There has been some joy in the real estate marketplace during the past few days, in large measure because the National Association of Realtors announced that home sales rose in May.

The rise was just 2 percent above the April sales level, but in a desert every oasis looks good.

According to NAR's chief economist, Lawrence Yun, "We are encouraged by rising home sales, particularly in distressed markets. Foreclosures and short sales appear to be a larger part of the market, particularly in California, and are creating a drag on current home prices."

There surely are a lot of distressed properties. Just in the month of May the foreclosure listing site RealtyTrac.com reported that more than 260,000 property owners received some type of foreclosure notice.

It's a good thing in terms of inventory to see sales rising and to observe distressed homes being purchased. And since it's hugely positive to get foreclosed and distressed homes off the books, the question ought to be why we do everything we can to stop such sales.

How do we undermine the sale of distressed properties? We drive away investors.

We drive away investors by having one set of local property taxes for investors -- and a lower set of property taxes for owner occupants. We have rules for investment properties that simply do not apply to owner-occupant homes -- just think of lead paint regulations.

The idea is not to promote get-rich-quick and no-money-down schemes, but to encourage those with capital to help with one of the largest financial problems of our time, the gross abundance of real estate inventory that's driving down home prices nationwide.

As a country we certainly lost no time bailing out Wall Street with loans worth hundreds of billions of dollars in exchange for securities of dubious value. Why is it that we should support billionaires on Wall Street but not small investors willing to risk their capital buying neighborhood homes?

The argument is not that we shouldn't help the big-money folks on Wall Street, the argument is that we should also encourage small investors who can us help unwind the current real estate crisis one house at a time -- if we let them.

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