US Housing Market Two Outs in The Bottom of The Ninth
“There is a good reason people with credit scores below 620 are classified as sub-prime. Scores this low result from missing multiple payments on credit cards and loans, having multiple collection items or judgments and potentially having a very recent bankruptcy or foreclosure. They have low paying jobs or no job at all. Giving them a loan to purchase a US$250,000 home or a US$30,000 automobile will not improve their lives. Heads they win, tails the dupe gets kicked out of that nice house onto the street and has those nice wheels repossessed in the middle of the night.” 
US House Prices
“The median price for a new home far exceeds the bubble highs of 2005. A critical thinking individual might wonder how new home sales could be down 60 per cent from 2005, while home prices are 15 per cent higher than they were in 2005. Don’t the laws of supply and demand work anymore? The identical trend can be seen in the existing homes sales market.
The median price for existing home sales of US$228,700 is an all-time high, exceeding the 2005 bubble levels. Again, sales are down 30 per cent since 2005. I wonder who is responsible for this warped chain of events?”
–James Quinn, The Market Oracle, September 25
US Rentals
“For American renters 2013 marked another year with a record-high number of cost burdened households – those paying more than 30 per cent of income for housing.
In the United States, 20.7 million renter households (49.0 per cent) were cost burdened in 2013.
A whopping 11.2 million, or more than a quarter of all renter households, had “severe cost burdens, paying more than half of income for housing.” The median US renter household earned US$32,700 in 2013 and spent US$900 per month on housing costs. Renter housing costs are gross rents, which include contract rents and utilities.”
–Center for Housing Studies at Harvard, “State of the Nation’s Housing” report, September 25
