Category: US Housing
The analysis published under this category are as follows.Friday, October 23, 2009
U.S. Housing Market, Tax Credits, and Realtors / Housing-Market / US Housing
So, the home buyers tax credit is in the news again and it's becoming quite controversial...
Proponents would like to see the program extended well into next year and have the credit expanded to $15,000 (or more), removing the first-time home buyer requirement which, by the way, really didn't restrict this to new home buyers at all, just those who hadn't owned a home in the last three years.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Commercial Real Estate Vacancies Musical Chairs / Housing-Market / US Housing
Commercial real estate vacancies hit nearly 25% in Phoenix Valley area. Scottsdale and Southeast Valley vacancies are even higher. Please consider Office vacancy rates in Valley hit record.
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Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Connecting the Dots to the U.S. Housing Market Recovery / Housing-Market / US Housing
Dot 1
There is a “shadow market” of 2.7 million homes that are technically in foreclosure but are yet to be reclaimed by the lender, says a Wall Street Journal study today. While it’s no secret banks are kicking the can down the road on finalizing foreclosures (and consequently accepting the mortgage loan as a loss) this is the first guess at the total number of such homes that we’ve heard:
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Sunday, September 27, 2009
Commercial Real Estate Day of Reckoning is Here / Housing-Market / US Housing
Tom Dyson writes: This weekend, I had pizza and beer with an executive at a commercial real estate company...
My friend's company is one of the largest office landlords in America, with big investments up and down the East Coast. My friend manages the debt-finance division.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
How Does One Tell If Houses Are Overpriced? / Housing-Market / US Housing
Tonight I received a question from a "Concerned Canadian" about home prices.
However, my answer does not change regardless of where someone lives. The same metrics apply universally.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
We're All Going to Pay For the Housing Market Mess / Housing-Market / US Housing
The citizens of the United States will be paying to clean up the collapse of the real estate bubble. It doesn't matter if one participated in the housing boom or not - we are all going to pay and pay dearly for this mess. Renters, owners and speculators are all equally on the hook if they are taxpayers (did you know that 40% of people living in the U.S. pay or owe no federal income tax?).
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Saturday, September 19, 2009
U.S. Housing Market Foreclosure Prevention Tactics Useless / Housing-Market / US Housing
An interesting report in the Los Angeles Times shows that a person with super-prime credit scores is more likely to walk away from an underwater mortgage than a person with a subprime credit rating.
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Friday, September 11, 2009
U.S. Housing Market Foreclosure Filings Top 300,000 for Sixth Straight Month / Housing-Market / US Housing
Foreclosure filings are still on a rampage as noted by the Bloomberg headline U.S. Foreclosure Filings Top 300,000 for Sixth Straight Month.
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Tuesday, September 08, 2009
U.S. Housing Market, The 800,000 Pound Deflationary Gorilla / Housing-Market / US Housing
The housing market is rapidly deteriorating under the surface. A housing price collapse is a highly deflationary event because it affects so many banks and individuals. We are not close to a bottom in the real estate market and it is essentially almost impossible for it to come before the 2011-2012 time frame. If our government insists on continuing to subvert what's left of the free market system in real estate, it may take another decade to find the bottom.
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Tuesday, September 01, 2009
The U.S. Housing Market's False Dawn / Housing-Market / US Housing
Martin Hutchinson writes: Is the U.S. housing market truly at a turning point, as investors seem to increasingly believe? Or is this actually a false dawn, meaning that there are problems and pain ahead for those who turned bullish too soon?
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Tuesday, September 01, 2009
Six Million Home Foreclosures: Next Ticking Lehman-Style Bomb…FDIC Insured Banks? / Housing-Market / US Housing
Over a year ago Hank Paulson declared "The US Banking System Is A Safe and Sound One", the market's reaction to that piece of news was to short Fannie and Freddie into oblivion. A key issue there was holdings of mortgaged backed securities, specifically RMBS; valuations of those things depended on (a) their credit rating, (and once the LTV started to slip the rules said they had to be downgraded, so the price tanked), and (b) there was a rule of thumb that the value of those things was what an equivalent Treasury cost, less the cost of a CDS to insure them; when fear took over, the cost of a CDS went through the roof, the "market" (it never was a real market), froze. Then there was Lehman.
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Friday, August 28, 2009
U.S. Housing Market Stabilises, But Don't Expect an Rip-Rooaring Rebound / Housing-Market / US Housing
Mike Larson writes: Almost four months ago, I made one of the most dramatic shifts in my investment outlook ever. After warning — in advance — that we would experience a devastating housing and mortgage market crash … and after repeatedly refuting all the early — and wrong — bottom callers during the four-year collapse, I wrote the following in my Money and Markets column four months ago:
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Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Huge Plunge In Mortgage Cure Rates Portends Housing Market Foreclosure Disaster / Housing-Market / US Housing
Mortgage cure rates have fallen off a cliff. For those unfamiliar with the term, a "cure rate" pertains to those who go delinquent on loans then catch up and become current. Late payments that don't "cure" have a tendency to get later and later over time, before they eventually default.
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Saturday, August 22, 2009
Do U.S. Housing Stats Really Indicate Housing Market Bottom? / Housing-Market / US Housing
In 2006 I predicted the bursting of the real estate bubble would spread its problems into the financial industry and broad economy to create one of the worst recessions since the 1930s. In 2008 I said the problems began in the real estate industry and the eventual recovery will have to begin in the real estate industry.
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Friday, August 21, 2009
Liar Loans Were Not The Problem: Don't Worry About Re-Sets...Just A Scare Like Y-2K / Housing-Market / US Housing
Years ago I got a project building a credit scoring system for a bank that did auto loans in Dubai, it was a lot of fun, I got hold of tons of data, did a multivariate regression analysis, and the result was absolutely useless.
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Friday, August 21, 2009
U.S. Housing Market Hidden Backlog of Foreclosures / Housing-Market / US Housing
When it comes to foreclosures, there is no such thing as a "safe state". Even states that did not engage in widespread use of liar loans and other silly mortgage lending practices are struggling with foreclosures. The issue is jobs, and unemployment is rising everywhere.
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Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Bright Side of Falling House Prices / Housing-Market / US Housing
"Morally Conflicted in Arizona" writes:
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Monday, August 17, 2009
Wave of Foreclosures About to Break U.S. Housing Market Dam / Housing-Market / US Housing
A summary of Second Quarter 2009 Negative Equity Data from First American CoreLogic shows that Nearly One-Third Of All Mortgages Are Underwater.
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Sunday, August 16, 2009
U.S. Housing Market Crash Means Collapse Of The "Ownership Society" / Housing-Market / US Housing
Bush's "ownership society" has collapsed under the dead weight of debt. There is too much debt and too little income to support it. Please consider President shifts focus to renting, not owning.
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Thursday, August 13, 2009
U.S. Housing Market Recovery Will Be Slow as Foreclosures Continue to Weigh on Housing Prices / Housing-Market / US Housing
Bob Blandeburgo writes: Prices for single-family and condominium homes in the second quarter fell by a record 15.6% and 19.8% year-over-year in the United States, mainly due to foreclosures.
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