Romney: Accelerate foreclosures to ‘allow investors to buy up homes’

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Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney argued Monday that the U.S. housing market would be better off if more American families were renters instead of homeowners.

“One is, don’t try and stop the foreclosure process,” the candidate told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in response to a question about what he would do to encourage housing. “Let it run its course and hit the bottom, allow investors to buy up homes, put renters in them, fix the homes up, and let it turn around and come back up.”

“The Obama administration has slow-walked the foreclosure processes that have long existed and as a result we still have a foreclosure overhang,” Romney added.

Daily Kos’ Jed Lewison predicted that Romney’s quote would almost certainly end up in a campaign ad if he survives the nomination process.

“It’s not just that he’s saying we need to help banks put more people out of their homes, it’s not just that he’s saying we need to do it until we hit bottom, it’s that he’s also saying that then and only then will ‘investors’ feel comfortable buying up homes so that they can rent them out to the people who used to own them,” Lewison wrote.

Romney will appear with the other Republican candidates at a CNN debate in Las Vegas Tuesday. Nevada has the country’s highest foreclosure rate. One in every 118 households in the state were foreclosed on in August, according to RealtyTrac.

Watch this video from Las Vegas Review-Journal via Daily Kos.