Category: US Housing
The analysis published under this category are as follows.Friday, December 07, 2007
Subprime Mortgage Bailout is the Mother of all Bad Ideas / Housing-Market / US Housing
Without question, the Bush administration's mortgage rescue plan will exacerbate, not alleviate, the problems in the housing market. As the plan will sharply reduce the ability of new buyers to make purchases, it really amounts to a stay of execution and not a pardon.Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
HOPE For the US Housing Subprime Mortgage Credit Crunch Victims / Housing-Market / US Housing
"...What a difference lies between .org and .com on a website address..."
HOPE NOW is a British-based charity, founded in 1985 to spread the good news of Jesus Christ, working primarily in the former Soviet state of Ukraine .
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Monday, December 03, 2007
US Housing Slump 2008... DEEPER, DARKER, SCARIER! / Housing-Market / US Housing
The (spreading sub-prime) mortgage hole is worse than anyone saw. It is deeper, darker, scarier… (banks) are now looking at new reserves …my sense…is they don't have a clear picture of how this will play out …confidence is low.” ( Tony James, Blackstone Group.)Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, November 30, 2007
US Housing Market Crash Can't Find A Floor! / Housing-Market / US Housing
Mike Larson writes: Every month, I get asked if there's any evidence whatsoever of a turnaround in the housing industry. So far — every month — I've had to emphatically say "NO."
And I'm going to give it to you straight about the numbers that were just released: They are some of the worst I've ever seen.
Here's what happened for the month of October ...
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Sunday, November 18, 2007
Buyers Disappear From US Housing Market Fearing Further Falls in House Prices / Housing-Market / US Housing
Yesterday, DataQuick released the Southern California real estate sales data for the month of October. For the first time since probably the mid-1990s all six counties show year-over-year declines in the median price led by Riverside County at -15 percent.Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, November 16, 2007
UK Housing Market Continues to Weaken, Nationwide Now Expects Zero 2008 House Price Growth / Housing-Market / US Housing
The housing market analysts are belatedly starting to come to terms with the prospects of a falling UK housing market during 2008. Nationwide takes the first step on that road by now forecasting ZERO house price growth during 2008. This still remains some way from the Market Oracles forecast of a fall of 15% over 2 years as of 22nd August 07 and therefore suggests continuing downward revisions in Nationwide's forecasts during 2008 in the face of falling house prices.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, November 12, 2007
US Housing Crash - History Repeating in Florida and Lessons from the Roaring 20's - Part 2 / Housing-Market / US Housing
Part 1 - “Perhaps the boom was due for a "healthy breathing-time…
As a matter of fact, it was due for a good deal more than that. It began obviously to collapse in the spring and summer of 1926. People who held binders and had failed to get rid of them were defaulting right and left on their payments. One man who had sold acreage early in 1925 for twelve dollars an acre, and had cursed himself for his stupidity when it was resold later in the year for seventeen dollars, and then thirty dollars, and finally sixty dollars an acre, was surprised a year or two afterward to find that the entire series of subsequent purchases was in default, that he could not recover the money still due him, and that his only redress was to take his land back again.
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Saturday, November 10, 2007
US Housing Crash - History Repeating in Florida and Lessons from the Roaring 20's - Part 1 / Housing-Market / US Housing
History has a mysterious way of creeping up on those that fail to study it. Somehow, with all the talking heads going crazy, you would think this housing market has no parallel in history. When you hear that the national median home price has never gone down there is always the caveat of “since the Great Depression.” I've written 3 articles about the Great Depression ( letter from a lawyer , letter from a president of a bank , and 3 main reasons why this bubble is worse ) highlighting eerie similarities of this credit bubble to the Roaring 20s.
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Saturday, October 27, 2007
Subprime Credit Crunch - The Market for New Homes is Dead / Stock-Markets / US Housing
In this Issue:As the Subprime Turns
"The Market for New Homes is Dead"
Mortgage Pig of the Year
When the Going Get Rough, Simply Borrow More
$100 Oil and $1,000 Gold
More Birthdays, Home Again and Deadlines
As the World Turns is a popular soap opera playing on American TV. It focuses, as do most soaps, on the lives and foibles of its characters, with plenty of dramatic flair. We are watching a different type of soap opera today which we could call "As the Subprime Turns. And the world is watching. It has plenty of drama, lots of flawed characters, a plot that is hard to understand, everyone saying it was the other guys fault and the world (literally) paying for the sins of exuberance in the US. Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Wanted: Prime Suspect of Housing Market Murder / Housing-Market / US Housing
Helen Mirren accepted her Emmy award for best actress in the mini-series, "Prime Suspect" with elegance and grace. Just the opposite of the tough detective superintendent character she plays who tracks down murder suspects in England. Who would Jane Tennison pick out as the prime suspect for the murder of the U.S. housing market and the resulting gruesome credit crunch?Read full article... Read full article...
Sunday, October 07, 2007
US Homebuilders in Desperation As Housing Bust Continues / Housing-Market / US Housing
If you've been keeping an eye on the news in the U.S. at all these past few months, you know that the situation in housing has continued to deteriorate, despite the much too early bottom calling from industry spokespeople, vapid "economists", and the media's talking heads.We've reached the "bust" portion of this particular boom-bust cycle, and with each passing week there are new stories to fill in the picture of the real estate market's decline.
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Friday, September 28, 2007
US Housing Decline to Continue and Commodities Prices Headed Much Higher / Housing-Market / US Housing
This past weekend, I went into my local bookstore and saw Alan Greenspan's The Age of Turbulence prominently displayed in front of the store. When Alan Greenspan retired, just over a year ago, CNBC auctioned off a painting of the former head of the Federal Reserve, and financial pundits around the world were lauding his achievements. Unfortunately, as I read the news surrounding housing, our economy, inflation, and the dismal outlook for the US dollar, I cannot understand why most people view him as such a prominent economist.Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, September 07, 2007
Feds Starts Bailing As US Housing Market Takes On More Water! / Housing-Market / US Housing
We're seeing two major developments on the housing and mortgage fronts, and I want to make sure you know about them — and what they mean.
So let's get right to it …
Development #1: Bailout Plans Are Set Into Motion
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Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Housing Bust Lessons From the Great Depression: / Housing-Market / US Housing
A Letter from a former Banking President Discussing the Housing Bubble
With the incredible response we had to a personal letter from a lawyer discussing in great deal, the failures of the previous Great Depression bubble we can see many parallels emerge to our current potential future. For one, the wanton greed and disregard of financial prudence. The inability to see beyond the current market and realize that history has a mischievous way of sneaking up on those who forget her. There is no longer a debate regarding the once fabled housing bubble. We can all take off our tinfoil hats off and begin to construct a vision of the future in the midst of a collapsing housing market. Today I'll be posting an article that came out in the Saturday Evening Post in November of 1932 from a former bank president in New York, three years after the crash, highlighting the economic situation of a post bubble world. This is an old article so I retyped the important paragraphs:
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Tuesday, September 04, 2007
US Housing Market Crash - School of Hard Work Or Habituated Hand-Outs? / Housing-Market / US Housing
After signing the 'American Dream Downpayment Act of 2003' Bush added , "We want people to be fully aware of what it means to buy a home and what it takes". The contradiction, if otherwise unclear, was that the President was signing a law that gave free money to those who could not afford to buy a home, and then he planned to educate them about the hard work, savings, and planning that is required to buy a home.Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, August 31, 2007
US Housing Bubble Crash - The Writing is on the Wall / Housing-Market / US Housing
This week, Larry Kudlow and others strongly chastised Bernanke for his failure to read the writing on the wall and urged the Fed Chairman to quickly slash the Fed Funds rate. Methinks the pundits doth protest too much. For years, Kudlow, who practically coined the term “Goldilocks economy,” has dismissed with scorn suggestions that the American economy was anything less than ragingly healthy. If our economy is really so strong, why does he call so loudly for the artificial stimulus of a significant rate cut?Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, August 31, 2007
Navigating Treacherous US Housing and Mortgage Markets / Housing-Market / US Housing
Mike Larson writes:I've written a lot about the housing and mortgage crises, and what they mean to your investments. But I'd wager that many of you are homeowners with mortgages, too.
Some of you may even be trying to buy or sell residential property right now. And if you're like me, you probably know of at least one or two folks having financial troubles because of the housing crisis.
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Thursday, August 30, 2007
US Housing Market Crash - Subprime's New Song: The Worst Is Yet To Come / Housing-Market / US Housing
Susan C. Walker of Elliott Wave International writes: Remember that catchy love song that Frank Sinatra made popular in the 1960s, "The Best Is Yet To Come"?
"The best is yet to come and, babe, won't that be fine?
You think you've seen the sun, but you ain't seen it shine."
At the risk of mixing musical metaphors and styles, it looks more like the sun has deserted us right now in the financial markets, and we're about to see "The Dark Side of the Moon," the title of Pink Floyd's 1973 smash album. With the subprime mortgage problems reaching farther and farther out to touch hedge funds, U.S. and European banks, mortgage companies and money-market funds, what we're going to experience sounds more like "The Worst is Yet To Come."
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Friday, August 24, 2007
There’s No Such Thing as a Free Bailout for the US Housing Market / Housing-Market / US Housing
PIMCO's William Gross is now calling for a fiscal policy bailout for the U.S. housing market debacle rather than a monetary policy bailout (see “Where's Waldo? Where's W?”). On the surface, Gross's arguments seem to make sense – on the surface . Gross argues that even a cut in the federal funds rate of several hundred basis points might not lower reset rates on adjustable-rate mortgages enough to prevent the massive looming foreclosures. In addition, Gross argues that such an injection of Fed-created credit could be the catalyst for a run on the dollar, which, in turn, would probably prevent 15-year or 30-year fixed rate mortgage yields from falling enough, if at all, to prevent massive foreclosures.Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
US Housing Market Collapse Not Correction! / Housing-Market / US Housing
With U.S. mortgage defaults up 90+% from a year ago, collapse of U.S. mortgage market is being felt around the world. U.S. housing starts have fallen to a ten year low, and are headed lower. Financial infrastructure that fueled this speculative bubble is being dismantled. Rate is important, but so is means of funneling money to borrowers. Mortgage financing system begins with mortgage brokers at front end. Mortgages then travel through layers of investment bankers till ultimately residing in portfolios of gullible investors around the world.Read full article... Read full article...