Let There Be Blight

Ahhhh, back in Sac, the little town that hasn't. Did you know Sacramento ranks #5 in the country in foreclosures? Yeah, we're pretty proud of that. I get to come back home to news stories like the one about the people who are vandalizing the homes they can't afford anymore (that they couldn't afford in the first place, actually, and now if they can't have it, no one can.)


Wishful thinkers disguised as talking heads tell us that we're close to the bottom and things should get better next year. It's amazing how the media coupled with mob mentality can be so effective in creating mass delusion. People have a short memory, and believe what they want to believe.

I'm not bitter or anything, but a few years ago flippant flippers swooped in, raped and pillaged, and scrambled out, all the while proclaiming that home prices were going to climb forever. "...and you can just get this interest-only loan with a zero down payment...." What could possibly go wrong?



And now housing market optimism hype spreads like teenage STDs.

But the fact is that there are still plenty of 3 or 5 year adjustable-rate loans that have yet to reset in 2008 and 2009, not to mention all those "liar loans" dotting the financial landscape. (For those of you who haven't fallen asleep yet, liar loans are no-doc loans or stated income loans where the borrower is simply asked to state their income, and taken at their word.)

Foreclosed homes remain vacant, and many are vandalized, creating neighborhood hazards described with words like blight, disease, and poverty. These conditions take years to recover, if they ever do. What part of all that allows the market to "turn around" by next year?

I thought blight and disease were reserved for trees. Granted, houses are made out of trees and Sacramento is the City of Trees. We should we change our motto to: Sacramento - The City of Blight and Disease (which rhymes with trees, by the way).



Kinda makes you want to bust out your AAA Travel Guide book and arrange a trip to the capitol of California right away, doesn't it? Yeah, and if you're interested we've got a McMansion or two or twelve for sale, dirt cheap. Come on down.

... IN OTHER NEWS ...

Nanny Goats would like to step off the soap box for a second to give mad props to Onedia In The Ozarks. This beautiful blog, run by the Super D Duper Miss Onedia, has been generous enough to not only link to Nanny Goats, but to also throw it into the "Laugh Out Loud" category. Thanks, Onedia!