Mathew Owens

According to first quarter data for this fiscal year 2012 in the state of California, roughly 55 percent of occupied housing is owner-occupied, with the remaining 45 percent being renter-occupied. Of those who are statistically classified as owning a home, over 75 percent carry it with a mortgage and about 35 percent, or about 5,100,000 homes are near negative equity.

Most financial advisors would have you believe that when planning for your retirement, the goal and the inevitable outcome is subsistence solely on the savings you have accumulated until the point of your exiting the work force. The reason they try to sell this strategy of mere sustainability is because the investments types they put forth–such as mutual funds, life insurance products, stock and bond portfolios, etc.–are typically the ones on which they stand to earn a commission.

In early October of last year the Controller of the State of California released data showing that California fell more than $700 million short in initial budget plans for the year. A slight miscalculation, an overly buoyant disposition, or perhaps just sheer ignorance; whatever the reason it is easy to see why, given the such a disjointed mindset, we took the housing bubble to a completely different level.

Read any introductory college economics book you wish, most will tell you that there is no way the amount of public debt can outstrip the productive capacity of a wealthy, developed nation like the United States.

The student loan market relentlessly makes it way to and past the $1 trillion mark, having outstripped credit card debt, estimated at around $850 billion.

In a recent effort to encourage spending by consumers, the Federal Reserve promised to hold short-term interest rates near zero at least through mid-2013. A plan to lower long-term rates followed suit in September. Unfortunately these lower rates make it harder for savers to hold onto their cash and still beat inflation.

These days the average American household has an average of $15,799 in debt, a number found by dividing the total revolving debt in the United Sates ($793.1 billion as of May 2011 as listed in the Federal Reserve's July 2011 report on consumer credit) by the estimated number of households carrying credit card debt (50.2 million).

With the stock market tumbling, many investors are looking to stable cash flow investments backed by a hard asset such as real estate. Most investors realize that the ponzi scheme of the stock market keeps investors in high risk and highly volatile investments.

As part of a new government innovation program aptly named the Mayors Project, New York City Mayor and billionaire philanthropist Michael Bloomberg is doling out a combined $24 million in grants to five of his colleagues around the country.

With historically low mortgage interest rates accompanying super-low prices and a considerable supply of homes on the market, there is no better time to buy a home. In order to be successful it is essential to not think simply in terms of a shifting real estate market, but an evolving one in which the end of large jumps in housing prices, extremely cautious mortgage lenders, new emerging markets, and long-term commitments for both buyers and investors are now contemporary orthodox.