SF Peninsula Real Estate Guru

This unusual event took place in this Sunday’s September 9 New York Times.

The headline in the article was “It’s Time to Take a Deep Breath“.

How true !

The following points were made by Ben Stein:

1. The sub-prime mortgage industry helped many individuals to buy a home - without the sub-prime mortgage industry many of these individuals would not have been able to buy a home. Owning a home is the bedrock of the American Dream.

2. There is plenty of blame to go around - the sub-prime issuers and the bundlers of sub-prime mortgages - certainly share some of the blame. But many borrowers also faslified their loan applications and failed to do their own due diligence of their terms of their loans.

3. The time to buy real estate is when it it is down.

4. The Federal Reserve Board is on the case and they have stepped in to prevent further panic in the financial markets.

5. The US economy is very very large and it can not be derailed by anything we have seen right now.

I believe all of this is true. It is an issue - it is a problem - but it isn’t the end of the world. Our housing market and economy will get through this and hopefully we will have learned some lessons while we do.