Our foreclosures are an embarrassment, totaling 7,196 in the four-county Tampa Bay area in December alone.
Home construction is floundering. Tampa scraped together a record-low 932 housing starts in the last quarter of 2008.
Even local apartment owners have gone begging for tenants. Housing prognosticators predict 10 percent vacancy by the end of this year.
With such a smorgasbord of sickly signs it's understandable that real estate insiders are pleading with Washington for help. But that's the wrong approach.
If you missed the recent news, home builders hit the federal government up for a new $22,000 maximum tax credit for new home purchases. Presumably, if your tax bill were too small to use the credit, Washington would send you a welfare check.
Real estate organizations press for universal 4.5 percent mortgage rates. Antiforeclosure advocates seek massive loan forgiveness for homeowners drowning in debt.
None of these measures will cure what ails us. As we learned during the latest credit meltdown, somebody's free lunch becomes somebody else's starvation diet. Squeeze one end of the proverbial balloon, and the other end sprouts a tail.
Banks forced to subsidize the financially reckless will collect their pound of flesh from the financially responsible. Tax credits for new homes penalize people buying existing homes.
I don't blame trade groups for petitioning the government for favors. But what we need is a restoration of confidence that comes with a cleansed market neither hobbled nor helped by fly-by-night government intervention.
The market doesn't need more hot wiring but a cold water cure.
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