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John McCain may complain that his housing plan received short shrift in the post-debate coverage. Yet the underlying crisis was not ignored by the nightly newscasts. All three filed a real estate feature; CBS filed two. NBC's Michelle Kosinski surveyed the "sea of foreclosures" in Lee County Fla and found hints that the housing market had hit bottom. Sales are resuming, with many buyers skipping mortgages and paying all cash. This is what a burst bubble looks like: a brand new $275,000 home, seized by the bank from bust developer, has been bought for $80,000.
For ABC's A Closer Look, David Muir (embargoed link) told us that banks are at last beginning to volunteer to renegotiate mortgages and reduce interest rates for struggling homebuyers. His examples were IndyMac and Bank of America, with the overall rate of renegotiation six times higher than this time last year. CBS' Cynthia Bowers cited the statistic that fully 12m homeowners are not true owners at all, owing more on their mortgages than the property itself is worth.
CBS' second feature was in praise of the home mortgage lending practices of the First National Bank of Orwell in Vermont. Michelle Miller introduced us to community banker Mark Young, whose grandfather ran the same firm a century ago. It holds 400 mortgages. It insists on 20% down payment on each and has not sold on a single loan to be bundled in a securities scheme. "A commonsense approach for uncommon economic times," Miller concluded approvingly.
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