patrick.net

As I am sure most readers of Patrick (and Dr. Housing Bubble / Irvine H.B.) know, there are loads of properties out there that banks are silently holding as part of their extend-pretend strategy. While their books contain toxic assets, there will be associated costs. When they sell these toxic assets, they still usually lose some money. Ultimately, it seems like us taxpayers are responsible for footing this bill. Certainly, unwitting investors in MBS trash also pay a price, but given the massive bailouts & behavior of the Fed, it seems like banks are mostly covering losses with money stolen from The People.

In having conversations with coworkers & friends, it seems that the majority of people are largely oblivious to all of this. Folks that bought houses seem the most out of touch with with happenings in the RE world. I cannot say I blame them, particularly since many bought houses in the last decade. When you were a kid and though that there was a monster under the bed, you pulled the covers over your head & pretended it wasn't there. I think that the same psychological mechanism exists for loanowners today, and I certainly cannot blame them. At the same time, a number of potential buyers seem clueless about the reality of things. They "research" purchases through real estate agents and generally seem to trust them. Really, the biggest issue I see with real estate right now is a general lack of informed people. While sites like this obviously attract concerned & impassioned individuals, we are most definitely in the minority. Certainly, in bubble areas like the Bay Area, the uninformed majority has no problem keeping the illogical side of real estate going strong, while we come in here grating our teeth.

So, can we work to spread information to "the masses"? Obviously, that is this site's intent, but we all know that "the masses" get their news from mass media outlets. They want infotainment provided to them passively, and finding this site (or even going to it) is probably too much of an active demand. Many here will cynically remark that major news outlets will never spread the type of information found here because they are servants to the banks. There is probably some truth there. Nevertheless, I think that it might be worthwhile to try to put some information together and to provide it to some of the larger local newspapers. I mentioned the shadow inventory at the beginning. Well, I think that that topic might be the easiest place to start. There seems to be a fair amount of data available regarding it, and it certainly seems to involve a lot less speculation than topics concerning future home values. Ideally, I would like to see a piece published that provides information about the size of the shadow inventory, and just how it is being paid for.

If we were to try to get some information published with a paper, how would we go about doing that? It seems to me that we would provide them with the basis for a story and supporting data, and then their people would verify sources & do whatever further work was necessary to get it "credible" and publish it. I haven't ever tried to do something like this, so I could use some input. There are the obvious hurdles here, like how much the newspaper is owned by the financial industry, and whether or not they are willing to piss off the NAr / entities that buy ad space for RE listings. Anyway, I was hoping that we could brainstorm some ways to disseminate information to the masses. We can piss & moan about the absurdity of the RE market on here all day, and it IS fun, but I think that it would be worthwhile to think about ways to attack the source of the problem. In my opinion, the source of the problem is an uninformed general public that continues to feed the insanity. While groups like the NAr are also huge problems, we all know that we can't do anything about them at the moment. We need to start targeting their targets.

Thoughts? Given the size of Patrick's site & members, it seems like we might be capable of affecting some change in the community.

#housing