"The Death Valley Of Housing"

Now that the homebuyer tax credit has run out, housing has fallen off a cliff. Howard Gleckman reflects:

The hardest bit to swallow is not so much that the homebuyer tax credit is a boondoggle. It is that it was a totally predictable waste of money. Economists warned Congress in 2008 that the credit would do little more than shift timing decisions by a few months. But lawmakers ignored the advice again and again. Remarkably, the Senate may be about to give buyers still more time to close on homes they put contracts on before April 30. That way, they can squeeze the last few dollars out of a failed credit.  

Calculated Risk has been on top of this from the start.