The primary, if not only, reason there has been a brief spike in subsidized demand for housing in recent months (2012), has been the GSE/FHFA endorsed REO-To-Rental plan, and associated securitization conduits, in which large asset managers have been encouraged to take advantage of government funded, risk-free financing (and entirely bypassing banks who have given up on loan origination due to legacy liability issues which have every bank tied up in litigation from now until Feddom come - just see today's Bank of America results) and purchase foreclosed properties in bulk, with the intention of converting them into rental properties.http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-17/och-ziff-calls-top-reo-rental-exit-landlord-businessIt is no secret that in addition to the well-known phenomenon of "foreclosure stuffing", one of the primary drivers of the artificial housing "recovery" has been the surge of hedge funds and asset managers into purchases of rental units courtesy of near-zero cost REO-to-rent federal lending facilities, which have taken out distressed inventory from the market in hopes of converting it into rental.

I would have thought that the funds would be used for, say, the government permitting office starts screwing things up for us, or a pier ends up being a failure, or materials prices rise 5% a month in the two months before framing could begin.

The news in one of my farms loves stories about government gone awry.

Keeping track of the regulations, highway taxes, permits for the types of hauling you're doing, drivers logs, and paying the costs of insurance and fuel makes it a tough way to earn a living.

This makes it hard to enforce any regulations because people know they can get away with it.

Another older federal regulation; Finance and banking laws and RE laws are intertwined that makes casting a net over a violator of one matter to be in violation of another or several laws.

Bound by agency laws and over-site from NAR, CAR and local RE board, and of course the state BRE, continuing education on laws, regulations and legal forms?"

Another egregious violation of the 10th amendment by a federal government that is out of control.

But there are reasons that governments and private enterprises publish statistics and so on - to assist folks in predicting the future.

I'd say the reason you're blown away is that you really don't understand the securitization and you think Fannie Mae is the federal government, which it is not.