For sale, one cracked crystal ball
It’s easy to be a guru, someone once observed. Just make lots of outlandish predictions, then publicize only the ones you got right.
I foresee that I will claim my predictions were right all along!
But on the internet, everyone knows what you said [even if no one cares! – Ed.], so, for better or worse, we have a record of what I predicted for 2007 a mere twelve months ago, and how those fearless predictions came out.
1. Home markets will pick up in spring, 2007, stimulated in part by declining interest rates. The pickup will be accompanied by a series of can-it-last? stories.
The bigger the scare, the bigger the issue sales!
No one will notice that several of these stories will be word-for-word reprints from 2006 and 2005.
Uh, wrong. Not even close.
That prediction wasn’t even close to being right!
I grossly underestimated the severity of the subprime mess. In my defense, so did a lot of other people.
Isn’t it a fact that they’re called bullet loans?
In fact, it’s no longer a subprime mess – instead what we are seeing is a worldwide repricing of risk back from historically very low levels. That risk repricing is not over, and will be the dominant story of 2008. [More fearless predictions for next year? – Ed. Yes, but in another post. – Auth.]
2. Housing and affordability will be much bigger on the national stage than any time in the last 18 years. With new Democratic House chairs Barney Frank and Charles Rangel both committed urbanists and long-time supporters of affordable housing, there will be a great deal of activity inaugurated in the House: proposals, concept papers, hearings, and bills introduced.
Half credit. Housing is much bigger on the national stage, and Mr. Rangel did drop a far-ranging piece of legislation – but he did so merely as a placeholder, a marker for the 2008 legislative session (and, truth be told, really as a signpost for the 2009 session since 2008 is likely see even more posturing and less legislation than 2007).
But housing’s bigger not so much because the Democrats are in charge of Congress as because the subprime shakeout’s consequences are so far-reaching that nobody can overlook them. Subprime has sucked up all the political oxygen, and the more structural issues – the breakdown of public housing, HUD’s moral bankruptcy in funding Section 8, the continuing shortages of workforce housing, the policy innovation inversion – have received virtually no air time.
Had this been an actual housing emergency, there would have been news
3. The House will pass a significant new housing authorization bill. It may focus on emerging issues like workforce housing, public housing revitalization and reinvention, additional affordable housing production, and the recapitalization of aging HUD properties.
The House’s ambitious legislation will probably not be enacted; indeed, it may well stall in the Senate. (If so Messrs. Frank and Rangel, long-time Members who have seen enough to know that the game is decided not by its beginning but by its end, will leave the business unfinished in a way that it can be promptly taken up in the second session.) A much more likely year for enactment is 2008.
Yup, this one came true in both its optimistic and cynical elements. The House did push along a lot of legislation, most of which the Senate barely deigned to notice.
There’s no particular reason to think things will be any different next year.
4. Congress will enact GSE regulatory reform. Although the lame duck never quite flew, the realpolitik practiced by the Administration and Mr. Frank tees up GSE regulatory reform as a mutual-benefit political move, likely to be accomplished in the second quarter.
No. Didn’t happen. GSE regulatory has all but died, a casualty of the subprime fallout and the pressure on credit. The GSE’s have done a marvelous job of suggesting wistfully that they would have been of immense help, if only Congress had let them off the bench into the game.
We could have provided liquidity if they’d let us play
I doubt anything will happen on GSE reform in 2008 either.
5. GSE regulatory reform will establish a set-aside Affordable Housing Fund. Permissible uses, permissible recipients, and who decides what programs and properties are funded, will collectively attract more testimony, editorializing, lobbying, and advocacy than everything else in the GSE bill put together.
Hey, I want some, too!
I’m requesting an Incomplete on this one; since it was predicated on GSE reform, the failure to enact such reform renders it moot.
In point of fact, the pending legislation does include a trust fund. But it’s still vaporware money, not real money, and likely to remain so.
6. Earmark reform will sustain its momentum with the enactment of earmark transparency. Congress will not forego its practice of directly funding particular worthy projects — the policy case for earmarks is defensible and the political case is irresistible —
You used to vote just for me, but now I find you,
Simply irresistible!
– but it will succumb to blogger and good-governance blandishments to compel every earmark to have an identified sponsor, and to allow a Web-based transparency in earmark scrutiny. Congress will imperfectly follow its own rules.
True! This one I got right.
While earmark reform is still being fought committee by committee, the trend is irreversible, the concept irresistible.
7. The Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) will undergo a streamlining/ improvement legislative amendment. The program is popular, successful, efficient, and overdue for some tweaking. Good proposals are floating to address it.
They may be floating, but they’re likely to Sunset first
No, nothing meaningful. Another casualty of the political logjam.
I had thought the inactivity record set by the 109th Congress would stand the test of time, and come to be seen as a monument to immobility.
If I weren’t so dazed, I’d be lame
But the 110th is making its predecessor look positively hare-like.
8. Public housing recapitalization will be debated … and not enacted. Even as the public housing delivery system continues to break down, the program-design task of reinventing public housing is large, complex, difficult, and far-reaching. (Who knows, maybe the
I can’t even give myself half credit for this one, because while I was right nothing was enacted, I was wrong in thinking something would be proposed. It hasn’t been, and public housing continues its slow collapse. This is making things worse, much worse, and the cost will be higher when the bill finally comes due.
I’m here for the public housing funding backlog
9. The
Yes.
Not terribly profound as a conclusion, but not wrong. A good thing.
“Being superficial but right is a good thing.”
10. AHI will be active in Ireland, the UK, South Africa, Egypt, and two other countries. We’re working in Ireland (designing a rental accommodation scheme modeled on US best practice and lessons learned), and I’ve recently been to both London and Johannesburg, two wonderful cities and great folks to whom I hope to return soon, and frequently. And in Egypt, we may be following up on our previous work in helping the Egyptians determine how they can create 500,000 new affordable homes in six years.
And the other two countries? I have no idea, but we continue to respond to inquiries and requests for proposals, so I’m hopeful.
Yes, got this one substantively right. We haven’t been back to
And our crowning achievement, or the crowning client relationship, is with Slum Dwellers International, which works in
11. I’ll still be blogging a year from now. It’s addictive — consuming yet pleasurable — and it makes me think about housing in constantly new ways.
You might as well face it you’re addicted to blog
All of you seem to like reading it — the hits and unique visitors have continuously climbed, very pleasing for a specialized subject! I really appreciate having readers.
(If you like my writing so much you want more of it, check out my movie reviews at my personal Web site.)
These predictions go to eleven!
O yes. No question here. Of course, this was the only controllable prediction, but still, it’s a New Year’s Resolution kept.
That’s the total of them. Can I still keep my guru license?
I foresee problems with your guru license, David
My final score was 5 right, 4 wrong, 2 partial.
Blog. David’s blog.
Write a comment