It’s taken me a few days to absorb what happened Sunday and read the articles by the ‘experts’ as to there take on the bailout of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. The consensus seems to be that the bailout will help stimulate the real estate market, albeit minimally. They seem to think that lower interest rates will help buyers on the fence get in the game. Although this may help, I feel their train of thought is skewed because high interest rates are not what are keeping buyers away. Affordability and tighten lending criteria are the true obstacles (As was always before the banks’ self imposed boon). Fear about decreasing property values is another important factor. The bailout does nothing to address these issues.

The only ones thrown a life preserver are the investors (like they really need it). I understand why it’s important to keep the security aspect of package mortgages relatively stable, but what’s wrong with throwing a few hundred billion to aid those on the brink of foreclosure? After all, the banks are the ones who encouraged this whole mess. They knew exactly what was going to happen-they went through it just a few years ago-SNL scandal.

The real estate market is like any other market: There are only so many customers we are all vying for and there are only so many products to sell. When one of those is out of whack you have a problem-in this case they both are out of whack, no buyers & too many homes.

Neither of these will be solved by this bailout. Worse yet we are in store for a tsunami of foreclosures just around the corner and if nothing is done we may see property values down to what they were 20 years ago or lower.

Noel Padilla

"Doing Business Right"