Its not all bad news out there……
“Sure, there was a lot of sound (the housing bubble grows) and fury (the bubble pops) in the last decade. But numbers released this morning show that home prices rose by 46% between January 2000 and December 2009. That’s way above the rate of inflation. So odds are if you bought a house at the beginning of the decade and sold it at the end of the decade, you made money. That’s a big deal, given how many people (who don’t wind up as anecdotes in news stories) buy a house and live in it for 10, or 20, or 30 years. ”
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/02/house_prices_rose_50_in_the_au.html?ft=1&f=93559255
Tags: Home Prices, Housing Bubble, Inflation
I wish Bernanke & Co. would provide a clue by what the Fed. means when they say, “the forseeable future…” 6-months? 1-year? 2-years? My 85-YO Father is desperately struggling now due to the horrible interest rates being offered on secure FDIC insured CD accounts. Are you going to tell an 85-YO man he needs to risk his entire life-savings via the highly volatile bond/stock markets? I don’t think so…At least not my Father…My Father won’t even consider a fixed income annuity & advised me he’d be happy if he could at least lock in a 5-Year CD @ 4.00%, but there’s just no such FDIC insured institution offering such a rate. The best I’ve seen thus far is 3.63% @ DiscoverBank.Com, but even that’s for 10- vs. 5-Years. It would be ludicrous to lock his life savings in for that long, at such a dismal rate.