The 800 Pound Gorilla on the Housing Market’s Back
Jun 30th, 2009 | By Karim Rahemtulla | Category: Real Estate InvestmentsI could almost hear the collective groans of disbelief as soon as readers read my forecast. It was a column I wrote almost three years ago, warning about the impending U.S. real estate crisis and projecting that home prices were set to tumble by as much as 40%. Turns out I actually under-estimated the scale of the bust. Prices have fallen much more than that in some areas – and may fall even further. The are obvious reasons for this. The economic recession. The evaporation of available credit. A huge increase in unemployment. And, of course, the mere fact that the housing market had simply risen to bubble-like proportions and needed to correct. But there’s a bigger problem – and it’s…