And then right on schedule the illegals started going home

And you just know they're walking away from no-down toxic loans in droves too. Nice job Wells Fargo giving loans to illegals! Nice job Countrywide! Nice job IndyMac. Fricking idiots.

You're gonna see ghost towns in America folks, where the illegals moved in and just as quickly moved out. The buildings will still stand, torn and tattered spanish-language billboards and closed-down storefronts will dot the landscape, (most of) the people will be gone, and trust me, you won't want to go there at night. Tucson, South Phoenix, most of LA and San Diego, the border cities of Texas, and so many more are gonna get nasty. Like a bad zombie-picture nasty.

And I'll remind you when Nicholas Retsinas, the corrupt and incompetent REIC stooge who runs the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, talked about the REIC wanting the illegals to keep pouring in - who else was going to buy up all these stupid unwanted houses? Hell, who was gonna build more of these stupid unwanted houses? The illegals! That's who!

Didn't quite turn out that way, huh Nick? Maybe the illegals can take Retsinas over the border with 'em. We don't need him anymore.

And it sure is nice to see that some Governors still think the United States is a nation of laws. Even though our corrupted Congress and President have given up on that ideal.

The US a nation of laws? That concept seems so, well, how would you say, so retro! Doesn't it?

As predicted by HP, laid-off homebuilder illegals now fleeing housing-crash-central Arizona in droves. What's that giant sucking sound now?

Gotta love the folks who didn't understand that the housing bubble and illegal immigration were linked at the hip.

If you're still in that camp, hopefully this article will make you understand.

Illegals built the houses. Some illegals bought the houses (using toxic loans of course). And now that the corrupt REIC work has dried up, and home prices are falling, plus the states are making it illegal to hire an illegal, we've got a big stinking mess on our hands.

Will they stay, go underground, and turn to lives of crime?

Will they go home, leaving ghost towns of run down neighborhoods, empty Wal-Mart stores, and a sea of foreclosures?

Or will they rob the banks on the way out (Countrywide and Indymac of course), doing cash-out refis with bloated appraisals, never intending to pay back the loans?

What a mess. Ay caramba. Here's a report from housing-crash and illegal-immigration-hellhole Phoenix Arizona.

New hiring law nears, migrants flee
Immigration hard-liners cheer, but economic fallout begins

Undocumented immigrants are starting to leave Arizona because of the new employer-sanctions law.

The state's strong economy has been a magnet for illegal immigrants for years. But a growing number are pulling up stakes out of fear they will be jobless come Jan. 1, when the law takes effect. The departures are drawing cheers from immigration hard-liners and alarm from business owners already seeing a drop in sales.

Some are moving to other states, where they think they will have an easier time getting jobs. Others are returning to Mexico, selling their effects and putting their houses on the market.

Adrian, a 34-year-old undocumented immigrant from Sonora, plans to move back to Mexico as soon as he can sell a 2-acre tract he owns in Tonopah.

Adrian said his sister also is selling her house with plans to return to Mexico. He knows other undocumented immigrants who are refinancing their houses and getting cash out so they can return right away rather than waiting for their houses to sell.

For the PC crowd who ripped HP for connecting illegal immigration to the housing bubble, I give you this...

This article addresses the supply side, where illegal labor fueled the corrupt homebuilders profits these past few years as millions of poorly built homes went up and an American homebuilding workforce was displaced, all with a nudge nudge wink wink from the corrupted Congress and President.

But don't forget though that the illegals also played a role in the demand side too (check out that article - $15,000 a year illegals get $720,000 loan) which is also unraveling faster than a soggy burrito.

For Illegal Immigrants, Housing Slump Takes Toll

Some of the casualties of America’s housing bust are easy to spot up and down California’s Central Valley.

From Fresno to Sacramento, big tangles of wire and PVC pipes clutter vacant lots in silent subdivisions, waiting for houses to be built — some day. Dozens of “For Sale” signs already dot the lawns across new residential communities. And right next to the ubiquitous billboards from builders are fresh signs offering homeowners help to avoid foreclosure.

But another set of losers is less visible: the immigrant workers, mostly illegal, who rode the construction boom while it lasted and now find jobs on building sites few and far between.

Offering more than $10 an hour as well as new skills and a shot at upward mobility, construction provided many illegal immigrants the best job they ever had, a step up from the backbreaking work reserved for those toiling without legal authorization, which in the Central Valley mostly meant pruning and picking in fruit and vegetable fields.

The growing presence of illegal immigrants in home building, mostly working for small labor contractors, might help explain why government statistics have recorded only a small decline in construction employment, despite the collapse in residential investment.

“Technically they don’t fire them,” said Myrna Martínez, coordinator for the Fresno office of the American Friends Service Committee, a nonprofit organization working on social assistance projects for immigrant workers. “They just tell them that there is no more work.”

While there are no equivalent statistics at the state or local level, a glance at a construction crew anywhere in the valley confirms the overwhelming immigrant share. “There are only Mexicans,” said Adrián L., an illegal immigrant from Oaxaca who does interior work on homes here. “Now not even the supervisors are American.”

FLASH: Housing starts plunge 14.3% to 10-year low - New home construction down 37.8% year-on-year

Millions will go unemployed during this REIC downturn. Just like the telecom implosion in 2000, way too much capacity, way too little demand.

The unemployment will only make the housing ponzi scheme unraveling even worse.

Panic is knocking. Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock. Can you hear it? You should.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - U.S. home builders started the fewest homes in nearly a decade in January, as housing starts plunged 14.3% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.408 million, the Commerce Department reported Friday.

It's the lowest rate for starts since August 1997. Housing starts were down 37.8% compared with January 2006.

The starts figure was much lower than expected on Wall Street, where economists were looking for a 2% drop to 1.60 million annualized units. The permits figure was close to the 1.58 million expected by median forecast in the MarketWatch survey of economists.

The stunning drop in home building indicates that builders are scaling back their plans on a massive scale to work down the excess inventory of unsold homes on the market. Hopes that a bottom in the housing market has been reached will have to be re-evaluated

Starts of single-family homes dropped 11.2% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.108 million, the lowest since August 1997. Permits for single-family homes fell 4% to 1.121 million, the lowest since December 1997.

Two weeks ago, the Commerce Department reported that the number of vacant homes increased by 34% in 2006 to 2.1 million at the end of the year, nearly double the long-term vacancy rate. Economists said there are 1 million excess homes.