:: The S.I.C.L.E. Cell ::

:: Tuesday, February 09, 2010 ::

More demand, but more supply, too
The demand for housing has diminished as unemployment and other financial pressures have forced college graduates to stay with their parents and whole families to move in with their relatives. But longer term, that demand is expected to be "extremely sound," says Steve Melman, director of economic services at the National Association of Home Builders, or NAHB, in Washington, D.C.

Melman expects a resurgence to occur as economic conditions improve and the children of the baby boomers, called the echo boomers, enter their peak homebuying years.

Demand for housing already has returned to some extent and may increase further in 2010. The National Association of Realtors, or NAR, recently reported that pending home sales rose for nine consecutive months through October 2009. NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said in a statement that existing home sales should number 5.5 million to 6 million annually based on population growth, but that sales were "well below the 5 million mark" before the federal homebuyer tax credit was offered.

Yet even an increase in demand may not be enough to match the number of sellers, warns Dowell Myers, a professor of urban planning and demography at the University of Southern California School of Policy, Planning and Development in Los Angeles.

"Before, there was an unlimited supply of buyers because of the baby-boom generation," he says. "But now that unlimited supply of buyers is going to turn into an unlimited supply of sellers."

Myers says sellers eventually will outnumber buyers, unless a greater effort is made to "cultivate" them.

"There is a shortage of young people all over the country relative to the number of seniors in the future, so they'll all need to step up to meet the supply of homes for sale," says Myers.

The implications for current homeowners could be dire if Myers' read is correct as a supply-and-demand imbalance of such magnitude could cause home prices to decline. The solution? Myers recommends a greater investment in education so more young people will be able to afford to own a home in the future.

If the boomers were the pig in the python, the echoers are the stomach stoma. More education now is only a patch and probably not an adequate one. Simply put, more people equals more demand. And the idea that all children ever aborted would have been impoverished criminals anyway is a ridiculous cliche. Of all the people I've known I can't think of ONE who would not have been able to offer her progeny higher education had s/he not been aborted.

Since 1973 an entire generation of human beings, I call them the ripplers, has been wiped out. And we are practically stupid to think that the loss of this many people will have little or no effect on us morally, emotionally, socially, financially. Mary Shelley's message was a good one: mess with mother nature, get Frankenstein (in oh so many ways).

So I contend that part of the reason your home value may be in question is due to the rippler effect. Remember that the next time you tell someone abortion isn't your issue.

:: ashli 9:45 AM # ::
...

We're buying a new house. We were in our old house for 15 years. It's a weird feeling. I like where we're going, but our old home has seen a lot of drama and contains within its walls basically all of my adult history. Also...it's the only place where my first child and me were alive and together.

The surprising thing is that I feel the loss of this house in a way I wouldn't if I had not aborted my little one thirteen years ago. I suppose I still have myself, my womb that I carry with me everywhere, but it's no consolation. There's something awful attached to that "landmark:" it was a temporary home for my child, and then it was a crime scene. It's like the hotel room where 5-year-old Shaniya Davis was defiled and victimized within an inch of her life: not only do you not ever want to go there, you feel it should be firebombed off the face of the earth. So I take no comfort in my own biology; it's no kind of positive focal point for the two of us. Gentle sentimental winds do not blow within those walls.

The new house is nice and roomy. I think how one of our family will not be making the move with us, will not be there to enjoy it or the children across the street. These are unhappy thoughts that were not expected, so I find that I'm still living the abortion experience in different ways and always will. I'm like the 79-year-old Gloria Swanson who, three years before her death, began and ended her memoirs with the loss of her child via abortion. It was the mark-maker, the beginning and end, emotionally all-encompassing.

At the restaurant today my kids and husband went to get their food leaving me sitting alone at the table. Suddenly I was overwhelmed by thought and emotion surrounding our first wee one. Tears fell on the table in such a public place. I had to wipe them quickly up and repair before anyone saw, because how can I explain that I am simply moving and it has triggered something awful and refreshed the deepest agony I have ever known.

The debilitating maternal illness from which I suffered was for a time. Abortion is forever.

I traded diamonds for dirt. Nothing was worth this. Nothing upon nothing.

:: ashli 9:31 PM # ::
...