Special report, Part IV: NAR’s parting push

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Here’s the final report from former Chicago Tribune staff writer Mary Umberger, who has been hobnobbing with members of the National Assn. of Realtors at their convention in Orlando, Fla., since Thursday and, even as you read this, is preparing to board a plane in the hopes of replacing the hotel and convention hall air in her lungs with a cold blast off Lake Michigan. Thanks for putting yourself through this on our account, Mary.

Umberger concludes:

So, if housing is ever to emerge from the doldrums, the NAR wants the federal government to give it a push. Among the initiatives the trade group is promoting is a program for the feds to ‘buy down’ mortgages to make them irresistibly cheap.

It will be urging the next session of Congress to subsidize lending in order to create a fund to pay ‘points’ -- the fees that mortgage buyers typically might pay upfront to get lower interest rates. The Realtors would like to see such subsidization pushing 30-year fixed rates down to 4.5% for participants (buyers) in what it would foresee as a one-year stimulus program.

The NAR estimates that the costs to taxpayers for a 1%/1-point ‘buydown’ would amount to $100 billion –- but it also believes that such a subsidy might absorb 800,000 homes for sale that are currently glutting the market.

‘Given the $700-billion package [passed in October], $100 billion would seem reasonable,’ chief economist Lawrence Yun said.

-- Lauren Beale

Thoughts? Comments?