Fracking boom could lead to housing bust

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http://grist.org/climate-energy/fracking-boom-could-lead-to-housing-bust/

?w=250&h=173

When it comes to the real estate market in Bradford County, Pa., where 62,600 residents live above the Marcellus Shale, nothing is black and white, says Bob Benjamin, a local broker and certified appraiser. There aren’t exactly “fifty shades of grey,” he says, but residential mortgage lending here is an especially murky situation.

When Benjamin fills out an appraisal for a lender, he has to note if there is a fracked well or an impoundment lake on or near the property. “I’m having to explain a lot of things when I give the appraisal to the lender,” he says. “They are asking questions about the well quite often.”

And national lenders are becoming more cautious about underwriting mortgages for properties near fracking, even ones they would have routinely financed in the past, Benjamin says.

That’s a real problem in Bradford County, where 93 percent of the acreage is now under lease to a gas company.

[femmocrat]

1. Good article, thanks.

Unfortunately, I can relate.

[enough]

2. Maybe the prospect of ruined real estate values will wake people up,

even if poisoned water and pillaged land doesn't do it.