For months, we’ve been wondering if the housing sector was rebounding or whether the good news was a creature of the tax credit. Well,  the jury is still out, but we have a microphone in the jury room and it doesn’t look good. The May numbers were just plain disappointing, and no amount of it-takes-longer-to-close-a-short-sale explaining away will excuse it.

The weak job numbers for May almost guarantee that this recovery will be very slow and very mild. Without jobs, housing cannot come back and while there’s some good news on the employment front, it just ain’t enough. It now appears that the housing sector has become a ward of the state, fully dependent on government concessions for survival. The demographics are good and if the job market and the economy were to come back strongly, there is great potential for a real estate surge.

But the Great Recession and the financial meltdown seem to have caused a sea change in the outlook of many Americans. Most folks were only accustomed only to good times; the downturn has now convinced them that there will never be good times again. So, like their forebearers in the Depression generation, they accept the fact that renting is their only future. Until this psychology can be turned again, there will be no return of housing, onlywhat the government dole will allow.