Category: US Housing
The analysis published under this category are as follows.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Californian Housing Market in Meltdown, Liar Loan Writedowns Have Barely Begun / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Mike_Shedlock
My
friend "TC" monitors C.A.R. data, DQNews data, and Case-Shiller Data. Case-Shiller data was out a few days ago and you can read about it in Case Shiller Futures Suggest 2010 Housing Bottom . What follows is an analysis of data from the California Association of Realtors from "TC" who tracks the data month by month and is looking at things from perspective of percent declines from the peak.
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Thursday, June 26, 2008
US New Homes Taking Longer Sell / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Paul_L_Kasriel
I hope the Census Bureau can count the number of people in the U.S. better than it can count the number of new homes sold. The first estimate of a given month's sales is notoriously off. So, we should take the first estimate of May sales and inventories of new homes with a grain of salt. Be that as it may, May new home sales retreated 2.5% to an annualized pace of 512 thousand units. The low sales rate for this cycle to date is 501 thousand established in March. The sales region that really put a dent in the total was the wild West, where sales declined 11.63% to a cycle low annual rate.Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Case-Shiller House Price Index Declines - Light at the End of the Tunnel? / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Paul_L_Kasriel
The Case-Shiller Composite 20 house price index dropped at an annual rate of 18.5% seasonally adjusted (by me) in April compared with March. This was a relatively sharp slowdown in the rate of descent as the March month-to-month annualized decline was 24.2%. On a year-over-year basis, this house price index descended at its fastest rate to date, 15.3% vs. 14.3% in March (see Chart). If, in fact, the slowdown in the rate of price decreases on a month-to-month basis is signal, not noise, then perhaps we are nearing an inflection point in house prices.Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Case Shiller Futures Suggest 2010 US Housing Market Bottom / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Mike_Shedlock
The April S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices are now out. The index shows show annual declines in the prices of existing single family homes across the United States continued to worsen in April 2008, with all 20 MSAs now posting annual declines, 13 of which are posting record low annual declines, and 10 of which are in double-digits.
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Sunday, June 22, 2008
Housing Market Depression Without an Economic Depression / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Michael_Pollaro
They” said it couldn't happen, but it has. Home prices are falling at rates not seen since the Great Depression. From peak to March 2008:
• New Home Median Prices -13%
• Existing Home Median Prices -13%
• Case Shiller US National Index -16%
Saturday, June 14, 2008
US House Prices Collapsing, Home Owners Equity Plunging / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Paul_L_Kasriel
House prices are collapsing, which means that homeowners' equity in their houses is plunging. According to Federal Reserve flow-of-funds data, homeowners' equity dropped by $399 billion quarter-to-quarter in Q1:2008 and $880 billion year-over-year - both record absolute declines (see Chart 1). The drop in homeowners' equity contributed significantly to the $1.7 trillion decline in household net worth in the first quarter (see Chart 2). Read full article... Read full article...
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Greenspan Interest Rate Conundrum In Reverse / Interest-Rates / US Housing
By: Mike_Shedlock
There was an interesting chart in the New York Times article Shrinking Lines of Credit . The fact that home lines of credit are shrinking is not really news, nor is the fact that mortgage rates are stubbornly high. I have talked about both of those on many occasions.
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Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Bernanke Blames Global Saving Glut For Housing Bubble Instead of the Fed / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Mike_Shedlock
In yet another long winded and self serving speech, Bernanke blames everyone but the Fed for the housing and credit bubbles. Not once did he mention interest rate policy at the Fed. However, he did blame foreign investors and "the global savings" glut for contributing to the problem. Given there were no highlights, let's tune into the lowlights from Bernanke's Remarks on the economic outlook at the International Monetary Conference, Barcelona, Spain.
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Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Zero Overhead Real Estate Investing- Right Now / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Steve_Selengut
Real estate investing is not nearly as complicated, financially burdensome, or time consuming as you might think. In fact, Its easy to add raw land, shopping centers, apartment complexes, and private homes to your portfolio without brokers, bankers, attorneys, and handymen on your payroll. Even better, the zero overhead approach allows you to blend your real estate investments into your securities portfolio for ease of management, income monitoring, diversification, and analysis.Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
US Housing Industry- A Monument to Futility / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: John_Mauldin
Regular readers of Outside the Box will be familiar with Michael Lewitt's thoughtful commentary. Today, he reminds us that much of the turmoil we are in could have been avoided with proper regulatory structures and then does a very poignant analysis of various sectors of the economy. I agree with him that we have not seen the worst and that we will continue to see this mild recession/slow recovery for longer than we should without true structural reform. Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, May 30, 2008
"Liar Loans" Live Up To Expectations / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Sara_Klein
Investors who purchased soured mortgages securities are forcing lenders to repurchase the original loans based on a provision that required lenders to take back loans that defaulted unusually fast if mistakes were made or fraud was committed during the underwriting process.Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, May 23, 2008
US House Prices Suffer Record Worst Quarterly Fall / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Jennifer_Yousfi
U.S. home prices suffered their worst decline on record, skidding 1.7% in the first quarter, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) announced yesterday (Thursday).
That drop-off from the fourth quarter to the first quarter in the OFHEO's "purchase-only index" exceeded the 1.4% decline between the third and fourth quarters of last year, and was the biggest decrease in the 17-year history of the index. On a year-over-year basis, home prices have fallen 3.1% since the first quarter of 2007.
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Monday, May 19, 2008
FDIC: Fights US Housing Market Deflation with Inflation / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Adrian_Ash
"...Apparent defender of US cash savers since the Great Depression, the FDIC wants to see $50bn pumped into the very worst mortgages issued in 2004-2007..."
AS THE U.S. and British housing bubbles continue to deflate, leaking stale gas like an air-bed blown up when you're drunk, just how much trouble will come from government schemes aimed at saving over-geared debtors and over-lent lenders?
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Thursday, May 15, 2008
Fannie Mae Advertising Foreclosed US Homes to the Brit's / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Adrian_Ash
"...'Find a holiday home in America ,' shouts Fannie Mae across the Pond..."
YOU CAN'T BLAME Fannie Mae for trying. Last year saw British property buyers snap up around 20,000 homes in the United States .
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Tuesday, May 13, 2008
US Government Responsible for the Housing Boom and Bust / Politics / US Housing
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
The House passed two bills attempting to rehabilitate the housing and mortgage market this week. There doesn't seem to be any shortage of criticism and blame for the bad decisions, and rightly so. Lenders and banks do share much of the blame for the overheated market. Lending standards were relaxed, or even abandoned altogether, creating an exaggerated pool of homebuyers that led to ballooning home prices that many, especially real estate investors, expected to continue forever. Now that the bubble has burst, the losses are staggering.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, May 12, 2008
US Housing Dueling Views: Jim Rogers Sees More Pain, Warren Buffet Sees Rebound Under Way / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Keith_Fitz-Gerald
When asked about their outlook for the crisis-ridden U.S. housing and financial-services markets, two U.S. financial experts provided outlooks that completely contradicted one another - once again underscoring how tough it is for investors to predict when the U.S. economy will turn around. Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Real Estate and Credit Deflation: The Next Dozen Shoes to Drop / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Steve_Moyer
"If the shoe fits, it's too expensive." ~ Adrienne Gusoff I was offered a very nice position with Fisher Investments of Woodside, California last year and, although I passed on the opportunity, I truly respect their money management track record. At the same time, I have noticed from their website that they are comparing the current equity market with the set-up which existed in 1992; they see this as a brief cyclical downturn prior to a multi-year bull market run rather than an unfolding, post-triple-bubble economic downward spiral. In fact, as I look through the site's archives, the Fisher research team (60 strong, and plenty bright) doesn't address post-bubble possibilities in any way, shape or form.
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Friday, May 09, 2008
Pending US Home Sales Hit Record Low, Again / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Sara_Klein
Pending home sales hit a record low for the second consecutive month in March. March's reading was down 20.1% year-over-year and 35% from the index's peak in April 2005. With the recent resilience in homebuilder stocks, powered by those who must believe that the housing market is bottoming, these numbers should be a disappointment. In my universe of understanding, a bottom should be followed by some sort of uptick, not continuing declines.Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Fannie Mae Cumulative Defaults and other Mortgage Market Disasters / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Mike_Shedlock
Inquiring minds are checking out the Fannie Mae 2008 Q1 10-Q Investor Summary . There are plenty of charts, graphs and other data to consider. For example, please consider this graph on page 27.
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Wednesday, May 07, 2008
WaMu's Suspect Mortgage Pool- Fallout from Liar Loans Continues / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Mike_Shedlock
I have been tracking a particular Washington Mutual (WM) Alt-A mortgage pool for several months. The pool is known as WMALT 2007-0C1. Read full article... Read full article...