Obama $1.5 Billion Housing Plan Needs More Explanation

by Tim Krulia – Private Money Blueprint CFO

As part of our quest here at PMBP to give you the single best resource on the financial aspects of growing your real estate investing business (aka, we help people find private money quickly, easily, and abundantly)… here’s an article I found with a video that announces President Obama’s plan to spend $1.5 billion on a new housing aid program…

The MSNBC article has a video of President Obama’s Feb. 19 speech at a town hall in Henderson, Nevada. The event was really a campaign push for Dem. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid who is behind in the polls for the pivotal Nevada 2010 senator race. Obama’s speech paid Reid lots of compliments for his work in Congress, talks at length about the economy, touches on health care, education, green energy and announces a $1.5 billion housing aid program.

Of course, the housing aid program is what I’m interested in researching.

$1.5 Billion In Housing Aid… What Does That Mean To Investors?

The MSNBC article doesn’t do a very good of a job detailing the $1.5 billion housing aid program so that’s why I also am highlighting the Business Week article (it does a little bit better anyway). It’s probably best to understand the A-Z for this news story by watching the MSNBC video and then reading the Business Week article.

The problem for me is that even after I did, I think I only understood about the A-K of what this program is doing, unfortunately. The news applies most directly to those who live or invest in real estate in California, Florida, Nevada, Arizona and Michigan (the leading indicator states).  These are the states that are said to have been hit hardest by the housing bubble bursting. The idea is to target the worst of the worst areas and help them out first and foremost.

Okay, so after reading these couple of articles and watching the video a few times………umm, I’m still a little in the dark about exactly what they are going to do with the $1.5 billion. The best I can find in the info I’ve researched are two comments that stick out a bit, but they are mostly just clues… I think.

1. In Obama’s speech he said, “…and that’s why we’re buying up vacant homes and converting then into affordable housing.”
2. In the Business Week article Diana Farrell, deputy director of the White House National Economic Council, says “The aid is intended, in part, to test programs that reduce principal or extinguish second mortgages where borrowers owe more than their homes are worth.”

Is the government really going to start buying vacant homes?

Did Congress get together and decide, Ah Ha!!! Here’s how we make some $!! Let’s become real estate investors and start buying the cheapest houses out there! Yeah, yeah yeah! We can get the public’s buy in because we’ll say that we’re creating jobs for contractors to fix them up and boost realtors and loan officer’s production! Then we can sell the houses and earn BIG PROFITS!! Yippie!! LOL!

I doubt that’s what President Obama meant but what if that’s part of their plan a little bit? Could the US Government be your competition buying the short sale deal you’ve been working on right out from underneath ya? Again, I don’t think that’s the case, but dang if it doesn’t sound like it from the speech. I’m not serious exactly; just a little humor.

Diana Farrell, on the other hand, notes that the program will help folks that are upside down on their mortgages. Reading in between the lines I guess that by eliminating second mortgages or lowing mortgage balances in general will thus lower monthly payments. Lower payments on a mortgage will help some people avoid foreclosure.

That’s great if you have a job with an income that allows a borrower to make regular payments. Hello? The unemployment rate is still about 10%!! I guess I’m a bit skeptical about where this money is going right now because I can’t seem to understand exactly how the relief is getting handed out.

Housing Plan Questions…

Let’s start by asking the questions…. so who qualifies for this one and exactly what should one expect if they get approved?

Wouldn’t it would be great if there was one central location that anyone could contact, tell a specialist on the recovery act, stimulus stuff, tax incentives & credits, etc. what their situations are and then let the specialist look though all the cool recovery & stimulus stuff out there and in an instant, “poof” it’s in place for ya?

I guess if I had it my way, I’d just make the $1.5 billion available as private money that real estate investors could grab up at a really low interest rate (i.e. 1%)!

We’d be out there pulling down the funds and rejuvenating whole neighborhoods left and right! Then again, it’s kind of small potatoes. Why pay so much attention to this anyway I guess? There was something like 2.3 million houses that entered into some stage of foreclosure in 2008.

$1.5 billion is only the equivalent of 10,000 $150K homes anyway.

In Summary

To sum it up… as real estate investors we should all have our pulse on not only the real estate market… but other factors that can affect our businesses such as new goverment regulations or bills like this one.  I only see more and more of this type of action happening as elections in 2010 draw closer to sway public opinion that the voters are being “helped out” by the government… and this “help” could mean competition for real estate investors in the short sale market (short term competition), but it could also open up a whole new market for savvy investors that we don’t even know about yet.

 

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