Category: US Housing
The analysis published under this category are as follows.
Monday, June 09, 2014
How to Profit from "Margin Call" on American Homeowners / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Money_Morning
Shah Gilani writes: Get ready. There's more trouble ahead for home buyers, home builders, and especially homeowners who took out home-equity lines of credit before the housing crisis. Those heydays have turned into haymakers.
What's already started to happen might not only knock out the formerly aspiring but now petering-out housing recovery, but also might knock the already weak economy to the ground.
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Tuesday, June 03, 2014
US Housing Market's Darkening Data, Get Ready for Falling House Prices / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Dr_Martenson
Brian Pretti writes: When looking at residential real estate, we often tend to focus almost solely on recent price movements in assessing the health of the housing market at any point in time. But as both homeowners and income-earners in the larger economy, of which the housing market is an important component, to really understand what's going on, we need clarity into the larger cycle driving those price movements.
The more we look at today's data, the more it looks like that we are in a new type of pricing cycle -- one that homeowners and housing investors have no prior experience with.
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Monday, June 02, 2014
Beware the Latest U.S. Mortgage Market Trap / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Money_Morning
Shah Gilani writes: Get ready. There’s more trouble ahead for home buyers, home builders, and especially homeowners who took out home-equity lines of credit before the housing crisis. Those heydays have turned into haymakers.
What’s already started to happen might not only knock out the formerly aspiring but now petering-out housing recovery, but also might knock the already weak economy to the ground.
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Friday, May 30, 2014
The Next Trillion-Dollar U.S. Mortgage Market Meltdown May Be Coming / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Money_Morning
Shah Gilani writes: The fourth securitization deal of big investor-owned single-family homes for rent is here.
Is this just another Wall Street gamble that will wreck the economy again, or is this time different?
You be the judge.
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Thursday, May 22, 2014
How to Safeguard Your Portfolio from the Coming U.S. Housing Market Crisis / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: DailyGainsLetter
George Leong writes: The housing market has enjoyed a boom that’s lasted several years as prices have ratcheted upward toward the 2008 highs, prior to the subprime mortgage meltdown. Now, while the housing market has been fairly steady with above-average price appreciation potential in homebuilder stocks, I still think we could be headed for some issues on the horizon.
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Wednesday, May 21, 2014
U.S. Home Owners Drowning in the American Dream / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Raul_I_Meijer
According to a new Zillow report, 40% of all US mortgage holders can’t afford to sell their homes. That is 20 million Americans homeowners, 10 million who are downright underwater and another 10 million who are so close to being there that they don’t have the money to cover the cost of selling. And those are still numbers across the spectrum; things are far towards the bottom. ’30% of homes in the bottom price tier are in negative equity, while 18.1% of homes in the middle tier and 10.7% in the top tier are underwater’. If we assume that at the bottom, like across the spectrum, as many people are close to being submerged as those who already are, that would mean 60% of bottom tier borrowers are too poor to sell their homes (i.e. have less than 20% equity).
Saturday, May 17, 2014
U.S. Homeowners Become Renters - Welcome to the Third World America / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: John_Rubino
This morning’s housing report was huge. As one representative headline put it: “Housing starts up sharply; permits highest since 2008″.
Dig just a little deeper and it’s still huge, though in a different way. Turns out that all the increase was in apartment building, while single family homes — the linchpin of what used to be thought of as the American Dream — actually fell yet again. Here’s a brief but on-point analysis from the New York Times:
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Wednesday, May 14, 2014
Are Homebuilder Stocks a Buy Ahead of the Spring? / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Investment_U
David Becker writes: Homebuilding stocks are down nearly 5% so far in 2014, but as spring approaches, an increase in sales could just be the remedy these shares need. Unfortunately, homebuilders generally underperform in May and June, and higher housing prices and recent disappointing sales data could further erode the prices of homebuilder stocks.
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
The Mortgage Is Due for Fannie and Freddie / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Money_Morning
Shah Gilani writes: You can call it a bailout, a rakeover – I mean, takeover – or socialism for cash. It’s all that and more.
But, whatever you call it, it’s not going to last.
The $187.5 billion bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac back in 2008 was absolutely necessary. Before you tell me I’m crazy, let me tell you why…
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Thursday, May 08, 2014
Profitable Investment Opportunities in a Fragile U.S. Housing Market / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: DailyGainsLetter
George Leong writes: The housing market continues to hold. But there are some warning signs. Famed investor Warren Buffett suggested the housing market was overvalued and due for an adjustment.
Now, while there are some indications of an overhyped housing market, I’m not convinced it’s bubble-like quite yet. But be warned: mortgage rates and interest rates are heading higher. This means it will become more expensive to finance mortgages going forward.
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Monday, April 28, 2014
Why U.S. Housing Market Has Stalled — And Why Everything Else Will Follow / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: John_Rubino
It’s not easy being a mainstream economist. You spend your life building models that become your professional identity. And when those models fail to describe and predict reality, you’re left wondering about the meaning of it all.
The latest case in point is US housing. Keynesian economic models say that if you lower mortgage rates you get more houses bought, sold and built. A nice, simple piece of cause and effect. But today’s mortgage rates are at levels that would have incited a buying frenzy a generation ago, employment is rising — and home sales, home building and mortgage originations are all flat-lining.
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Sunday, April 27, 2014
US Housing Market Is Down For The Count / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Raul_I_Meijer
Recent news, graphs and data confirm what we have long said would inevitably become clear: the entire global economy appears to have “functioned” through an orgy of refinancing, LBO and M&A lately. That is to say, zombie money has been enthusiastically slushed and re-slushed around to provide commissions, bonuses etc. to bankers and brokers, a process enabled by central bank and government policies in which large amounts of credit were thrown against the wall like so much Jello, hoping – but not demanding – that some would stick. Zero bound interest rates made this process all the more attractive, since it was crucial to lure mom and pop back in. But now, if our eyes don’t receive us, it is reaching its inherent limits. And that’s going to hurt something bad.
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Fed Follies, U.S. Housing Market Fiasco / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: LewRockwell
So far we have experienced 7 million foreclosures. Beyond that there are still 9 million homeowners seriously underwater on their mortgages and there are millions more who are stranded in place because they don’t have enough positive equity to cover transactions costs and more stringent down payment requirements.
And that’s before the next downturn in housing prices—a development which will show up any day. In fact, another downward plunge is a positive certainty now that the buy-to-rent LBO speculators are rapidly pulling out of those “flash” bull markets in Arizona, California, Los Vegas, Florida and elsewhere. The latter were merely short-lived price eruptions which were an artifact of the Fed’s free money policies.
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Monday, March 31, 2014
How to Turn Disappointing U.S. Housing Market Data into Greater Returns / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: DailyGainsLetter
John Paul Whitefoot writes: Since the beginning of 2012, the U.S. housing market has been considered one of the bright spots in an otherwise uneven economic environment. Between 2007 and the end of 2011, the U.S. housing market fell 33%—since then, it has rebounded, climbing roughly 22%.
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Thursday, March 27, 2014
Winding Down Fannie and Freddie the Economic Scam of the Century / Politics / US Housing
By: Mike_Whitney
The leaders of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, Sen. Tim Johnson (D., S.D.) and Sen. Mike Crapo (R., Idaho), released a draft bill on Sunday that would provide explicit government guarantees on mortgage-backed securities (MBS) generated by privately-owned banks and financial institutions. The gigantic giveaway to Wall Street would put US taxpayers on the hook for 90 percent of the losses on toxic MBS the likes of which crashed the financial system in 2008 plunging the economy into the deepest slump since the Great Depression. Proponents of the bill say that new rules by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) –which set standards for a “qualified mortgage” (QM)– assure that borrowers will be able to repay their loans thus reducing the chances of a similar meltdown in the future. However, those QE rules were largely shaped by lobbyists and attorneys from the banking industry who eviscerated strict underwriting requirements– like high FICO scores and 20 percent down payments– in order to lend freely to borrowers who may be less able to repay their loans. Additionally, a particularly lethal clause has been inserted into the bill that would provide blanket coverage for all MBS (whether they met the CFPB’s QE standard or not) in the event of another financial crisis. Here’s the paragraph:
Monday, March 24, 2014
What’s Handicapping First-Time U.S. Homebuyers? / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: DailyGainsLetter
John Paul Whitefoot writes: For months and months now we’ve been pointing to seemingly obvious economic data to prove that the U.S. housing market is in trouble because of the weak U.S. economy. Those in the “know”—economists and the real estate board—have been waxing eloquence on how the weather is the main culprit behind the disappointing U.S. housing market numbers.
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Saturday, March 22, 2014
U.S. Housing Market One Chart Says it All / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Mike_Whitney
Get a load of this chart from DataQuick’s National Home Sales Snapshot. It’ll tell you everything need to know about housing.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Fannie and Freddie reform is necessary, but not at expense of private sector investment / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Ronan_Keenan
Private investors and the government don’t always make easy bedfellows and nothing exemplifies this more than the case of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. After verging on collapse in 2008, the government-backed mortgage groups are now turning significant profits, but investors are not happy.
Since their inception, the structure of Fannie and Freddie has been a point of contention. Established by government charter, the entities are owned by private shareholders and guarantee the vast majority of US mortgages, buying and selling loans from financial institutions to provide money for the banks to facilitate lending to home buyers. For much of their existence the groups’ configuration has drawn criticism as private investors enjoyed the profits while losses were felt by taxpayers. Things have changed since then.
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Wednesday, March 05, 2014
Has the U.S. Housing Market Hit the Wall? / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Carl_R_Tannenbaum
The housing market began 2013 with a great deal of momentum, but recent data on this sector has moderated considerably. It would be easy to blame this trend on the weather, but there may be more to the housing story. The contribution of this sector to economic growth going forward may not be as robust.
Construction and sales fell to a very low base level during the depth of the recession, and therefore were able to show outsized gains as the recovery began. Residential investment was one of the biggest contributors to gross domestic product growth in 2011 and 2012.
Wednesday, March 05, 2014
The Securitization Fraud That Collapsed the U.S. Housing Market - JPMorgan Chase Mortgage Fraud / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Ellen_Brown
In a nearly $13 billion settlement with the US Justice Department in November 2013, JPMorganChase admitted that it, along with every other large US bank, had engaged in mortgage fraud as a routine business practice, sowing the seeds of the mortgage meltdown. JPMorgan and other megabanks have now been caught in over a dozen major frauds, including LIBOR-rigging and bid-rigging; yet no prominent banker has gone to jail. Meanwhile, nearly a quarter of all mortgages nationally remain underwater (meaning the balance owed exceeds the current value of the home), sapping homeowners’ budgets, the housing market and the economy. Since the banks, the courts and the federal government have failed to give adequate relief to homeowners, some cities are taking matters into their own hands.