Homeowners aren't benefiting, they've underwater on their mortgages and are selling for pennies on the dollar. It's Blackstone and a number of other clever players who've been at this for years [1].
The 80 million homes that are owned in the US, are selling for pennies on the dollar and are underwater? Quite the opposite, only 8% of home owners are underwater, and that's a drastic improvement vs the peak of the real estate collapse. Total home value in the US is near all time record highs, and home equity has skyrocketed the last three years.
Home equity has climbed by $4+ trillion in just the last 2.5 years, an increase of 64%; from $6.7 trillion in the first quarter of 2012, to roughly $11 trillion today.
Home owners have benefited massively from the Fed bailout, via low mortgage rates and cheap refinancing. Home owners have gained probably $8 trillion since the bottom, across essentially every market in the US.
Numbers without sources have no value in an internet forum but from what I'm taking from your argument (please correct me if I'm wrong), is that:
"TARP worked because, housing prices have increased across the board and as a result, the whole country is richer and everyone is better off"
You're definitely right about prices have definitely gone up[1] (side note: Case-Shiller Index isn't close to 64% nationally), but all of this is all on paper. Residential home sales are still at '08/'09 levels; it's hard to translate those paper gains into liquidity [2]. I also agree with the low mortgage rates comment, however, all of the QE money is going everywhere but the housing market. Even if you have a stellar credit rating, it will be incredibly difficult to get a loan. Hell, even Ben Bernanke couldn't refinance his mortgage, which is both ironic and absolutely insane when you think about it [3]. Six years post-TARP, the housing market and American economy, still have plenty of structural issues. TARP was a monumental decision that will forever affect every part of America and housing prices cannot be the only metric or lens that we judge TARP's performance on.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-14/blackstone-s-home-b...