How the housing crisis will be resolved

Kind of a snarky article at the NY Times about Countrywide executives being involved with the purchase of distressed loans from the government. The “bad” loans, or toxic assets as some call them are a significant part of the problem with the financial industry in the United States. There really is only one way to clear up that problem, and that’s to get rid of the assets at a price that makes sense for the purchaser, not the value most banks seem to feel the assets are worth.

The “fire sale” prices are what’s necessary to attract private capital to the product, and that private capital is certainly going to be more efficient than a government bureaucracy at turning that product into either a producing loan or selling the underlying home at it’s true current market value.

So why does the Times seem to feel it’s problematic to have major lending executives in charge? The tone seems to be the executives made money through greed on the market’s way up, and now they’re trying to make more greedy money on the way down. Who else is going to have the experience to run that kind of an operation? Reality dictates the need for experienced executives who can quickly determine which loans are salvagable and which properties need to be taken back. There aren’t years available for on-the-job training on how to do this, it’s got to be done quickly and accurately.

I never thought I’d be defending lending executives, but I think the Times has it wrong in this case.

Rob Alley, Realtor of The Avery Group at Roy Wheeler
540-250-3275 (cell)
roballey@roywheeler.com
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