You know, I think that thing we see coming up to hit us in the face really fast might be the “bottom” of the housing market everyone is talking about.

Well, maybe not everyone. Just people like me who are working in sales or interested in the economy in general. You’d think I had a million dollars invested the way I follow the stock market. But the more you learn about the stock market the more you realize that you don’t know. Still, I probably am a lot more knowledgeable than a lot of the bozo’s on Wall St who are gambling every day with other people’s money.

And that’s not really a digression.....

One of the things that interests me is that the stock market seems to be jittery about concerns in the sub-prime lending industry. Usually, when stocks drop in value, people invest in real estate. But I wonder what will happen now that problems in the real estate market are causing the problems in the stock market?

Actually, I suppose that isn’t really true. It’s problems in the LENDING industry that have caused problems both in the housing market and in the stock market. For investors, I don’t have that much sympathy. People who buy investment property know very well the risks associated with “flipping” houses – and if they don’t, they should. Besides, as fewer people are able to buy homes rents are going to go up, so it’s not like anybody but the most seriously leveraged real estate investor is going to be totally out of options. Likewise, people who were heavily invested in these bankrupt or ready-to-go bankrupt mortgage companies should have been paying attention to the company’s day to day business practices.

There is no way that any rational person thought giving no-doc (no income verification) loans to minimum wage workers for half a million dollars was a smart idea. Can you say “predatory lending practices”? Of course, many of these lenders didn’t care that they’d have a foreclosure on their hands since they thought they could sell foreclosed property for a profit. If pressed on courting buyers anybody with an ounce of common sense would have declined, they said, “Hey, everybody’s doing it. It’s just what you have to do to stay competitive. I’m not preying on Joe Lunchbox. If I don’t make him the loan, he’ll just go down the street and borrow from somebody else.”

Yet you’d think that sheer self preservation would have prevented some of this stuff from happening. If not only one company is out there on a limb writing all kinds of wack deals but ALL of them are doing it, how do they think they’re going to deal with the foreclosures when they all happen? You can’t tell me that the leadership of these loan outfits really thought that the economy was going to go roaring into overdrive at any minute, wages were going to go up, enabling all these people to easily make the payments they could hardly afford to start with. ESPECIALLY with the Fed raising interest rates at the merest hint of wage pressure threatening “inflation” – what could these people have been thinking of?

Well, now the uber-boss at my company has to think of things like “Make sure you get rid of anything that says American Home Mortgage on it.”

“Already took care of that, boss.” I said, calmly. Hmm. Maybe it’s a good thing we DIDN’T have a bunch of deals in the works.

What I’m not looking forward to are more customers like the ones I had earlier today, arrogant and bad mannered people who don’t have questions – they have demands. It’s fine if you come to look at a model and don’t want to get a hard sell. Not that I would ever give anybody a hard sell anyway. If you’re just looking, or “want to keep your finger on the pulse” of the market, or are just driving around looking for something to do on the weekend you’ll get the same pleasant treatment as the guy who has to move next month. You don’t have to insist that something down the street is so much less expensive with the same features or insult the builder personally since you once saw him at your place of worship. I already know what the man looks like, and what kind of sales person would I be if I didn’t already know what was going on down the street? If you like the other place so much better, enjoy it in good health: it doesn’t have concrete between the floors and granite counter tops aren’t standard.

They looked so disappointed when I just kept smiling and saying, “Oh, I didn’t understand it that way, but you could be right about that.” Finally, failing to engage me in an argument they both just stood there looking at me google-eyed and asked me to explain the standard features of our units again, which I patiently did. Then we had to do the whole tour over since by now they were listening instead of shouting at me through all four models.

People are crazy.