Housing Recovery?

Mortgage Rates have fallen to a record low. USA Today wrote a great article about the effects that the low mortgage rates are having on the housing market. The idea is that low mortgage rates will be extremely beneficial to the economy in three ways.
The first way involves the refinancing portion. Refinancing to lower rates allows current homeowners to spend less money each month on their mortgage payment. This causes an effect where the homeowner has more disposable income, feels richer, then spends the money stimulating growth. In this aspect the low mortgage rates will be very beneficial to our economy as a whole.
The refinancing alone though will not influence the mortgage economy as much as the fact that low mortgage rates make investing in properties more profitable and allow people to buy and sell houses much more easily. Whenever houses are bought or sold it has a very influential effect on the economy because people invest money in fixing up there home. With more money to spend and increased real estate investment, the overall housing economy should see some growth. Remember that right now the housing market is at a relative bottom. So any growth at all is a huge positive, it signifies the emerging from a valley.
The third way low mortgage rates will benefit the economy involves stimulating the lending environment generating money for the banks and lenders that will be further put back into the economy. The cycle of lending needs to be continuous and ongoing in order for the economy to revert back to fully functioning. Without lending our economy will again come to a standstill.
In these ways all signs point to a recovering housing market. But let's take a look at some externals that will factor in. The jobs reports are bleak, the financial bailout did not work as intended, Europe is in financial chaos, and the middle east is in unrest.
If the jobs reports show high unemployment that means a lower number of people are in the total population of people able to buy a house. Without employment you cannot get a mortgage loan. This has a very negative effect on the mortgage and housing industry.
The financial bailout has cause the United States to be in a massive amount of debt. The only feasible move for the U.S. Government to make is to raise taxes to overcome the debt. The increased taxes will cause people to have less money and will cause the growth in the economy to slow.
Europe is in such unrest that financially every other country needs to be on guard against another recession because of how intrinsically linked our global financial markets are.
And finally the middle east, specifically Syria at the moment, is in unrest. With turmoil overseas the only option the United States have is increasing money spent on defense. This will affect other areas of the U.S. because less government investment will lead to crumbling infrastructure.
For now I would be very concerned with the housing recovery. Their are too many variables that could go very negatively.

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Current Mortgage Economy

Bleak. The current mortgage economy is bleak. With consumer spending down across the board, decline in growth in China and a recession looming in Europe, the mortgage industry does not look like it will recover anytime soon. People can't afford to spend money buying houses at this point in time due to the negative strain recession will put on their income, as well as fear of loosing jobs due to the impeding economic recession. The housing market is up a little bit with home prices creeping higher, but overall the housing market still has not recovered from three or four years ago when prices were extremely inflated and the market crashed.
The mortgage bankers association is a great place to get all your current economic information related to mortgages. You can find the current monthly forecasts and outlooks at Mortgage Bankers Association.

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Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

So I was sitting watching The Kudlow Report today and Kudlow stated something along the lines of, it isn't banks that are causing this financial crisis... It's Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Let me just set the record straight. It was NOT the fault of the government agencies designed to be providers of secure lending to underprivileged people. It was the shameful greed of America especially those on wall street, the government officials preaching deregulation, but most sadly the majority of the population who decided with all these fancy financial instruments I can live well above my means and hope that everything goes up a lot so in 15 years I can sell houses at a profit. It is ridiculous to think that people purchased so many loans that within two years they completely crashed our financial system, and yet nobody caught on. Anyway, I've digressed. I think with help Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can conservatively recover and later down the line resume command of issuing loans to lower income citizens of the United States of America so we can have a working class.

Also, the housing market will recover but it will be on much lower income homes. I'd say houses you could build and sell to people for $50,000. When we figure out how to make living in a $50,000 home feasible and enjoyable then the housing market will recover to before bubble periods.