The Real Reason Housing Will Not Recover

You can't find much in the paper, and forget online, about the true nature of the housing market. One month housing reads like it is coming out of the dumper and the next month you read reports that housing will not return to 2008 levels until 2020. Articles abound about why the housing market is in the tank from the Fed starting this whole debacle, which is true, to the mass of foreclosures flooding the market and driving down prices. These are all factors, but it is not what's happening now.

As a residential builder and investor for more than thirty years I have another view of the housing mess. Government, and not for the reasons I have mentioned, does not want housing to recover and certainly not in the same "urban sprawl" way government and city planners have been fighting against for years. Now is their "moment" to control this mess. It's the elitist view of the housing market and certainly this administration's. The words that come to mind are McMansions are out and neo-traditional and european planning in. It's the eastern establishment's way of doing things.

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