Someone rooting for us.

rose-colored-coolaid

Just saw this article on slate.

This article is basically an argument why foreclosures can in fact be a good thing. Some key quotes.

None of these foreclosed houses is going to disappear. After a foreclosure, one family moves out, and another moves in. We see the sad faces of the people moving out, but we don't as often see the happy faces of the new homeowners moving in. Nevertheless, those happy faces are out there, and we should not discount them.

All it takes is the simple observation that there cannot be more homeowners than there are homes, and if one home becomes vacant, then there can be one new homeowner. Call it the law of conservation of homes.

If you get to live in a nice home for a few years and then lose it to foreclosure, you are not worse off than someone who never got to live in a nice home in the first place.

sniglet

I wouldn't go so far as to say that we should rejoice to have foreclosures, and that they are a net benefit to society and the economy. Frankly, we would have been better off never having leant large sums to people who couldn't pay it off to begin with. The global economy would be SO much more productive if we hadn't had all the mal-investment in residential dwellings due to the easy credit sloshing about in the last 20 years.

That said, foreclosures are by far the best way to work the excesses out of the system, and get us back to a rational economy. We certainly don't have to view foreclosures like the plague.

ira s

In some cities, some blocks have a bunch of empty, foreclosed houses. That would be a bad thing...
It just seems kinda cold to feel like " eh, somebody gets kicked out, somebody else moves in."
But foreclosures, when there are enough of them, put a damper on house prices, and that, in my opinion, is a good thing.

rose-colored-coolaid

Actually, I think the article is not so much arguing how great foreclosures are. Rather, it's arguing how bad they aren't. We see the sad families leaving the house they never really could have afforded and are expected to be empathetic. While ignoring the fact that those people's greed pushed up prices and damaged those of us who lived within their means. The foreclosure is nothing more than a reversion, and for that reason I don't feel bad at all when people lose their house.

Now, if the people did their homework, bought something they could afford and then had a major illness in the family eat up all their income. I feel sorry for them when they foreclose. But I have to imagine that's the minority right now.