Charm City Baltimore Real Estate: Baltimore, Maryland Real Estate & Homes

There was a populist backlash to the President’s housing initiative last week, with an unlikely leader. A cable-TV commentator known for his rants, Rick Santelli of CNBC lost his cool again when describing the package of mortgage revisions that the Administration hopes will put the housing market back on the rails, stabilizing it and cutting down on foreclosures while keeping as many people as possible in their homes. As if to add some kind of justification to his nonsense, Mr. Santelli turned to the traders on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade for support and used their obedient chorus of catcalls as proof that “average America” didn’t like the President’s plan.

Later, as a guest on Chris Mathews’ HARDBALL, Mr. Santelli went further, advocating that people in trouble simply be allowed to fail. He added, dramatically, that he’d be willing to “bite the bullet” and let both of his neighbors go into foreclosure if necessary because he wasn’t planning to sell his home. He would ride out what he considered the small amount of collateral damage to his home or his neighborhood, because he wasn’t planning to sell anytime soon. The next day, on the same program, he began to finally tip his hand when he used the term “redistributionist” to describe the goals of the plan. Mr. Mathews moved in for the kill: it turns out that Mr. Santelli is a Republican who voted for John McCain.

Mr. Santelli engaged in manipulative, insincere populism, and his premise and description of the results were simply wrong.

I’m sure that in the lovely upscale suburbs of New York and Chicago, the million dollar plus homes on large lots could indeed survive several foreclosures without significant hits on property values. The neighborhood probably won’t see an  increase in drug havens, increasing street crime, physical deterioration, or other negative results. Investors won’t swoop in to snap up the lavish homes, slap on a new coat of paint, and then stuff them full of tenants who have no ties to the neighborhood and have no real stake in maintaining it. In short, I’m sure that in Mr. Santelli’s neighborhood he could let the country’s housing market go down the toilet without too much discomfort. It makes it very easy for someone in his position to wrap himself in populist rants of “unfairness” to thwart a solution that will mitigate the terrible consequences for the rest of us.

So, Mr. Santelli, since you’ve made it clear you don’t give a damn about the rest of us, why don’t you just go back to your lovely home in your lovely neighborhood, build a very, very, very tall fence, buy lots of assault rifles to fortify the ramparts, and never come out again. I can tell you that the rest of us will not miss you.

We’re now less than 24 hours since the Obama Administration announced the shape of the housing rescue package that will be TARP2. The short-sightedness of much of the opposition in their attacks is truly appalling. Many of their politically motivated arguments have been widely debunked by other sources, but the “moral hazard” argument is the one that bothers me the most. Lender statistics show that once a property is 90 days behind, the ability of a borrower to have a successful renegotiation of their mortgage is severely compromised. If we are going to truly avoid some of the foreclosures that are coming, the renegotiation has to begin while the struggle is still somewhat successful — while the borrower is still current, but when they know they are at the end of their rope. That’s how you prevent a property from becoming a foreclosed property.

The people who argue that is an unnecessary “bailout” which punishes the “people who have played by the rules” and have cut back, saved, etc. to be able to live within their means is really a straw man. It needs to go away. The folks who will be helped by this package also “played by the rules.” But for reasons beyond their control… declining housing market prices, loss of work, medical problems… they are fast sinking and will soon go under. There is no “moral hazard” in this program. Speculators and people who got in trouble by living beyond their means are specifically omitted from it.

And what about their neighbors who “played by the rules” and are making it by ok? They will be helped by the fact that the house next door does not go into foreclosure, presenting a potential haven for illegal activity, and dragging down their property values by another 9-10%. Their community will benefit from having homeowners staying in their homes, not being sold to an investor at a bargain price who will bring in renters who may, or may not, value the quality of life in the neighborhood, maintain the house, cut the lawn, trim the trees, shovel the walks, etc.

In short, these carping critics would have criticized Christ for hurting local fishermen and bakers by performing the miracle of the fishes and the loaves. I say we need a miracle right about now.

I don’t know of many people who really loved the idea of new home developers putting bigger homes on smaller lots, but certainly many people over the last decade bought them. Personally, if I had a choice between two huge houses sitting so close to one another that I could see into my neighbor’s window, and a two similarly sized townhouses … I’d pick the option with the solid wall separating us from the nuts next door. (And, in fact, I did.)

Still, the “McMansion” craze was a national development, and as the square footage of these hulks increased and the size of the lots decreased, you had to wonder if living shoulder to shoulder in the suburbs with little underlying sense of community wasn’t the cause of many of our society’s problems. Media rooms and “man caves” taking what used to be times of communal experience and building camaraderie and putting them in windowless basement rooms where we were cut off from those around us.

Now, in the middle of our dark winter, comes news from the National Association of Homebuilders. The average size of new homes is shrinking — from the 2,629 sq. ft. average in the third quarter of 2008 to 2,438 sq. ft. in the fourth quarter of the year. Fully 88% of their members surveyed in January said they will be building a larger share of smaller homes in their new developments, although they make no mention on whether they will try to downsize the lots as well. And from that venerable source of information on how Americans design, build and decorate homes — Better Homes and Gardens — come survey results involving 733 potential new-home buyers that find 32% of them expect their new home to be “either somewhat smaller or much smaller then the one they already live in.”

I wish that the reason for this change in attitude was a sense that things had gotten out of hand instead of the devastating impact of the current economic crisis. Not a week goes by that I don’t go into a home built two generations ago, where mom, dad and a brood of four children were raised to hard-working adulthood in half of the square footage of our current median home size of 2,090 sq. ft. These were real communities, where people got to know their neighbors, where much of the activity of life took place on front stoops in warm weather, and people looked out for one another.

And when adults had to get away from the little darlings, there was also a bar on every corner. Dark, windowless “man caves” where…

Oh, never mind.