HOUSING: Behind high prices

Housing costs too high?

Who’s to blame?

Two words: government intervention. Well-meaning government funded home loans have inflated housing prices.

And to hear any builder or home seller complain about the “awful government” is a lot like Colonel Sanders complaining about chicken farms. Government money has made many a builder or seller rich.

How? Banks lend government money. Not their own. Banks get paid to service loans funded by Fannie, Freddie, USDA, VA, FHA, etc. And before these GSEs or government agencies took over exclusively in 2009, it was the FDIC or FSLIC insuring private money lent to stated income liars after deregulation made the lying possible. The buck at risk was really the government’s. Aka yours. Fannie and Freddie just bought toxic loan assets from the banks that still service these loans.

So government-monied homebuyers sustained home values, or more recently, drove up home values which raised rents. Bidding wars with government loan money are common. Can’t qualify? Too bad! Evidently, the government picks winners and losers.

Get the government out of home lending or deposit insuring and watch housing costs plummet. And boohoo developers squealing like stuck pigs. We couldn’t have that! Who will fund these horndog politicians? And who will pay their victims cash settlements?

Oh what a web we weaved when we plotted to deceive…ourselves!

MIKE RENO

Newman Lake