Category: US Housing
The analysis published under this category are as follows.Wednesday, October 30, 2013
What U.S. Housing Market Recovery? / Housing-Market / US Housing
"4,594,000 Mortgages Going Unpaid in the United States."
Buying a house is a lot like buying a car. If you don’t look under the hood, you could wind up with a lemon. Only with housing, it’s not as simple as checking the dipstick or looking for oil under the rear axle. No, smart home buyers check the data to see what’s really going on. That’s the best way to cut through the hype and separate the fact from the fiction.
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Thursday, September 26, 2013
How to Buy Prime Manhattan Real Estate for Less Than $100 / Housing-Market / US Housing
Robert Hsu writes: Unless you own a home in each of America's 20 biggest cities - or you're an economist - a 12.4% increase in the S&P/Case-Shiller Index doesn't mean much.
You can't make money from a nationwide statistic. Not in real estate...
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Thursday, September 26, 2013
No Tapering, More QE, Serious U.S. Housing Market Slowdown / Housing-Market / US Housing
With September out of the way, most economists now expect a December tapering event. Steen Jakobsen, chief economist at Saxo Bank in Denmark is not one of them.
Via email, Steen writes ...
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Monday, September 16, 2013
Is the U.S. Housing Market Recovery Over? / Housing-Market / US Housing
Mortgage rates are rising and the housing market is getting weaker. In May of 2013, the 30-year fixed rate mortgage was 3.59%. Today it is 4.71%, more than a full percentage point higher. That means that the payment on a $200,000 loan is 15 percent more than it would have been just two months ago. The higher rates mean that would-be homebuyers are getting less bang for their buck and might not be able to afford their dream home. It means that housing sales will fall and prices will drop. Higher rates are poison for housing.
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Thursday, September 12, 2013
Big Drop-Off in U.S. Mortgage Applications Spells Trouble for Housing Market Again / Housing-Market / US Housing
Sasha Cekerevac writes: Regular readers of this column are fully aware that for the past year I have been calling for higher levels of interest rates. I’ve also stated that higher interest rates will have an impact on the housing market and related stocks.
Well, now we are starting to see my forecast come to fruition, as many mortgage-lending operations are seeing the negative impact of higher interest rates on the levels of mortgage originations.
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Friday, September 06, 2013
U.S. Housing Market Short Squeeze Shorting Opportunity / Housing-Market / US Housing
Shah Gilani writes:Everyone knows the U.S. housing "recovery" has been resurrected on slippery ground. But now that we're finally about to slip - big time - no one sees it coming...
Then again, how could they?
The numbers are incredibly misleading...
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Wednesday, August 28, 2013
WARNING: These Housing REIT Stocks Will Crush You - Strong Sell Signal / Housing-Market / US Housing
Robert Hsu writes: Log in to your brokerage account... Call your broker... Request a plan prospectus from your pension administrator... Jump online and review the holdings in your "target retirement" funds, ETFs, variable annuities...
Do whatever it takes to find out - today - how much exposure you have to real estate investment trusts (REITs), and mortgage REITs in particular.
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Saturday, August 24, 2013
What Those Collapsing House Building Stocks is Trying to Tell Us / Housing-Market / US Housing
Michael Lombardi writes: Finally, some good news for the U.S. economy?
The National Association of Realtors (NAR) just reported July existing-home sales increased in the U.S. housing market to an annual rate of 5.39 million homes—up 17.2% from July of 2012. (Source: National Association of Realtors, August 21, 2013.)
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Saturday, August 24, 2013
U.S. Housing Market New Homes Sales Plunge 13.4% on Rising Mortgage Rates / Housing-Market / US Housing
On August 14 I penned Mortgage Applications Decline 13th Time in 15 Weeks; Are Mortgage Rates Cheap? What's Next For Housing?.
Pertinent Snips
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Friday, August 16, 2013
U.S. Housing Market Flipping for Profit Is Back? / Housing-Market / US Housing
Michael Lombardi writes: When I turn on the TV or read a newspaper, reporters are touting how robust the U.S. housing market has once again become. Voices on the radio “sing” a similar tune. Some are saying the “rebound” in the housing market will continue for a while. Charts of home prices rising in Phoenix, Arizona and Las Vegas, Nevada are all over the media.
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Thursday, August 15, 2013
U.S. House Prices Soaring, Housing Bull Market Momentum Reaches Boom Times / Housing-Market / US Housing
Prospective U.S. Home buyers who may have been persuaded by skeptical journalists that populate the mainstream financial press of the sustainability of the rise in house prices will by now be increasingly finding themselves in an panicky state as US house prices have literally started to soar during the past few months, as illustrated by the Case Shiller house prices index for the most recent month of May showing a jump of 7% over just the past 6 months.
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Friday, August 09, 2013
Why Millions of Americans are Still "Trapped" in Their Homes / Housing-Market / US Housing
Gary Gately writes: For millions of Americans who were underwater on their mortgages, the tide is finally receding.
That's good news for the housing market, of course, and for the U.S. economy as a whole, as housing is a major engine of the economy.
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Saturday, August 03, 2013
Deflating Mini U.S. Housing Bubble May Be Economy’s Next Problem / Housing-Market / US Housing
The housing and automobile industries are the main driving forces of the economy - in both directions. That makes sense since consumer spending accounts for 70% of the economy, and homes and cars are the biggest ticket items consumers spend money on. More importantly, unlike most purchases, it’s not just spending the money they made last week, but through loans and mortgages it’s spending in advance money they will earn for the next five to thirty years.
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Friday, August 02, 2013
Is the U.S. Home Mortgage Interest Deduction Worth Keeping? / Housing-Market / US Housing
Garrett Baldwin: Don't Just Cut the Mortgage Deduction... Cut All Deductions and Lower Taxes
If home ownership is the American Dream... then why do we need government to subsidize it?
The home mortgage interest deduction (HMID) is a lopsided tool of economic alchemy that favors the rich, and artificially increases housing prices due to the "stimulus" it creates.
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Thursday, August 01, 2013
Detroit Broke City / Housing-Market / US Housing
It should come as no surprise that the lessons that should be learned from the bankruptcy of Detroit, a city that once stood as the shining example of America's industrial might, are being ignored by the American political establishment and its allies in the docile press corps. While the death spiral of the Motor City may be extreme in relation to conditions throughout the country, it is a difference of degree rather than design. In truth, Detroit is our canary in the coal mine. It is succumbing to the same combination of productive decay, government mismanagement, and unmanageable debt that is crushing the rest of us. But as the most sub-prime of all major American cities, the symptoms that are infecting all of us have first become fatal in Detroit.
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Tuesday, July 30, 2013
U.S. Housing Market Recovery in Jeopardy / Housing-Market / US Housing
A major determinant for U.S. GDP growth is the state of the real estate sector. The construction of new homes contains only small section of the total picture. New appliance purchases and home furnishings go hand in hand with all the ancillary employment surrounding the housing market. Real Estate brokers, banking and legal functions are all necessary to support the buying and selling of new and existing houses. Most importantly, rising real estate prices increase the net worth of consumers, which in turn boosts credit creation, consumption and economic activity. These points were overlooked back in 2007; and the major reason why nearly everyone on Wall Street and in Washington was blindsided by from the fallout of collapsing real estate prices.
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Monday, July 29, 2013
Why the Housing Market Recovery is Bypassing Young Buyers / Housing-Market / US Housing
Gary Gately writes: Think of the housing market as a ladder with first-time homebuyers at the bottom and homeowners on the upper rungs, with homes priced higher as you proceed upward.
The first-time homebuyers make it possible for those in the lower-priced homes to sell and move up to costlier homes, which in turn enables the sellers of those homes to move up to costlier homes - and so on.
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Sunday, July 28, 2013
Declare Detroit a Free City, Give Free Markets a Chance / Housing-Market / US Housing
Patrick Barron writes: We who advocate the free market as the sure path to peace and prosperity often hear that the US economy has to get much, much worse before any real reforms will be allowed. Why must we continue to wait before taking serious action to throttle back parasitic government? A common response is that we need to wait until things are so bad that no one will be able to deny that government is the problem and not the answer. Then even died-in-the-wool socialists will give the free market a chance.
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Saturday, July 27, 2013
Return of the U.S. Housing Market Bust / Housing-Market / US Housing
Anyone who believes that housing is back in a big way needs to take a look at homebuilder stocks.
Here’s DR Horton (DHI) which is down over 30% from its recent highs.
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Friday, July 26, 2013
How Higher U.S. Mortgage Interest Rates Will Impact on Housing Market / Housing-Market / US Housing
Gary Gately writes: Where will higher mortgage rates raise monthly mortgage payments most?
These three charts from the real estate site Zillow.com depict how higher mortgage rates will affect monthly mortgage payments in different markets throughout the United States.
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