Category: US Housing
The analysis published under this category are as follows.
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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Tuesday, March 20, 2007
The United States of Foreclosure - Subprime fiasco to trigger Stock Market Crash / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Mike_Whitney
The stock market is about to crash. The only question is whether it will quickly fall down the elevator shaft or follow the jerky flight-path of a man pushed down a stairwell. Either way, the outcome will be the same; stocks will nose-dive, the dollar will plummet, and the bruised US economy will be splattered on the canvas like George Foreman in Rumble in the Jungle.Troubles in the sub-prime market have just begun to materialize and already 38 main sub prime lenders have gone kaput. Foreclosures have reached a 37 year high, and an estimated 2 million homeowners will be put out on the street in the next few years.
And that's just for starters.
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Saturday, March 17, 2007
What I'm seeing in the US Housing Market now / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Money_and_Markets
The last few weeks have been disastrous for the major homebuilders and mortgage lenders. The stocks have been crushed across the board. I'm not talking about a few percentage points. I'm talking about …
A 45% plunge in subprime mortgage company Fremont General (NYSE: FMT) in just 12 trading days …
A whopping 87% five-day collapse in New Century Financial , some of which took place on the Pink Sheets because the New York Stock Exchange suspended the shares …
A multi-week, 24% decline in the shares of homebuilder Centex (NYSE: CTX) …
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Thursday, March 15, 2007
US Subprime Mortgage Meltdown - Financial Fiascos Everywhere! / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Clif_Droke
“Millions at risk of losing homes” was the headline on the news wires on Wednesday, March 14. This happened on the day when the stock market showed a positive intraday reversal on strong trading volume. Obviously, the stock market wasn't put off by this negative piece of news.
If it were true that millions of Americans risk losing their homes over the sub-prime mortgage fiasco, the market would have already tanked by now.
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Wednesday, March 14, 2007
US Housing Mortgage Sector Meltdown - From the Sub-Prime to the Ridiculous / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Peter_Schiff
With the meltdown in the sub-prime mortgage sector now laid bare, many on Wall Street desperately cling to the notion that the pain will be localized. The prevalent delusion is that the overall mortgage, housing and stock markets will be little impacted by the carnage ravaging the sub-prime sector.
As such, renewed stock market weakness is seen as an over-reaction and a great buying opportunity. These assumptions represent wishful thinking in the extreme.
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Wednesday, March 14, 2007
A Bailout of the US Housing Market before the Bust ? / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Brady_Willett
Mortgage Bankers Association Chief Economist, Douglas Duncan, believes that mortgage activity is set to dip and that “there's no question that the decline in [mortgage] volume will reveal excess capacity”. Although Mr. Duncan isn't painting on overly grim picture, it is worth pointing out that he offered this negative outlook more than 3-years ago …Nearly Three Years of Insanity All But Over
As it would turn out, the so called ‘excess capacity' in the mortgage industry wasn't shed in 2004, it was simply utilized to push more ‘creative' mortgages.
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