Mortgage Optimism Needed

As long as the daily news media tells us morning, noon and night we're about to go to Hellenna Handbasket, not just as individuals participating in the economy, but the entire economy itself, especially the United States–the shot has been fired around the world–how are we supposed to recover, or begin recovery, or buy a house if we don't already have more than we can manage?

Rismedia reported yesterday there are eight signs of real estate recovery. Consider: 

Monthly inventory totals of unsold homes are down slightly for the first time in more than a year; buyer-seller ratios are stabilizing; an increasing number of member-agents reported that their sellers received 95% of more of their asking prices; monthly home sales are up slightly; and nearly two-thirds of U.S. metro areas reported median home price increases in the third quarter.

It seems a perfect time to buy: rates are low, vacant home inventory is relatively high. Of course, some of the jerks on Wall Street might need to go to jail, along with fraudulent appraisers, slimy loan officers, greedy mortgage brokers, and the rest. 

Ah, but it's so easy to take the damning road of blame, much like ridicule is the lowest form of humor. I'm trying to point to the bright side; hence the enormous sunlit landscape graphic bedazzling this page.

We're worsening our collective owee by fingering it with dirty hands, exploring how far it goes, where do its edges stop hurting, where does terrifying pain become comforting, because it's familiar.

"Mortgage" and "optimism" haven't appeared on the Internet together often since the beginning of the year. Most voices trailed to a whimper between August and December of 2007. Tom Petruno, of the LA Times Market Beat, agrees with me, "If Wall Street begins to think you're gone, you're gone." We're speaking into existence the reality we have. We behave according to our beliefs.

Thanh Nien News.com, a Vietnamese daily, reported January 16, 2008, business optimism standings of the International Business Report 2008 participating nations. Vietnam ranked third, behind the Philippines and India this year. Here's what was reported about the United States:

Optimism in the US has even gone up to 22 percent from 14 per-cent last year though the country faces the subprime mortgage crisis and resulting credit crunch.

I read that wrong the first time. I read "up 22%." No. Of the 34 nations surveyed, the United States is far behind the score of 95 credited to India. But we can change this. We can look on the bright side. We can clean up our credit and pay our mortgages. And as far as optimism goes, we're way ahead of Thailand at -30 and Japan at -44.

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