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- The New Market Is Here To Stay In California
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The Desert Sun reports from California. “A Palm Springs home known as a masterpiece of modernism sold Tuesday for $15 million. In the end, the famed house underperformed a bit. Christie’s New York, the auction company, initially believed the house would bring upwards of $25 million. During the bidding, even the auctioneer seemed surprised. ‘We’re at $15 million. Fair warning, now, $15 million,’ he said, taking long pauses as if waiting for an onslaught of additional offers.”
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Original Source: thehousingbubbleblog.com
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14 May, 2008| housingblogs |
Comments (0) @ 23:01
- Condo Stats and Negative Externalities
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The NY Times has an article on the negative externalities of some Condo Life: Foreclosures, Higher Fees and Mowing the Lawn When people buy condos, they expect their monthly fees will cover many of the responsibilities that they would otherwise have as single-family homeowners, like cutting the grass and paying the water bills. Now many find themselves nagging each other in the hallways to pay their assessments and adding special fees while haggling over chores. In Miami, Chicago and San Diego, condo owners are adjusting to the economic woes, sometimes by mowing themselves and working shifts for building security — all while lamenting their lost community. …
Original Source: feeds.feedburner.com/CalculatedRisk
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14 May, 2008| housingblogs |
Comments (0) @ 22:29
- Housing rescue stokes partisan split
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The momentum behind congressional efforts to let the government offer more aid to struggling homeowners has hit stiff resistance.
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Original Source: money.cnn.com
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14 May, 2008| housingblogs |
Comments (0) @ 21:50
- The Price of Being Wrong
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Nantucket Sleighride — Mountain
Don’t cry little Robin-Marie ’cause you know you’re losing your home…
It always makes me sad when I see these foreclosures and short sales with pictures from the children’s rooms. The disruption to family life caused by the Great Housing Bubble has only one precedent in the United States: The Great Depression. Hopefully, this family will be able to move into a comfortable rental rather than a tent city or Hooverville, but they will have to move. Basically, anyone who bought late in the bubble rally is underwater, and these homedebtors will fall into one of two categories: 1. Those who are forced from their homes (or choose to leave), and 2. Those who are trapped in their homes. It is difficult to determine who is worse off. Those who are forced from their homes will have ruined credit and difficulty in obtaining a home in the future. Those who are trapped in their homes have a complete lack of mobility to take promotions and crushing debt service payments that prevent them from doing anything else. All of these problems boil down to one bad decision: they bought a house during a wild financial mania….
Original Source
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14 May, 2008| housingblogs |
Comments (0) @ 20:30
- NJ Unemployment Rate Rises to 5%
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From the NJ Department of Labor and Workforce Development:
Employment Relatively Unchanged in April Unemployment Rate at 5.0 Percent for the MonthIn April, New Jersey payrolls increased by 1,000 and the state’s unemployment rate edged higher by 0.2 percentage point to 5.0 percent equaling the United States rate which was down slightly from 5.1 percent in March.
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Original Source: njrereport.com
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14 May, 2008| housingblogs |
Comments (0) @ 20:27
- Vulture fund eyes California land at "Armageddon" prices
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From L.A. Times staff writer Scott Reckard: Will California become the central feeding ground for real estate vulture investors?
That’s what was suggested today in a report from London describing something called the California Distressed Land Fund Ltd.
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Original Source: latimesblogs.latimes.com
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14 May, 2008| housingblogs |
Comments (0) @ 20:16
- Moody’s Warns on Bond Insurers’ Ratings
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As we discussed the other day in our post about MBIA’s $2.4 billion quarterly loss, the bond insurers are seemingly sitting on the edge of a cliff waiting for loan performance to deteriorate to a tipping point that pushes these companies in to insolvency. W…
Original Source: feeds.feedburner.com/typepad
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14 May, 2008| housingblogs |
Comments (0) @ 19:56
- On Freddie Mac Accounting Change
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From Bloomberg: Freddie Mac Accounting Changes Reduce Losses By $2.6 Billion (hat tip SC) A change in the way the company values some assets that aren’t traded reduced credit losses by $1.3 billion, while a separate rule that lets the company pick and choose which assets to measure contributed an equal amount as well, Freddie Mac said. …Financial Accounting Standard 157 allows companies to estimate a value on holdings that aren’t traded. Freddie Mac increased its Level 3 assets under FAS 157 to $156.7 billion, or 23 percent of its assets, from $31.9 billion as of December. The company also adopted FAS 159, which lets it pick which financial assets and liabilities to measure at fair value through earnings…..
Original Source
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14 May, 2008| housingblogs |
Comments (0) @ 19:55
- Real Homes of Genius: Today we Salute you Compton. Once, Twice, Three times a Short Sale.
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Once again the ministry of truth tells us that inflation is tame so long as you don’t eat or drive which makes for a fascinating Wall Street spectacle. At this point, it has become an utter joke trying to rely on the BLS data for inflation numbers. Practically speaking they are making it up as they go along. For a better frame of reference and your own sanity, it is better to simply grab the pulse of your surroundings and arrive at your own conclusions. After all, sometimes the best way to see how the weather is going to be is to stick your head out your own front door. California has now reached another disturbing point where 1…
Original Source: feeds.feedburner.com/DrHousingBubble-HowILearnedToLoveSocal
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14 May, 2008| housingblogs |
Comments (0) @ 19:29
- The Reality Fairy Has Left The Room- And Possibly The Country
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Here’s a novel solution to our economic woes. Let’s just redefine what makes for a "good" economy. From today’s Arizona Republic: [Thanks L!]
Arizona’s economy may seem ugly right now but when you look at it from a historical context, it looks pretty good, an Arizona State University economics expert said Tuesday….
Original Source: housingdoom.com
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14 May, 2008| housingblogs |
Comments (0) @ 19:09
- This Tsunami Of Economic Insanity
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Some housing bubble news from Wall Street and Washington. Bloomberg, “U.S. foreclosure filings climbed 65 percent and bank seizures more than doubled in April from a year earlier.More than 243,300 properties were in some stage of foreclosure, the highest monthly total since RealtyTrac began in January 2005. Nevada, California and Florida had the highest rates. Filings rose 4 percent from March.”
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Original Source: thehousingbubbleblog.com
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14 May, 2008| housingblogs |
Comments (0) @ 18:57
- WCRER: Housing Market Improving for Buyers
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The latest quarterly housing market snapshot from the Washington Center for Real Estate Research (WCRER) was released yesterday, and as expected, the news continues to get better for home buyers. Since we’re talking about January through March, there are no surprises here for anyone that has been following the NWMLS data and the Case-Shiller index.
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Original Source: feeds.feedburner.com/SeattleBubble
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14 May, 2008| housingblogs |
Comments (0) @ 18:56
- Don’t Buy Into the Hype
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The Buzz is out there, April resale home sales are up in comparison to March. And Ziprealty’s very own REALTOR® Pam is pushing it hard. Here’s an e-mail she sent out to one of our BMIT readers:”Everyone is aware of what happened when prices went too high, credit dried upand sales plummeted. However, the tide may be turning again. Demand is starting to rise quickly but the supply is not. Will this stabilize the fall of prices? It may be too soon to tell. However, what you need to know… sales for San Diego County…….
Original Source
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14 May, 2008| housingblogs |
Comments (0) @ 18:25
- Freddie Mac on Walking Away
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More from the conference call: Analyst: Quick question on your direction in terms of housing price declines and the impact on credit costs. Have you looked at the impact of rising LTV’s have on the projected credit cost. In other words, if people get close to and then get under water, does the propensity for them to default, does that go up geometrically, and is that captured in your numbers?Freddie Mac: Yes, clearly it is. And you know you have identified one of the key attributes of the loans in ‘06 and ‘07 that are contributing to the higher defaults. As I said in that remarks it has caused us to look hard at what the maximum LTV we’re willing to purchase, and it also results in our raising delivery fees to that portion of the population. So it clearly is contributing to higher default costs. It is captured in our numbers. And we have responded both with tightening of terms and raising prices….
Original Source
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14 May, 2008| housingblogs |
Comments (0) @ 18:21
- Brace yourself for 4 percent inflation
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Mervyn King is looking for understanding as price stability goes out the window. He promised reporters that “Inflation will return to the target and growth will eventually recover to a sustainable rate. But we will have to be patient”….
Original Source: bp3.blogger.com
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14 May, 2008| housingblogs |
Comments (0) @ 17:33
- Phoenix: April Home Sales Up But Median Down 21%
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Yesterday Jay Butler released his monthly home sales report for the Phoenix area:
MESA, Ariz. — For the first time since July 2005, the local resale housing market has posted year-over-year improvement. April had 5,585 recorded sales in contrast to 4,855 sales for a year ago and 4,335 sales in March 2008. Given the improvement, the basic question is whether this is the first sign of the much anticipated recovery or merely a blip in a continuing weak market, said Jay Butler, director of Realty Studies in the Morrison School of Management and Agribusiness at Arizona State University’s Polytechnic campus….
Original Source: housingdoom.com
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14 May, 2008| housingblogs |
Comments (0) @ 17:31
- Just wondering.. Does anyone seriously believe the hilarious US government inflation report out today - which showed nearly 0% inflation?
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I do believe the US government has lost all credibility as of today. Not that they had much anyway, but now it’s just laughable.Inflation pressures eased a bit in April despite the biggest jump in food prices in 18 years.The Labor Department reported Wednesday that consumer prices edged up 0.2 percent last month, compared to a 0.3 percent rise in March.The unchanged reading for energy reflected a big 4.8 percent jump in natural gas prices, offset by a 2 percent decline in gasoline costs….
Original Source
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14 May, 2008| housingblogs |
Comments (0) @ 17:13
- The shareholders begin to pay
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Its the fashionable thing - a rights issue.After weeks of denial, Bradford and Bingley finally admitted that they needed more money to shore up their battered balance sheet. They are looking for £300 million of new money. The news won’t make their shareholders happy. The new shares will be discounted at 48 percent of the B&B’s Tuesday’s closing price….
Original Source
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14 May, 2008| housingblogs |
Comments (0) @ 17:00
- Mortgage approvals take a dive
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Yesterday, the Council of Mortgage Lenders published data on the number of new mortgages. However, the bad news from the banks was buried beneath yesterday’s terrible inflation numbers.They can run, but they can’t hide. Here is a picture of the sorry tale coming from the house lending business. The number of new mortgage approvals is way down. Moreover, the number appears to have reached a dismal plateau of about 40 thousand a month. Normally, January and February are quiet months in terms of lending activity, whith things picking up in March. Not so this year. The March number is actually a fraction lower than February….
Original Source
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14 May, 2008| housingblogs |
Comments (0) @ 16:44
- [Spring Fishing] Getting To The Bottom Of It All
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Spring brings optimism to our economic senses, and that’s probably a good thing. Pessimism as it relates to the housing market usually becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. After all, what is property value but an intangible feeling about a property compared to others based on future expectations (and of course, a lot of other things, but bear with me).
I…
Original Source: matrix.millersamuel.com
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14 May, 2008| housingblogs |
Comments (0) @ 16:37
