Stop Your Home Values Freefall

Home values have fallen dramatically and they continue to slide further and further south.  If you own a home, there is no doubt that you’ve felt this drop in equity.  One of the biggest reasons for the massive decline in home values is due to record levels of foreclosures.  Until the foreclosure problem is solved, there is going to be a continued drop in home values across neighborhoods.  Are you willing to use $300 billion of your tax payer money  to cure the disease of foreclosure and keep your house from losing it’s value?

The anger and frustration that many homeowners feel when presented with the idea of using their hard earned tax money to “bailout” homeowners is no doubt warranted.  I hear people ask why we should use our tax money to pay down the mortgages of people that are currently upside down in their home, furthermore why should we use our countries money to restructure loans to make homes more affordable to prevent eviction by banks.  If I’ve never missed a mortgage payment, why shouldn’t I  also get rewarded with a government bailout?  The only answer to this arguement is that it’s better then the alternative; continued depreciation of home values and increased foreclosure rates.  Would you pay a few thousand dollars worth of tax money to save Tens of thousands of dollars in reduction of your homes value?  Not to mention preventing economic slowdown, which has affected each one of us directly and indirectly.  Ultimately at the end of the day, if your neighbors home gets forclosed on and the bank unloads the property for much less then what it was purchased for, it will have a direct impact on the value of your home.  Even worse it could sit vacant for months and become run down while not being properly maintained.

I don’t think there is a perfect solution for this dillema, but I do believe it needs to be addressed.  Perhaps we should have a broad government program that rewards every homeowner and not just those that are facing foreclosure. Each and every homeowner would get a low fixed interest rate at current market levels. Right now the fact still remains that home values keep falling and until we stop the issue of foreclosure, they will continue slide.  Furthermore, until we stop the slide of home values we will continue to face economic uncertainty; at the end of the day is it worth $300 billion dollars to try and cure the problem?