The Blog of Author Mark MacKenzie: It's The Housing Market, Stupid!

President-elect Obama announced today during a speech that as part of his stimulus plan he was going to offer 95% of working families a $1000 tax cut. Didn't President Bush just do this in a different form in May of 2008 as part of the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 when they mailed out checks to ...

I've been thrown up on and pissed on, and it's only 7:30 in the morning.  I'm hoping that there's not another incident of another color as I've already had to wash myself off twice and I haven't even been to the gym yet and considering I live in the desert, were trying to conserve on water.   I'm...

I can't help but compare the current real estate depression and NAR's misguided efforts to stimulate the market to the infamous words of former Boston Celtics coach, Rick Pitino when he said, "Larry Bird is not walking through that door" after another loss for the former storied basketball franch...

According to the NAR, the pending home sales index has declined for the third consecutive month and is down -4.0% from last month and -5.3% from last year.  This index is the leading indicator of existing home sales for the next one to two months and the data represents yet another disappointing ...

Dear Mr. Yun, After reading your recent column in REALTOR Magazine titled "Supply and Demand Solutions Needed", I couldn't not respond to your claim about the relationship between mortgage rates and home sales. In your column you state, "NAR doesn't take a position on how low interest rates shoul...

With the NAHB continuing their lobbying efforts in Washington this week for a housing stimulus, I couldn't not comment on their proposal, specifically the tax credit which is the cornerstone of their plan.  Seeing as their plan could waste a couple of billion dollars of your tax payer money, I th...

With all of the talk and debate about recessions and depressions, the one anomaly and point of contention of the whole conversation has been the unemployment rate which is currently "advertised" as 6.7%.  During the great depression, according to Historical Statistics US the unemployment rate pea...

According to a recent report put out by Reuters, banks slashed their lending by 55% to the lowest volume since 1994.  The 2008 loan volume plunged from $1.69 trillion in 2007 to $764 billion in 2008.  This is what you call a bubble; and just as the real estate bubble and stock market bubble are d...

Consider the source.  That's the advice I have to people when filtering through predictions and headlines and trying to make sense of what is taking place in the economy and what to expect in 2009. Matt Heaton is a dangerous combination of somebody that doesn't have an "agenda" but also knows wha...

With the November existing home sales report published several days ago by the NAR showing the weakest housing market on record (an 11.2 month supply of housing), it has a lot of people wondering, including myself, what the numbers will look like in December, will the market continue to deteriora...