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Housing Crisis Getting Uglier in 2010
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Contributor | ScottĀ³ |
Last Edited | ScottĀ³ Feb 10, 2010 10:13am |
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Category | News |
Author | Ben Tracy |
Media | TV News - Columbia Broadcasting System CBS News |
News Date | Tuesday, February 2, 2010 04:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
Description | "CBS News correspondent Ben Tracy report the American Dream is now a nightmare for many of the 75 million Americans who own a home.
The housing report card is ugly. In the past two years, the housing market has lost an estimated $4.9 trillion dollars, as 59 million homes have declined in value.
Nearly 1 in 4 homeowners -- 10.7 million households nationwide -- are underwater on their mortgages. They owe more than their home is now worth.
The housing market is so bad in California, that a bank demolished 16 nearly completed homes - because it was cheaper to knock them down, than to finish them.
Home building across the country is almost non-existent. In 2005, 2 million housing units were built in this country. Last year, that number dropped to nearly a quarter of that.
That's left former boom towns like Las Vegas with a lot of roads to nowhere, as builders ran out of money and buyers for the homes they once planned to build here.
Then, there's foreclosure. Nationwide, nearly 6 million households have been taken back by the bank in just the past three years - pushing down home values, and leaving some neighborhoods looking like warzones.
People are still losing their homes, preventing a housing market recovery.
"Disaster is not too strong a word and crisis is not too strong a word," said Michelle Johnson of Consumer Credit Counseling Services.
All of those risky loans that banks gave to homeowners are still wreaking havoc." |
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