Housing Blogs

Please post off-topic ideas, links and Craigslist finds here.
…
Original Source: thehousingbubbleblog.com

How to get rich, REIC-style, while having no morals:1) make money screwing sheep on the way up2) make money screwing sheep on the way down3) repeat 1 & 2 until you die and your soul burns forever in eternal hell…
Original Source: bp1.blogger.com

It is seriously driving me crazy how much I see and hear the word “homeowner” in the media, as if America was full of ‘em.It’s not. Very few people actually OWN their homes. It’s the nation’s dirty little secret. And with HELOCs, even people who used to truly own their homes are now indeed owned….
Original Source

Just vote ‘em all out. All of ‘em.There. That wasn’t so hard, was it.No guillotines. No bullets. No goose-stepping thugs. Just a bunch of pissed off and screwed-over voters doing the most patriotic thing they can this November - overthrowing their government….
Original Source

Instead of proposing legislation to disband or rein in the Fed, George Bush and Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson (oops, I mean Treasury Secretary Paulson) want to give them even more power. Seriously. No, seriously….
Original Source: bp3.blogger.com

(click on the chart for a sharper image)It has to be a nerve-wracking business owning a flat in the North West of England. According to the Nationwide house price survey, since 2003, the market has “crashed” at least three times….
Original Source: bp2.blogger.com

Power Ranch is a nice master-planned community on the far east side of Gilbert, AZ.  The largest homes in Power Ranch were built by Toll Brothers in "The Enclave", the largest model being "The Terraza."  Not everyone in the Enclave has been happy with their home, but it’s a very nice neighborhood. The market slowed as Toll was finishing this neighborhood, and I believe it was late 2006 when Mr. Twist and I spoke with the agent who had listed Toll’s last inventory home.  It was a Terraza with an unfinished pool and carpet on every square inch of floor- including kitchen and bathrooms.
…
Original Source: housingdoom.com

Thanks GT
…
Original Source: housingpanic.blogspot.com

As another week draws to a close, LA Land looks forward to a mellow spring weekend in Los Angeles.  This is the season when trees flower by the tens of thousands, draping the urban forest in a sweet-smelling blanket. Pieter Severynen on one of the trees that makes this "fragrance time" in Southern California:…
Original Source: latimesblogs.latimes.com

I’d like to take a moment to announce a fun new gimmick that I’ve created for donating to Seattle Bubble: Bulls, Bears, and Ponies….
Original Source: seattlebubble.com

I  (along with many others) believe that the housing crisis was brought on, in large part, by poor policies and planning on the part of Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve.  So who does the Treasury Department feel is best qualified to take over crisis management?  You guessed it– the Fed:
…
Original Source: housingdoom.com

From Edmund Andrews at the NY Times: Treasury Dept. Seeks New U.S. Power to Keep Markets Stable (hat tip AllenM) The Treasury Department will propose on Monday that Congress give the Federal Reserve broad new authority to oversee financial market stability, in effect allowing it to send SWAT teams into any corner of the industry or any institution that might pose a risk to the overall system.H…
Original Source: feeds.feedburner.com/CalculatedRisk

The ‘other’ newspaper in Bend is having a field day with the Bulletin’s coverage of the real estate market.From The Source Weekly in Bend:When Fannie and Freddie make a move, the real estate industry takes notice. But when they tightened the rules for mortgages in Deschutes County, our local daily didn’t bat an eyelash.F…
Original Source

People are getting organized to Stop The [incipient] Housing Bailout. Here’s an email I got yesterday:”We have created a website www.StopTheHousingBailout.com (currently hosted on NationalBubble) that is designed to be a clearinghouse of information for a movement against the bailout. The website is in its infancy, but currently consists of a statement why the bailout is wrong and several links to efforts to stop the bailout.”I…
Original Source

From Reuters: S&P cuts FGIC insurance unit’s rating to junk status S&P cut FGIC Corp by six notches to “B,” five steps below investment-grade, from “BBB.” It downgraded FGIC’s insurance arm, Financial Guaranty Insurance Co, by six notches to “BB,” two steps below investment grade, from “A.”The outlook is negative This was expected (Fitch cut FGIC to junk on Wednesday), and FGIC will probably be in run-off (they’ve already stopped writing new business). Unlike insurers AMBAC and MBIA, FGIC was unable to raise new capital.
…
Original Source

A new study by the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City says that inner cities are being harmed even worse than other parts of the country by the foreclosure crisis. In 2007, 0.63% of residences in inner cities were taken over by banks, vs. 0.31% of residences in the rest of the country.

Here are ICIC’s results for the inner cities with the highest rates of properties entering banks’ “real estate owned” (REO) portfolios:

Detroit 3.7%
…
Original Source

It’s Friday desk clearing time. “Illinois’ year-over-year sales in February were down 23 percent, and prices were off 5.6 percent. Chicago-area sales slipped about 27 percent, the Realtors said. Francisco Ybarra hopes a price reduction to $699,000 from $719,000—plus a little jazz —will land a buyer for his West Town neighborhood rowhouse.”
…
Original Source: thehousingbubbleblog.com