slowly because Fannie and Freddie play such a dominant role in the mortgage market. Still, fully privatizing the secondary market would pose two risks: that the government may not fully be able to remove itself from rescuing companies that fail and that privatization would not ensure a "stable supply" of credit to housing in times of crisis.

 Some might argue that it's not up the federal government to ensure a stable secondary market.  And corrections in markets are sometimes healthy.  Finally, as taxpayers we should be concerned with this final analysis.

If investors still perceived the government would be willing to bail out firms considered too big to fail, institutions in the secondary mortgage market could continue taking excessive risks, exposing taxpayers even without Fannie and Freddie. 

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Foreclosures fall by record amount in November as lenders put brakes on

The word on the street is that with the new congress and higher rates that these foreclosures will increase in 2011.  BofA has already restarted foreclosures.

The lenders have already announced that they are restarting foreclosure activities, and they are going to have catch-up work to do," Sharga said. "It is very likely we are going to see accelerated foreclosure rates in the first quarter."

Several lenders announced partial freezes in October after admitting that they had employed so-called robo-signers — people who legally attested to the accuracy of foreclosure documents without reading them — in the states where the courts oversee the process.

In California, repossessions of homes in November plunged 40% from the previous month and 45% from November 2009, according to RealtyTrac.

Bank of America Corp. said last week that it was lifting its foreclosure freeze and began taking back some 16,000 properties nationally. The bank declared a freeze in October after it acknowledged that it had employed robo-signers.

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Housing Slump Offers Opportunity In Apartment-Building Market

Please note this is for out of California

"The pain was concentrated where we had gross overbuilding in overall housing: Florida, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Southern California, and to some degree smaller markets like Tucson, Charlotte and Atlanta," says Badji.

Marc Solomon, whose Solomon Organization owns 10,000 garden apartments in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania, says that it is difficult to find opportunities that make good business sense in his markets, which still offer slow, steady returns. "There's a lot of dollars out there chasing these deals," he says.

One of the reasons

"I don't think you're going to get fire-sale prices," he says. "But you can get that kind of return ahead of the job growth and ahead of the economic recovery."

Rental occupancy rates contracted dramatically during the recession, as people doubled up to save money and young adults boomeranged back home. Vacancies nationwide hit a high of 8 percent in the last quarter of 2009, according to real estate research company Reis.

But industry insiders argue that rentals will bounce back quickly and dramatically as well. Indeed, in the third quarter of this year, vacancies dropped to 7.2 percent, according to Reis

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Federal Debt and the Risk of a Fiscal Crisis

This is an excellent analysis of the possible consequences of Federal Debt on our financial system.  It's published from the Congressional Budget Office (C BO) and is a non-partisan analysis.  It's a sobering look of what we have borrowed just at the Federal level.

CBO Doc