Giving a helping hand - government strategies to stabilize a falling US housing market
In this short note we summarize the plans being put forward to help the shaky US housing market.

We then briefly touch on the relevance of these proposals to the residential market in the UK.

The latest data provides ample evidence that the housing market's decline in the US is accelerating.

The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home price index of 20 major U.S. cities fell by 14.4% in March versus last year, the largest drop since its inception in 2001.

The narrower 10-city index declined 15.3 percent in March a record fall in its two-decade history.

One estimate, from Moody's Economy.com, suggests that with prices declining rapidly in much of the country, nearly nine million homeowners have mortgages equal to or greater than their home's value.

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