Do you think speculators have destroyed the housing market? Who is to blame?

The Fed, a spendthrift congress, and loose monetary policy. Housing is just the current bubble, loose monetary policy patched over the dot com bubble, but with the consequences we are seeing now.

,What these lending institutions did was granted loans to people they knew didn't have the money and other wise wouldn't have gotten a home loan from an honest institution.

These institutions took advantage of the interest rate and counted on people not knowing what could happen should the interest rates go up.

When interest rates go up (and they will) so does their house payment if they don't have a fix interest rate. Fixed interest rates is the key to buying a home and not just during the hard times people are having right now. The institutions didn't make that clear enough for the people buying a home, which mostly were their 1st home.

When the interest rates where as low as they were, you can count on them going up again. Thus foreclosures and the title goes back to the bank for resale. So these institutions double there money. Eventually they too went out of business, because it didn't work the way they thought it would or got caught on dishonest business practices. Unfortunately, when they did get caught or went under, this didn't help the home owner, because they took the loss.

By the way, this didn't only happen to the middle class, it also happened to the rich. They were partying and keeping up with Jone's they just didn't make their house payments. There money went for party's and the like. The quietly walk away, because they didn't want their neighbors to know they lost their home.

The housing market fell victim to inflated prices, because of two main causes. One is speculation, the other is lenders lending to people that in the past would not be able to obtain a loan. At the end of the day, housing prices aren't "crashing" they are correcting to the levels they were before the boom. The people that are in trouble are the people that bought houses that were over priced, or they took out loans thinking their home was worth more than it was.

Another reason house prices have dropped is over building. There are more houses than people that want to buy them.

So no, I don't think speculators destroyed the market. They over inflated prices, and now they are correcting. No one is to blame, it's just a trend. Lenders promoted inflated values because they lent to people that paid to much for homes, and couldn't afford them. The housing market will drop, but in the next couple of years, we will see another boom of people buying that either lost their homes, or didn't buy because of fear.

As for a change in lending laws, it was more about lenders loosening their underwriting guidelines. Once one did it, they all did to keep competitive, and once they jumped on the slippery slope, they ended up lending to many people that couldn't afford the payments. In places like California and Florida, home prices jumped 50% in 6 months, because people would not worry about paying for the house, they just would refinance and refinance until they sold. Eventually people stopped buying. Did those people really think that the prices would just keep rising, and that an 800 square foot home next to an airport was really worth 500k?

speculators, and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 that repealed the Glass-Steagall Act allowing financial services to be consolidated and allowed the same people offering mortgages to also offer default swaps and insurance.

Without that, we wouldn't even have to worry about this problem.

The people who are in trouble, aren't people who took out loans they could afford, they are people who took out loans they thought they could refinance when the rate changed.

When it came time to refinance and avoid the higher monthly payment, they found themselves unable to refinance, because the housing market started to collapse, as a result of over-building, and credit starting to slow down.

People who took out loans they could not afford, because they weren't really informed about ARMs, only make up about 25% of the foreclosures.

the idea that there is a law that forced banks to give bad loans to people who couldn't afford them is a lie.

most the people getting foreclosed on are speculators. Most of the rest only got a house because of bad lending laws forced on banks by democrat politicians

it is not speculators.. that is the dumbest thing i have heard yet... right next to the American military flew planes in to buildings on 9/11

look at the leaning laws.. 2 years ago laws changed to make it easier for the "poor" to get house.. even if they could not afford them.. when gas price went up.. people that could barely afford the home they had lost it with the added cost in everything...

people are not taught to manage the money they have... most people get a 2 week class into credit and bank accounts.. which is stupid.. money should be a 2 year class in high school...

Community Reinvestment Act. Look it up. It was passed in 1977, but the real damage came when it was amended in 1995.

Everyone has blame to go around. From the idiot flippers to the ones taking reverse mortgages, to those taking loans that they could never afford to buy the next big TV or car, to regulators failing to regulate, to Alan Greenspan to the stock market trading toxic assets. Domestic, Abroad, you name it.

What's the point of trying to assign blame now. We fix what we can and learn from our errors.

some people are victims of circumstance... a small percentage.

but the idiots who overextended their finances & had to file for bankruptcy, are to blame, the system has no real consequences for being a moron. they are the ones to blame.

but the analysts haven't helped things either.

It will recover but it might take a decade or longer.