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UPDATED (5:29 PM)
Banks have a new remedy for America’s ailing housing market: bulldozers.
There are nearly 1.7 million homes in the U.S. in some state of foreclosure. Banks already own some of these homes and will soon repossess many more. Many housing economists worry that a near constant stream of home sales by banks could keep housing prices down for years to come. But what if some of those homes never hit the market?
Foreclosures are down. Time to celebrate? Not really. Realtytrac, which monitors foreclosures, says the number of people losing their homes is dropping not because people are having fewer financial problems but because banks are taking longer to process foreclosures. And that’s not because they are modifying loans and helping people stay in their houses for good. [...]
The new homes market is looking more and more barren (Photo: Chris Keane/REUTERS) It might be time to bring back the home buyer tax credit. On Wednesday, a day after the National Association of Realtors said sales of existing homes dropped 2.2% in October, the Census Bureau said that new home sales had dropped a [...]
