Category: US Housing
The analysis published under this category are as follows.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Real Estate Bubbles and California's Economic Growth, Video Lecture Part 1 / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Submissions
An economics video presentation at Humboldt State University. Special guest lecturer Dr. Christopher Thornberg of Beacon Economics discusses the current housing bubble and its effects on CaliforniaRead full article... Read full article...
Monday, May 28, 2007
The California Housing Report: Details In the Data Show A Broad-based Price Decline / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Jas_Jain
Headline: "C.A.R. [California Association of Realtors] reports sales decrease 27.8 percent in April, median price of a home in California at $597,640, up 6.2 percent from year ago." Then we also read, "Throughout the state inventory levels have increased to their highest levels in recent years..."
Price increase in the climate of declining sales and rising inventory? Something doesn't add up.
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Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Homebuilders Stocks Rallying : How could this be? / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Michael_K_Dawson
Since bottoming on April 12th, the SPDR Homebuilders ETF (XHB) is up 12.5%; twice as much as the S&P 500's gain of 6%. If you are surprised by that statement you are not alone. I still find it hard to believe even after staring at the chart.Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Investment Flash: Derivatives Say Bernanke Will Be Wrong / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Paul_Lamont
U.S. mortgages in foreclosure rose in April 62% from a year ago according to RealtyTrac Inc. Folks are increasingly losing their homes as we warned last October . Attempting to allay fears, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke spoke last Thursday: "We believe the effect of the troubles in the subprime sector on the broader housing market will be limited and we do not expect significant spillovers from the subprime market to the rest of the economy or to the financial system." We clearly disagree.
Credit Suisse's ARM Reset Schedule, included in our last report , shows that over $1 Trillion dollars worth of adjustable rate mortgages will reset over the next 5 years. Bloomberg is just now reporting on the extent of the subprime meltdown . Even more telling is what credit derivative market charts are showing.
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Wednesday, May 16, 2007
US Housing Sector is Crashing, False Housing and Jobs statistics to eventually benefit Gold / Economics / US Housing
By: Jim_Willie_CB
The newest deceptions are with jobs and housing. Each is much worse than reported. The housing decline might be as much as 15% worse than reported, which leads to much bigger job loss than is reported. Most of the home construction job loss is under the table, to people not on state jobless insurance programs, and to immigrant workers paid in cash. Both fall through the statistical cracks in those home frames and plywood floors underlayments. A quick preface on the two biggest corrupted statistics first, since of paramount importance.
The US Federal Reserve will likely respond to more rapid job loss, and to more rapid home sector erosion decline. When they do, expect an official rate cut sequence to resemble that of 2001. As in, sharp & sudden. The signals surround us, that the major powers are in the process of permitting the USDollar to fall.
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Thursday, May 10, 2007
Inventory and Sales Of Single Family Homes In Santa Clara County / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Jas_Jain
The median price for the county in April increased 12.1%, YoY, more than I expected, led by increased prices and volume in high-priced areas like Cupertino, Los Gatos and Palo Alto.Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, May 04, 2007
Dump REITs - An early heads up on another Important US real estate trend! / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Money_and_Markets
Mike Larson writes: You want to know how to make big money in the markets? Be early.
By picking up on a trend in its infancy, you're able to position your portfolio for the day when that trend explodes onto the front pages of the nation's business sections. Then, when mainstream investors pile in, you'll be there to sell to them.
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Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Global stock market growth to offset US Housing Slump - Whistling Dixie To The Chicken Littles / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Brady_Willett
Having stayed out of the limelight for far to long, the 'bubbles forever!' doctrine is roaring back:
"Speculative money needs to go somewhere. There is no question that some of it is moving away from housing and into the stock market." Van der Eb, of the Gamco Mathers Fund, Chicago Tribune
"...bulls argue that global stock market strength helps to offset the wealth lost in people's homes..." Street
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Saturday, April 28, 2007
US Housing Bubble Meltdown: "Is it too late to get out"? / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Mike_Whitney
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson delivered an upbeat assessment of the slumping real estate market on Friday saying, "All the signs I look at" show "the housing market is at or near the bottom.”Baloney.
Paulson added that the meltdown in subprime mortgages was not a “serious problem. I think it's going to be largely contained.”
Wrong again.
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Friday, April 27, 2007
More Bad News on the US Housing Market / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Money_and_Markets
Mike Larson writes I hate to sound like a broken record … I really don't enjoy being tagged as the "doom and gloomer" of the bunch here … I wish I could do something fun like my good friend Sean Brodrick, who gets to traipse through Canadian uranium mines and tell you all about the red-hot prospects in the sector!
But right now, it's my job to deliver bad tidings. Because when it comes to housing, there are plenty of 'em. With each passing month, more data confirms what I've been telling you — that the U.S. housing market remains stuck in the mud.
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Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Chicago Fed Index Points To Weak GDP Report On Friday / Economics / US Housing
By: Paul_L_Kasriel
The Chicago Fed publishes a monthly national economic activity index (CFNAI). With the release of its March index today, we can now calculate an average for the first quarter. And that first quarter average is minus 0.30 - the lowest quarterly average reading since Q2:2003 and the third consecutive quarterly contraction in the CFNAI. All of this points to another quarter of subpar real GDP growth for the first quarter, which already is expected by the consensus of forecasters.Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Consequences of Housing Bubble Crash Ignored by the Media for 2 Years / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Mike_Whitney
Trouble in Squanderville - Two years ago, anyone who wrote about the housing bubble was dismissed as a conspiracy nut. Now hardly a day goes by that the headlines aren't splattered with the details of the massive meltdown in the real estate market.What changed? The facts are essentially the same today as they were back then. In fact, the “Economist” — as well as many independent journalists — had already shown that the Fed's low interest rates had inflated the biggest equity bubble in history which could potentially bring down the entire economy.
Now, all of a sudden, the media is acting as if the problem sprouted up overnight?
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Monday, April 16, 2007
Hidden Home Price Decline In Silicon Valley Housing Market / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Jas_Jain
The home price declines in Silicon Valley are anything but hidden for most people trying to sell their homes, but it doesn't seem to show up in monthly and weekly reports that show slight YoY gains in the median prices. I have used Santa Clara County as a proxy for Silicon Valley and it is also a good proxy for the SF Bay Area except that Santa Clara County has held up better than most other parts of the Bay Area.
There are two sources of data that I have used - DataQuick, which reports on all home sales, SFHs (single family homes) and condos, new and resales, and sales on MLS, reported by California Association of Realtors (CAR), which reports SFHs and condos separately and most of the detail break down are for SFHs. San Jose Mercury News, the main paper in the area, publishes weekly data from DataQuick with break down by zip codes and that is my source for the DataQuick reports.
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Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Don't Blame the Market for Housing Bubble and Crash / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
The U.S. housing market, long considered vulnerable by many economists, is now on the verge of suffering a serious collapse in many regions. Commodities guru and hedge fund manager Jim Rogers warns that real estate in expensive bubble areas will drop 40 or 50%. Mainstream media outlets like the New York Times are reporting breathlessly about the possibility of widespread defaults on subprime mortgages.Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Who's afraid of the US housing slump? / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Adrian_Ash
How the suckers robbed themselves in America's biggest ever Ponzi scheme...WHO'S AFRAID of falling home prices in the United States?
Bond investors might welcome a slump, says Bill Gross at Pimco. Head of the world's largest bond fund, he now forecasts "an ongoing bond bull market of still undefined proportions" thanks to US interest rates falling in response to the subprime collapse.
Gross's models put US rates back around 4%, down from the current 5.25%, if the Fed wants to stabilize national home prices.
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Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Subprime Mortgage Problem Contained? Give Me A Break! / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Michael_K_Dawson
I think that some heads are going to roll when Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson are forced to admit that the subprime mortgage problem is not contained. In my previous professional life, I worked as a sales person for a software company. We as sales people were often referred to as “feet on the street.” In addition to our sales responsibilities, we were responsible for gathering competitive information, surveying the landscape, detecting trends and most importantly feeding this data back to headquarters. Through formal as well as informal channels, the “feet on the street” ensured that the executives always had the most current field data. Since the executives were constantly speaking to Wall Street or in Industry forums inaccurate data could be very costly in many ways.
Obviously there is no such thing as “feet in the street” in the Government. If it were so, Paulson never would have made the following statement “Damage to the American economy from the housing market downturn and subprime mortgage foreclosures appears to be contained…” Five days after his remarks, in a statement released by a Buffalo, N.Y. based regional bank M&T Bank Corp (MTB), it stated that it is having trouble selling some of its loans. Prices dropped more than anticipated in its recent auction of some of its Alt-A loans – loans that fall between subprime and prime.
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Monday, April 02, 2007
Will the Vacation Industry be a Victim of Sub-prime and ARM Problems? / Companies / US Housing
By: Marty_Chenard
Where and How will the sub-prime/ARM problems hurt other parts of the economy?
Who will get hurt first?
You are probably tired of hearing about the sub-prime problem by now. There is another aspect about sub-prime problems that the no one is talking about that has underlying implications regarding delinquent debts problems .
Larry Jeddoloh, of TIS Group, made a good observation about consumers caught in debt problems relative to their mortgage payments and losing their homes. He said that, " ... when a consumer is in deep debt, they always try to save their homes first. They will let their credit card payments go, stop payments on their car, and default on loans from a relative before they lose their house." What about those who are not in deep debt yet?
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Thursday, March 29, 2007
US Housing Market - Only One Sub-prime cockroach? / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Hans_Wagner
One of the Trading Rules identified by Dennis Gartman of The Gartman Letter states that there is never only just one cockroach. If you see one, you know more are hiding in the walls and behind the counters. Investors who seek to beat the market should carefully consider this principle when they are considering investments in sectors that are experiencing trouble. They also might want to read Ahead of the Curve: A Commonsense Guide to Forecasting Business and Market Cycles 
by Joe Ellis is an excellent book on how to predict macro moves of the market.
Well, as I mentioned in earlier commentaries, the problems in the sub-prime mortgage market are going to become more significant over time. Where there is one cockroach, there will be many more. For example, www.lenderimplode.com lists 39 sub-prime mortgage firms that have either shut down or been taken over so far.
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Saturday, March 24, 2007
US Housing Market - All Foreclosures, All Subprime, All the Time / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: John_Mauldin
At the risk of being all subprime, all the time, this week we look at what I think are the real risks for the economy as a result of the subprime debacle. How can one side say it is a contained risk (and in one sense it is) and not a problem for the economy while another side says it will drag the US into a recession and thus be a drag on the world economy? The answers will give us a handle on the whole issue, as we look at how the problem developed.
But first, let me correct an error. Last Monday in my Outside the Box, we used a brilliant piece of work from Dr. Woody Brock on why we need more derivatives and that the real problem in the derivatives market is not the size of the market. If you did not read it, you should.
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Wednesday, March 21, 2007
US Housing Market - IndyMac - We are Not a Subprime Lender! / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Michael_K_Dawson
On March 15, IndyMac released a rather lengthy press release claiming that it had been inappropriately categorized by many media sources as a subprime lender. IndyMac stated that it is primarily a prime/Alt-A mortgage lender with minimal exposure to subprime. With the subprime lenders in melt-down mode, it is quite understandable why IndyMac would want to differentiate itself.
However, in doing so it brought more attention to itself and was featured in an article by CNN Money called “Liar loans: Mortgage Woes Beyond Subprime.” Sometimes it pays just to be quiet.
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