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Both NBC and CBS turned to the plight of the real estate market. CBS' Cynthia Bowers isolated three separate symptoms. First, homeowners with adjustable rate mortgages are confronting massive increases in their housing costs: she profiled the Donovan household of suburban Chicago, facing a monthly payment hike from $1,470 to $2,100 "and it could go higher." Second, the decline in house prices means that many homeowners cannot refinance their mortgages because they often owe more on the house than its market value. Third, would-be homebuyers, even those with good credit, have to pay higher rates of interest to obtain a mortgage, which increases their monthly payments, which lowers the amount they offer to the seller, which drives prices down further. NBC had Diana Olick of its sibling network CNBC explain a fourth problem--so-called jumbo loans, "which in mortgage-speak is anything over $417,000." Jumbos account for almost one-eighth of all new mortgages, concentrated in markets like California, New York, Washington DC and Boston, where housing prices are highest. The interest of investors in jumbos has evaporated so "a cash-strapped Countrywide Financial, the nation's largest mortgage lender, announced it will severely cut the number of jumbo loans it offers."
Given all these problems it was a counterintuitive decision by NBC to assign Don Teague to the building boom in luxury apartment communities for the elderly. Welcome to the Tuscan-themed architecture of the Edgemere in Dallas, $2,400 monthly rent. Teague gave us a tour of its golf greens, its gourmet restaurants, its fitness center and spa for "retiring babyboomers hoping to continue living the good life into their golden years"--if they can get a decent price on their existing home to pony up the $300,000 entry price.
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