Housing Conflict And The Housing Crisis

However, hope might be on the horizon for the victims of the mortgage disaster of 2007/2008. Home buyers who were foreclosed upon years ago, or boomerang buyers, are beginning to be eligible to buy homes again. While some feel hope after feeling bamboozled by lenders and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, some feel anxious and fearful of the thought of buying again. Yet there are lessons that have been learned by the mortgage meltdown. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac provided a lesson for the

This paper will argue how Canada's housing market is at an all time high, we are known in Vancouver for having the most expensive housing market. This expensive market is not just a Vancouver problem, it is an issue growing through out the nation and is depriving the average citizen to be able to purchase a house in there life time. There is a major issue with the state of our market and how it effects out current citizens. Issues have been arising where the average wage in Vancouver is estimated at seventy seven thousand per family house hold, yet the average costing home as reached between five hundred thousand in the

The housing crisis of the late 2000s rocked the economy and changed the landscape of the real estate business for years to come. Decades of people purchasing houses unfordable houses and properties with lenient loans policies led to a collective housing bubble. When the banking system faltered and the economy wilted, interest rates were raised, mortgages increased, and people lost their jobs amidst the chaos. This all culminated in tens of thousands of American losing their houses to foreclosures and short sales, as they could no longer afford the mortgage payments on their homes. The United States entered a recession and homeownership no longer appeared to be a feasible goal as many questioned whether the country could continue to support a middle-class. Former home owners became renters and in some cases homeless as the American Dream was delayed with no foreseeable return. While the future of the economy looked bleak, conditions gradually improved. American citizens regained their jobs, the United States government bailed out the banking industry, and regulations were put in place to deter such events as the mortgage crash from ever taking place again. The path to homeowner ship has been forever altered, as loans in general are now more difficult to acquire and can be accompanied by a substantial down payment.

The American dream is all about stability. Owning a home, having a well-paying job, a yearly vacation and children are stages of the American dream. Above all of them, owning a house is the most important because that means one is secure and stable. My auntie, Evelyn, had reached the biggest stage of the American dream: owning a house. After hearing the good news my family and I planned to visit her and see the new house, but it was too late before we got see her new house: the value of her house dramatically decrease and my auntie was forsaken. So, she decided to let the bank take her house instead of making the house payments. Just like my auntie, Evelyn, many American families were affected by the financial crisis in 2007-2008. Although the financial crisis was a horrific experience, there are some positive aspects.

As we now know, the U.S. economy, the middle class, and its job growth was damaged by the overwhelming collapse of Wall Street, which was triggered by the downfall of the housing market and sub-prime loan defaults. One of the main things that need to be addressed in our economy today is the housing market and making sure that our banks and credit unions are not allowing people who do not have the necessary income to pay their mortgage disbursements. In an article entitled Thinking outside the Housing Bubble, the author John Vogel remarks how the economy is generally supported by the housing market. Vogel states:

The American dream is sought after by so many people within the United States. Many people spend an entire life time trying to build that dream and prepare for their retirement. The economic growth within the United States and our American government plays a big part in our future. In the past ten years, the American government has been on a roller-coaster with its housing market. The housing market started to go through a big decline in 2007; construction was falling at an all-time high. From 2000 to 2006 there were around 1.5 million homes that were built each and every year to replace the ones that were in disrepair. If the market was to keep the trend of 1.5 million homes

Statistically, one out of seven families live in severe physical deficient housing. In fact, the housing and stock market revealed in July of 2009 that the Great Recession further widened the gap and income disparity between the average, hard-working Americans and the top 1% of wealthy Americans. Edward N. Wolff suggests that the average American produced a massive 36.1% drop in overall marketable assets while the top 1% of wealthy Americans only lost 11.1%. This income gap disparity ensures that ever-increasing need for affordable housing as the economic crisis worsens.

The financial crisis emerged because of an excessive deregulation of business operation of financial institutions and of abusing the securitization mechanism in the absence of clearly defined rules to regulate this area in the American mortgage market (Krstić, Jemović, & Radojičić, 2013). Deregulation gives larger banks the opportunity to loosen underwriting lender guidelines and generate increase opportunity for homeownership (Kroszner & Strahan, 2013). After deregulation, banks utilized many versions of mortgage loans. Mortgage loans such as subprime and Alternative-A paper loans became available for borrowers challenged to find mortgage lenders before deregulation (Elbarouki, 2016; Palmer, 2015). The housing market has been severely affected by fluctuating interest rates and the requirement of large down payment (Follain, & Giertz, 2013). The subprime lending crisis has taken a toll on the nation’s economy since 2007. Individuals who lacked sufficient credit ratings or down payments resorted to subprime mortgages to finance their homes Defaults on subprime and other mortgages precipitated the foreclosure crisis, which contributed to the recent recession and national financial crisis (Odetunde, 2015). Subprime mortgages were appropriate for borrowers with substandard credit and Alternate-A paper loans were

Prior to the 2008 economic depression, obtaining a mortgage was relatively simple for home buyers. However, many of those mortgages had provisions that made it difficult for borrowers to repay their mortgages (“Dodd-Frank,” n.d.). As a result, many homeowners lost their homes when they were unable to repay their mortgages, which led to the real estate crisis. In 2010 the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act, also known as the Dodd-Frank Act, was enacted to reform how mortgage servicers vetted borrowers and to eliminate the use of predatory loan practices (Cheeseman, 2013, p. 485). Under the Dodd-Frank Act, creditors must establish borrower’s credit history, income and expected income, debt-to-income ratio, and other factors before

When the housing bubble burst in 2007, 7.3 million borrowers lost their homes due to foreclosure or short sale. These “boomerang buyers” are slowly but surely recovering from financial setbacks and reentering the housing market. Conventional lenders have seasoning requirements that prevent buyers from obtaining a new mortgage until they have repaired their credit: a seven-year window for foreclosures and four years for short sales.

The mortgage crisis we are experiencing in the United States today is already ranking as among the most serious economic events since the Great Depression of the 1930’s. Hardly a day goes by without a story in the newspaper or on the cable news stations reporting about the increase in the number of foreclosures across the United States. The effects of this crisis have spread across all financial markets, where in the end all of us are paying a price for this home mortgage crisis. When the housing market collapsed, so did the availability of credit which our economy depends upon. The home mortgage crisis, the financial crisis and overall economic crisis all need to address by the

For decades Americans couldn’t help but rejoice when they were able to own their very own home. The image of holding the keys and to quickly step foot into their home provided Americans with visons of prosperity. Many Americans whether poor, middle-class, or wealthy could now dream of endless possibilities when owning their very own home, as well as embracing a sense of accomplishment. These accomplishments or feelings were great at first; however, the realty for some Americans was that behind the glitz and glamor was a ticking time bomb. Now imagine the United States of America flourishing in the real estate sector and the US economy from Wall Street to individuals benefiting from the booming housing market. However, while all this was

The housing crisis is not random, but is the deliberate result of the social and structural institutions that create neighborhood racial inequalities. Discriminatory and unfair housing policies have existed for generations, but have recently taken shape in the form of the new Jim Crow which relies on law and order regulation to create new forms of discrimination in housing, education, and employment. This regulated discrimination can be seen through the recent surge in sub-prime mortgage lending that targeted inner-city and marginalized communities. To challenge the housing crisis, policymakers must answer the question of whether they are willing to take a stance and create an infrastructure that challenges discrimination and advocates for

It has been 7 years since the housing bubble burst and the financial systems collapsed back in 2008. Since then, some will say that the housing market, as a majority, has healed and regained footing but is that entirely accurate? It has been an up and down rollercoaster since the collapse of 2008, however the housing market has only started to recover within the past 2 years. “Right now, I would say we are 64% back to normal and a lot of what is driving the housing market’s strength is existing home sales, but prices have also helped push the recovery” (Jed Kolko, Trulia). As stated in the first paper, the housing bubble burst because of the increase in interest rates that put homeownership out of reach for some buyers. This ultimately caused homes to become unaffordable, leading to defaults, foreclosures, and short sales. More so, on December 30, 2008, the home price index reported the largest dip in home prices ever recorded, losing 33% from its 2006 peak to 2012. This financial crisis, unanticipated by most, caused the United States to go into a recession and has been known to be most significant risk to our economy. It was the beginning of last decade, 2000, when real estate prices rose at an unprecedented rate, subsequently leading to the bursting of the housing bubble starting in 2006.

One of the first indications of the late 2000 financial crisis that led to downward spiral known as the “Recession” was the subprime mortgages; known as the “mortgage mess”. A few years earlier the substantial boom of the housing market led to the uprising of mortgage loans. Because interest rates were low, investors took advantage of the low rates to buy homes that they could in return ‘flip’ (reselling) and homeowners bought homes that they typically wouldn’t have been able to afford. High interest rates usually keep people from borrowing money because it limits the amount available to use for an investment. But the creation of the subprime mortgage