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“…roughly 2 million people are going to lose their homes this year. That will be a new high. In 2010, by my calculation, 1.5 million homeowners lost their homes.
So that’s a lot of people – a lot of distress. And it does raise the specter of more house-price declines because as those homes hit the market and the share of homes that are distressed – the share of homes sales that are distressed rises, we will see more price declines. And when you’re in a declining price environment, obviously, the risks are quite high too, to not only the housing market, to the broader economy.
It is hard to be entirely enthusiastic about the economic recovery when house prices are declining. And they are – they’re not declining everywhere in the country, but they are declining in many parts of the country and particularly in some of the more distressed areas.
”-Economist Mark Zandi at Third Way’s event “Under Water: Housing and the Recovery”
Third Way’s Domestic Policy Program hosted a discussion on the short-term and long-term challenges still facing the nation’s housing market and why policymakers must act.
Featured speakers were Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley, California Rep. Dennis Cardoza, noted housing economist, Mark Zandi and Columbia University’s Chris Mayer. The discussion was moderated by The New York Times reporter Binyamin Appelbaum.
LISTEN: Click here to download a free iTunes podcast of the event.
