I’m not sympatethic to banks either. My concern is that slowing down the foreclosure process will only delay the return to sanity in the housing market.[/quote]
I don’t disagree with that at all. The question is, should the lenders be allowed to ignore the law, which at times can (and has) lead to illegal foreclosures, in order to more quickly lead to a stable residential real estate market (which is what I presume you mean by “a return to sanity”)? I would propose that they should not be allowed to ignore the law.
I would also propose that we have already returned to sanity in the housing market on a macro basis. We are no longer in a bubble. Supply exceeds demand, so we have falling prices. If what you are looking for is a return to consistent and significant year over year increases in value, and builders building more than 2 million units a year, that isn’t likely to happen in the next 10 years.
Builders are building at a rate of about 1/2 a million units a year (for 2 years now), at close to an all time low (as in forever). When the over-supply is absorbed, we’re more likely to return to something still much lower than any time in the last 20 years, maybe a million units a year for the next decade at least. (There is evidence it could be even 20 years before more than a million units a year will be needed to supply new house formations.)
