Roger Altman Quotes

Our economy isn't going to recover until the housing market finds its footing.

I strongly believe supply is the best way to address housing affordability.

A strong economy causes an increase in the demand for housing; the increased demand for housing drives real-estate prices and rentals through the roof. And then affordable housing becomes completely inaccessible.

It is time to move on. House prices won't rise and the economy won't fully engage until more distressed properties are resolved and put back into ordinary use.

Housing is a relatively small sector of the economy, and its decline should be self-correcting.

Almost a decade removed from the foreclosure crisis that began in 2008, the nation is facing one of the worst affordable-housing shortages in generations.

Politically, sometimes you get situations where rent control will go through. It is especially true in an emergency, where there is a sudden, sharp increase in demand for housing or a cut back in supply. People will simply not allow the marketplace to allocate housing resources and so you get pressures for rent control. Once you have it, it is hard to eliminate.

Until Americans feel that their core asset - their homes - are stabilized, they are not going to have the animal spirits and they will continue to have less buying power.

Nationally, the share of mortgages that are underwater fell by about one-half between 2011 and 2014.

We don't have to guess what Mitt Romney would have done if he were president. Because he told us. He said we should let foreclosures - and I quote - 'hit the bottom' so the market could - I quote - 'run its course.'

We believe the 36, nearly 40, billion pound discount given for a right to buy houses took a million houses out of the public housing sector which is desperately needed for rent.

There are tremendous barriers to building housing. If we could break them down, the need for rent controls would go away.

The housing market will get worse before it gets better.

The virtues of homeownership are so ingrained in the American psyche that we often forget that housing is also a source of economic stress. Rising milk prices are regarded as a household tragedy for some, and spiking gas prices stoke national outrage. But whenever home prices go up, it’s “a recovery,” even though that recovery also means millions of people can no longer afford to buy.

For resident stability, I fully agree with the government's stance that stabilizing the housing market should be the first and foremost step.

I do know that homelessness is related to housing, and we haven't been producing housing in the numbers that our community requires - a lot of the escalating costs of housing is related to the fact that supply is way short than demand.

We need a government policy all-out in favor of more, denser housing.

It is already tough to buy a house. But if we are bringing a population the size of Newcastle upon Tyne into the country every single year, if we cannot set limits on the number of people that come and work in Britain, then simple maths says it is going to be even more difficult to get on to the housing ladder.

It is almost impossible to open a newspaper without reading something about the London housing market. House prices are rising at such a rate that the vast majority of Londoners can't afford to buy, are being forced out of the boroughs they grew up in, or in the worst cases, are being made homeless. If nothing is done, people will continue to be driven out of the city and London will cease to be a hub for creativity and entrepreneurship.

Shipping has a great oversupply of vessels that came from over-ordering a few years back. We think 2014 may be when it turns around.

A home is a home, and excess supply leads to prices falling.

It's time to pull the bandage off America's foreclosure problem. The economy is ready to emerge from its recent dark period, but to make it happen soon we need to speed the resolution of millions of troubled home loans. Six years have passed since the crisis began, yet instead of accelerating, foreclosures have slowed.

Local authorities face huge housing issues with demands outstripping supply many times over; the only way those in housing need can be housed is in the private sector.

When regulations on the housing industry are reasonable, the cost of housing goes down. Regulatory relief is needed to make housing more affordable to more Americans.

Once the housing market begins to recover, I would phase out the mortgage tax deduction.