Analysis Topic: Housing Market Price trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Greenspans Cheap Money role in the US Housing Crash of 2007 / Housing-Market / Analysis & Strategy
The American people appear to be oblivious to the economic hurricane which is expected to touchdown in late 2007. That's when $1 trillion in ARMs (Adjustable Rate Mortgages) will “reset” triggering a massive increase in foreclosures and plunging the country into a deep recession. If energy costs continue to rise at the same time or if the dollar loses more ground, we may be rooting around in the backyard garden-plot looking for passed-over spuds and radishes.
“The Fed, in effect, has become a serial bubble blower.” Stephen Roach, chief economist, Morgan Stanley
“This is the biggest housing slump in the last 4 or 5 decades: every housing indicator is in free fall, including now housing prices.” Economist Roubini Nouriel, Dow Jones, 23 August 2006
Sunday, February 04, 2007
US Housing Market- The Mother of All Bubbles / Housing-Market / Analysis & Strategy
The Fed should have tightened earlier to avoid a festering of the housing bubble early on. The Fed is facing a nightmare now: the recession will come and easing will not prevent it.” Nouriel Roubini, “Fed Holds Interest Rates Steady as Slowdown Outweighs Inflation”, Wall Street JournalI'm really baffled by the e-mails I've been getting lately. A lot people have been blasting my predictions that the housing bubble will burst in 2007 and trigger a deep and painful recession. They point to the Commerce Dept's recent report that “new home sales rose 4.8% in December after 7.4% increase in November.”
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Thursday, February 01, 2007
US Housing Bubble Bloodbath - The Property Crash Continues / Housing-Market / Analysis & Strategy
“The crash of the housing bubble will not be pretty. Millions of people stand to lose their homes and life savings. However, it was inevitable. The bubble created a fantasy world that could not continue. At the peak of the bubble, 160,000 people a week were buying a home, most at bubble inflated prices. The longer the bubble persists, the larger the group of people who paid way too much for their home. While it is not good that so many dreams had to be ruined, the number will be even larger if the bubble deflates slowly. So I make no apologies about hoping for the hasty demise of the bubble.”Read full article... Read full article...
Sunday, January 28, 2007
US Housing Slump Continues - Boom Bust Cycle - Silicon Valley Housing Market Report / Housing-Market / Analysis & Strategy
In this report you will see facts, based on the available data, that you will not find anywhere else. Vast majority of economists and statisticians who prepare housing reports are "professionals" that get paid to talk up the game. This is a NO BULL! report. The purpose of this report is to not only present the facts but also a commentary on the mindset of people who live there. Just to give you some flavor of the facts, how many people know the following (all home prices are median price)?
Price change, during Apr'00-Dec'06 (80 months), for all homes sold in Santa Clara County = 35%.
Price change, during Apr'00-Dec'06, for all homes sold in Los Angeles County = 165%.
Price change, during Apr'00-Dec'06, of the US Treasury STRIPS in my IRA account = 70%.
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Friday, January 12, 2007
US housing market - Subprime lending sector spiraling south ! / Housing-Market / Analysis & Strategy
ContiFinancial ... EquiCredit ... The Money Store ... Southern Pacific Funding. Maybe you've never heard of them, but they were the subprime mortgage lending stars of the mid-to-late 1990s.
They specialized in making loans to borrowers with bad credit, little or no down payments, and a host of other problems. Once they made loans, they'd sell them off to Wall Street firms and other investors, who would help package them together into bonds — a process known as “securitization.” The subprime lenders would use the proceeds to make additional mortgages, and the process would start all over again.
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Sunday, December 31, 2006
UK Housing market forecast for 2007 / Housing-Market / Forecasts & Technical Analysis
Early in 2006 we reiterated the overbought state of the UK housing market and how it was ripe for a decline. But the decline failed to materialise, as an early slowdown failed to go negative, with the market starting to trend higher again later in the year. Despite two rate rises, the housing growth has accelerated going into the end of 2006 to an annualised rate of over 8%.
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Thursday, December 21, 2006
Has the US Housing Market Bottomed ? Data and Fifth Grade Maths Says NO ! / Housing-Market / Analysis & Strategy
Act I. Scene - a fifth grade math class in a small farm town in MO.
'Good morning class.'
'Good morning, Mr. Scambuster.'
'What state we are in and what are we known for, Freckles?'
'Why, Missouri, sir. When shrills trained at Serve-the-Crooks League that you told us about try to tell us that this is so and that is so we turn around and ask, 'Show Me, buster.'
'Class, today we will learn how to apply the arithmetic that you have learned to the real world problems. Remember, when we took a field trip to the city and we saw lots of homes and condos going up everywhere? Remember, Tommy pointing to us that his uncle Kirk was building some of those homes? I also explained to you the process of getting permits to build homes, etc., on that trip. Well, today we will apply the simple arithmetic of addition and subtraction to this real life subject. I will draw a little table of the process of building new housing units.'
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Thursday, December 14, 2006
Facts On US Housing Boom-Bust Cycles and Recessions / Housing-Market / Analysis & Strategy
No one denies that housing in the US has been cyclical with huge swings in the new construction as well as resale activity (both showing a high correlation with each other). Establishment no longer denies that there was a housing bubble during the past four years and that it has begun to burst. However, the establishment, led by the Federal Reserve, assures the public of a "soft-landing." Some even point to "the mid-cycle slowdown during 1995" without pointing out that there was no housing boom preceding that slowdown and, hence, no housing-led recession to follow.Read full article... Read full article...
Sunday, November 19, 2006
US Housing slump continues as housing starts plunge 27% / Housing-Market / Strategic News
Contrary to Alan Greenspans comments last month that the US housing market was showing signs of having bottomed, the latest data released by Commerce Department show that the housing market is still weak and likely to continue to drift lower well into 2007
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Tuesday, November 07, 2006
The UK Property Market Boom compared to World Property Markets / Housing-Market / Analysis & Strategy
As the UK property market continues to shrug aside higher interest rates and march higher, we take a look at what could be in store given the performance of property markets in major economies from around the world.
US Property Market - The bubble across the atlantic has most definitely popped, with prices forecast to fall a further 10% during 2007. It could take the US 5 years to recover from this slump with fallout expected to hit to the US economy and leave it vulnerable to external shocks such as if oil prices took off again.
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Monday, November 06, 2006
Investing in the Japanese Property Market - A new Housing Bull Market Emerges / Housing-Market / Analysis & Strategy
The Japanese property 16 year bear market increasingly looks like it has come to an end. Presenting an excellent opportunity for investors to get in on a new housing bull market just when other property markets around the world are showing signs of peaking or like the US market are actually falling.
MarketOracle looks at how to invest in Japanese Property Market for the long-term.
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Wednesday, November 01, 2006
The UK Housing Boom continues as Abbey relaxes lending rules to X5 to further inflate the housing bubble / Housing-Market / Strategic News
The Abbey is to offer home buyers mortgages of up to five times their salary to help them cope with the booming housing market. The traditional limit has been 3.5 times salaries which has gradually been relaxed over recent years by many of the prime mortgage lenders and in some cases will lend as much as 7.5 times income depending on an individual's circumstances.
'With house prices rising and the market going that way, people are having to borrow more to be able to afford a home,' an Abbey spokesman said last night.
'What we are doing is offering people the opportunity to borrow up to five times their salary. This is all dependent on affordability, salary, credit rating and deposit. We do not want to bankrupt anybody by doing this, but the high earners out there, with healthy deposits behind them who want to buy these houses that are just slightly out of reach will now be able to do that.'
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Friday, October 20, 2006
US Housing Market heading for biggest decline since the Great Depression / Housing-Market / Analysis & Strategy
According to the latest US Housing Market forecasts, US house prices are headed for a 3.7% decline in 2007. This would be the greatest full year decline since the 1930's Great Depression.
US House prices are expected to make a low late 2007, and probably move sideways for some time.
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Saturday, October 14, 2006
Why UK House prices continue to rise ! / Housing-Market / UK Housing
For how many years have the market commentators been predicting a UK housing crash ? 1 year, 2 years, 5 years ? Yes in some cases even 5 years ago market pundits have been calling a crash, but in the meantime house prices, to this very day continue to rise ever higher !
Why ?
Here are four reasons as to why house prices in the UK continue to rise
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Monday, September 25, 2006
Joseph Rowntrees report into the state of UK Housing / Housing-Market / UK Housing
According to the report, affordability is currently stretched, with mortgage costs currently accounting for 36 per cent of average earnings.
The supply of affordable housing is also at a low level, the study claims, with 35,000 homes available in 2005-06 – half the level experienced in the mid-90s. This is well below the minimum of 48,000 outlined in the government-commissioned report.
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Saturday, September 16, 2006
IMF warns over UK property crash / Housing-Market / UK Housing
A sharp rise in interest rates could trigger a slump in house prices, which are overvalued by "any conventional measure", the International Monetary Fund warned yesterday. The world's chief financial watchdog warned that soaring prices posed one of the biggest risks to the UK economy.
"House prices in Spain, Ireland and the United Kingdom still look elevated, and could come under pressure in a rising interest rate environment," it said.
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Sunday, September 10, 2006
The Effects of a US Housing Market Crash / Housing-Market / US Housing
House prices across the atlantic continue to tumble across the board, with the National Association of Realtors, reporting a price fall of 1.7 per cent last month to $225,000 (£118,000), while sales of existing homes drop 0.5% to an annual rate of 6.3 million. At the same time, ever more owners are being forced to put properties on the market as mortgage rates have steadily risen, further dimming prospects of an improvement in the short term. The total of existing homes on the market is now the highest since April 1993.
As house prices fall, there will likely be many more defaults on mortgage products, such as ARM (adjustable rate mortgages), which the US borrowers were not used to a floating interest rate instead having relied on fixed rate products, now as interest rates have risen to 5.25% from just 1% have seen a surge in foreclosures reaching some 116,000 in August, up 53% on a year ago.
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Wednesday, February 15, 2006
UK Housing Bubble is Popping / Housing-Market / UK Housing
From the low in 1995 the average UK house price has risen from £50,930. to the £158,745 by the end of 2005, which is more than tripling in price ! From peak to to peak House prices have risen about the same 50%, as when the peaked in 1990. The Trend analysis suggests any decline could take house prices to the previous peak of approx 105k ! which would represent a staggering drop of 34% off current prices !
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Wednesday, September 14, 2005
House Prices - Tulip Mania - A lesson from History ! / Housing-Market / UK Housing
Holland in the early 17th century was embarking on its Golden Age. Resources that had just a few years earlier gone toward fighting for independence from Spain now flowed into commerce. Amsterdam merchants were at the center of the lucrative East Indies trade, where a single voyage could yield profits of 400%. They displayed their success by erecting grand estates surrounded by flower gardens. The Dutch population seemed torn by two contradictory impulses: a horror of living beyond one's means and the love of a long shot.Enter the tulip. ''It is impossible to comprehend the tulip mania without understanding just how different tulips were from every other flower known to horticulturists in the 17th century,'' says Dash. ''The colors they exhibited were more intense and more concentrated than those of ordinary plants.'' Despite the outlandish prices commanded by rare bulbs, ordinary tulips were sold by the pound. Around 1630, however, a new type of tulip fancier appeared, lured by tales of fat profits. These ''florists,'' or professional tulip traders, sought out flower lovers and speculators alike. But if the supply of tulip buyers grew quickly, the supply of bulbs did not. The tulip was a conspirator in the supply squeeze: It takes seven years to grow one from seed. And while bulbs can produce two or three clones, or ''offsets,'' annually, the mother bulb only lasts a few years. Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Britains biggest estate agent loses £6.4 million / Housing-Market / UK Housing
Countrywide hit by 'appalling' downturnBritain's biggest chain of estate agents yesterday showed just how dramatically the housing market had slowed when it revealed it had suffered a loss for the first time in a decade.
Countrywide said its UK estate agency division made losses of £6.4m in the first six months of this year - down 129% on the £22m operating profit notched up a year earlier. Read full article... Read full article...