Word: mortgagees
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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-- MORTGAGE CEILING LOWERED, reports the New York Times. "The ceiling on the size of single-family home loans purchased by the Federal National Mortgage Association is declining by $150, to $187,450 next year, the first drop in at least a decade."
In one sense this is good. (And of course it's very good if you don't yet own a house.) In the U.S., we need to invest relatively less on expanding our living space and more on retooling our factories. We need fewer real estate agents and more teachers...
Sluggish home prices are also good news in the drive to dampen inflation. Returning to the days of negligible inflation, if we eventually can do so, should also mean returning to the days of low interest rates (from 1880 to 1965, home mortgage rates above 6% were all but unheard...
Homes can still be a good investment -- much of my own money is in real estate, and so is much of the money of most of the successful stockbrokers I know (they sell stocks; they buy real estate). Even if there are fewer baby boomers entering the new-home market...
But more importantly, it means abolishing the middle-class welfare state that is hidden in the tax code. Tax breaks for employer-sponsored pension and health benefits cost the government far more than direct government spending on the poor. The home mortgage interest deduction costs far more than government housing...