cap and trade; real estate; green

We've been told that the cause of the Great Recession was plummetting home values which rendered financial institutions that lent on this collateral illiquid or insolvent. 

Guess now the value of homes isn't that big a problem anymore. Here's a little-known feature tucked into the Cap & Trade debacle which is guaranteed to cost  virtually every American time and money

The bill forces sellers to have an energy inspection prior to being able to sell their home. Windows, appliances and insulation will have to be inspected and approved by a government inspector and modifications would have to be made for compliance before you can close the sale.

Basically, you won't be able to sell until you go through the expense of bringing your house up to the new code. This will cost a prohibitive amount in many cases. For example, let's say that you own an older house which you bought in 2003 for $250,000 and you now need to sell. Not only has the value fallen to or below the level of the mortgage due the the drop in prices, but you are now faced with re-insulating the entire house, installing new windows, and changing the HVAC & other appliances. The total cost for this type of renovation might easily come to well over 10% of the house's value.

I'm sure this is going to reduce the toxic asset problem all the TARP banks have with underwater mortgages, not.  How many hundreds of thousands of homes will  prove too expensive to retrofit and be simply abandoned upon vacancy?  Bailout II for those banks---green style?

And will ACORN hire all these new "government inspectors"?...hey these will be "green jobs"!

I have a rhetorical question. Is there anything that the Obama Administration doesn't want to regulate?