Saturday, February 7, 2009

Keep your home

Everyone agrees that the housing market needs to stabilize before things can get better.

People are usually made reduntant because governments have not managed the respective exconomies like a prudent housewife would, not because of their work attitude.

Yesterday the Spanish Government extended their partial postponement of mortgages to three years from two for the unemployed and for people who are having difficulty meeting mortgage commitments, the economy ministry said in.

The measure will allow those worst hit by the Spanish economic downturn to postpone part of their mortgage payments for three years.

The government also announced it will extend and make more flexible the loans offered to small and medium sized businesses by state-owned credit agency ICO

By banks repossing houses it brings more properties onto the property market thus bringing house price down placing more families with negative equity, and more risk to the banking system.

The Spanish governments example will mean that the property market will establish a floor sooner and hopefully start to increase in value sooner. It is better for families to pay a mortgage for a few more years than loose their home and all the trauma that goes with it in finding a place to rent and moving all their furniture and belongings.

I don´t know if the English Prime Minister George Brown or the American President Barack Obama have a similar plan? If not I think that it would be worth considering as it is America that led the world into this crisis with their housing problem. Had they had such a scheme in place a few years ago maybe the world may never have got into this mess!