Unintended Consequences

I've been saying for some time that the Albuquerque/Rio Rancho market has been hurt more by external events than anything happening here. More confirmation: a lender who does a lot of business here in town (none of it was subprime) estimates that about 40% of potential buyers have vanished from the market due to the elimination of various types of loan programs. Again, I am not talking about the subprime loans that were not a major factor here. These are programs that performed well but were eliminated as the credit crunch devastated lender reserves.