I have scoured the original Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and nowhere do I find that our forefathers intended for our country to be controlled by businesses, corporations or foreigners.  Because so much of our country has been bought up by foreigners, foreign companies and corporations the Supreme Court has given our country away to the world and severely diminished the rights of the people.

The purpose of campaign advertising is to influence voters to a position of thinking, so if a foreign owned company, operating under the rules of the United States Corporation, chooses to influence the outcome of our elections they now have the freedom to spend and channel unlimited amounts of money creating that influence.

I fail to understand how or why our government chooses to treat corporations and or businesses as though they should have equal rights to those of the American people.  The primary intention of a corporation or any type of identification of business given by government is to create a taxing authority to ensure that monies are paid to the government for the benefit of the people.  Are corporations now being given the right to influence that government, the government of the people by the people and for the people?  A corporation or business is nothing more then any legal tool that is exclusively designed to serve the greater good of the people by providing goods, services and to distribute of monies in the form of compensation to the people employed under them for services rendered.  Further, if a business or corporation begins to operate in a fashion that is not in the best interest of the people, whether those people be consumers or employees, then it should be the legislative, administrative and judicial arms of our government’s responsibility to regulate those businesses and or corporations so they are accountable to the service of the people.

Under the Constitution it is the people who vote for elected officials, a process that is existed since our founding fathers laid their signatures down.  On that very premise the process of funding campaigns andvoting for elected officials should be reserved exclusively for those people that have the right to vote.  The idea that a corporation, and entity created for tax purposes that has no right to stand in the voting booth, has been given the right, the power, to have influence on the outcome of the elections for the government of the people of the United States of America is very sad commentary for our country.

This issue is an issue that should have all Americans Republicans, Independents and Democrats outraged at the least.  We as Americans need to realize that this country belongs to us and when elected officials are not focusing on the best interests of our needs they should be held accountable.  I encourage everyone who reads this to pass it, on to contact local and national media and to contact your elected officials to express your opinion.

Speak out Americans, stand up and speak out for your America!

The current real estate market is driving Short Sales and until there is a better solution than Short Sales the Foreclosure market will continue to grow. Short Sales typically are listed at a price lower than the last short sale and then are negotiated down in price to create a sale and the cycle continues, driving values down. You may not be too concerned but you should be because short sales are nothing more than a housing virus. When you see a home in your neighborhood go up as a short sale begin to worry because if/when it sells the value of your home will most likely go down in value. The short sale process has caused more and more homeowners to go from having equity in their home to becoming upside down, owing more than the market value  and then having it continue to decline as more homes go on the market. I guess its OK if one doesn’t have to move but what if you have to relocate because of a job, what it you lose your job, you get a major illness or any number of things that can take you from being comfortable, waiting out the storm to being faced with losing everything.

The really unfortunate thing is that this could have been taken care of in very short order and most likely at much less cost to the economy as a whole if things would have been done differently in the very beginning. In 2005-2006 the housing cycle should have started to contract, it didn’t, the lending industry jumped in and did what ever it could to sustain a rising market when it should have started to contract, they did this by developing loan products that they had to know would only lead to failure, they did it for home purchases and refinances. How you say, well they tore down the walls to responsible lending, creating “stated income loans”, took normal qualifying loan to debt ratios from the 28-36% range to as high as 55% and more! Many want to blame the consumer saying they should have know better. That might be an argument, however, I disagree. Consumers come into the marketplace seeking professionals, relying on them to provide them with honest reliable information whether its is for loans or automobiles or houses or consumer goods in general, otherwise why do the need you?  People were not given reliable and honest information by the lending industry.

So how do we ”fix the housing industry” well we are eroding the buyer pool that has led us out of financial downturns in the past and that is the first time buyer market. In past recessions the 1st time buyers would enter the marketplace, buy homes and create “Housing Push”  which quite simply is buying a home from one owner “pushing” them into another one and into another and into another and so on and so on. Think of a checkerboard and picture a family on each one of the squares, those are families in homes they own, when first time buyers came into the market they pushed those people up to another square pushing that family out etc. A first time home buyer accounted for a number of sales and all of those sales created “economic push” because of the consumer goods that would be sold as a result of people buying those homes, paint, landscaping, furniture, hardware goods, large sums of money being delivered right into the economy by large numbers of people.   What’s happening today is much different. First picture the checkerboard, now take about 25%+/-  of those families off of the squares because the home has been foreclosed on, if/when it sells, no push, now look at the rest of the homes and consider that many of them are being sold as short sales, again, no push because those families are not going to buy another house, so the very market that has been responsible for economic recovery in the past is now being gobbled up by vacancies, foreclosures and short sales, the push is almost nonexistent, kind of depressing isn’t it, well this is even more depressing, this could have all been avoided last year! How you say, go back to 2005-2006 when the lending industry forced the market to continue to rise when it should have been contracting, from that point on home values became overinflated to about 25% more value than they should have had, this occurred on homes that sold and homes that were refinanced through the period or until late 2008. To correct the problem and put and end to it and since money was being spent anyway, a plan should have been devised to roll back the loans made during that period by 25%+/- using a combination of government funding and lender participation.

With all that said, here is the good news, there is STILL a Solution!! Can you guess what it is? Share your thoughts, see if you can figure it out.

By the way, everything that is written above has been sent to legislators so this isn’t something I’ve kept to myself, there just isn’t anyone listening. You say why should they listen to me, 36+ years in the real estate industry as a builder, land developer, business owner, appraiser, Broker, conciliator, trainer, Board of Director and RE Sales Consultant.

Thats about all the rules, speak freely and respectfully get heated, but keep it respectful. So lets go Americans lets get something done here. This is our blog and this is our country. Seek Win-Win!!

BIG DAN