Turn On The Lights, Watch The Roaches Scatter Part 79

Foreclosuregate is still a major economic problem, folks.  There are millions and millions of foreclosed homes stuck on bank balance sheets, and the value of those homes continues to fall weekly. The banks are running out of ways to hide them under the rug and it's now catching up with them.

The housing market's ballooning shadow inventory — buoyed by a yearlong foreclosure slowdown — stands as the most menacing obstacle to the recovery of the residential real estate market.

Clustered mostly in hard-hit cities and states, there are more than 4.5 million homes either owned by lenders or headed for foreclosure. In Miami, for example, there are about 200,000 shadow homes, dwarfing the 30,000 properties that are listed on the active market. Even as prices in Miami have shown signs of stability this year, an impending wave of foreclosures threatens to keep real estate values deflated.

"A lot of people don't understand how much inventory is set to come on line in the next 18 to 24 months," said Jack McCabe, the CEO of McCabe Research & Consulting in Deerfield Beach, Fla. "When you compare what the Realtors show as inventory to what's out there, you realize we have a long way to go."

A McClatchy analysis of four years of foreclosure data and thousands of property records found record-high levels of shadow inventory in several housing markets across the nation.

This problem is national, folks.  The housing depression is the single largest reason why our economy is going to be stalled for years and years.  Housing prices will continue to fall, folks.  More Americans will lose their homes, and until this problem is addressed, the economy is not going to improve.

The GOP certainly won't lift a finger to do anything about it.  But will the Democrats?