Dr. Mark Dotzour On the Real Estate Market: Really, This Guy Ought to be the Next President of the U.S.

Forget Donald Trump. You know the kind of guy or gal we need to run for president? Someone who can tell us, in the way Ronald Reagan could, how to swallow the super duper bitter pills we need to take to mend our country financially. You know who I think that person is? Dr. Mark Dotzour at Texas A&M University’s Real Estate Center. Over the years I’ve studied him, he REALLY tells it like it is: “Let’s live within our means and tell the public the truth!” What’s the truth? That government spending is killing us financially, that government policies (like Dodd-Frank and Obamacare) are creating uncertainty in the marketplace, killing the recovery and regulators are putting the kibosh on real estate loans. He says it all and a whole lot more here: this is not a double dip, we have not even hit bottom. Yesteryear’s government’s home buyer’s credit was a fake recovery. A LOT of the recovery depends on what kind of information gets floated during the next presidential election from the candidates.¬† As long as there is uncertainty, which is all Washington feeds us these days, the markets will be stalled. What about inflation? He doesn’t see it on the horizon — unless Washington starts forcing up minimum wage.¬† Interest rates are at zero, yet there’s no movement. Our economy, he says, has been weakened by government regulation and foreign competition. Yet, Dr. Dotzour says he’s more optimistic than he has been since about 2007 and thinks we are seeing job growth on the upswing. When will home prices stabilize (and maybe even go up)? When we flush out the distressed inventory. All of it, gone. Consumers are paying down their debt, household net worth is inching upwards, and folks are going to be ready to start buying real estate without the lure of government incentives in about a year.¬† Now, if we could just get the government to live within its means… Long, but worth listening to —