Bursting the Bubble

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/13/MNVPSEMVQ.DTL

"It costs so much money for some of these people to get into the housing market," he said. "We're looking at an emergency loan program to help people refinance, in part because is the cost to help these people keep their homes more efficient than building more affordable housing? It's something we have to look at."

Isn't this bizarre and familiar? The greatest number of bank reposessions and short sales are occurring in the poorer neighborhoods, in spite of their sometimes sharing a Zip code with a perfectly established upscale securely higher-valued neighborhood.

The implication is that these homes aren't any sort of bargain. They could be presented in such a way to the lesser-informed as something grand and worth the investment, but anyone familiar with the area would know better.

A large portion of the paper on these loans is held by International funds. Some of the interest was specifically identified as "French" while the rest were simply "International."