The Seeds Of Discontent

| March 31, 2011

To see the real story, just look at the charts….. The top 1 percent  control 42 percent of all financial wealth. Growing Inequality…the middle class vs. the rich Growing Inequality…in income Source:  Social Security Does this look like a recovery to you?   More and More Food Stamps……and no end in sight And Real Estate values are […]

Real Estate ABC’s….According To Real Estate Data Analytics Firm CoreLogic

| March 30, 2011

Some sound advice….It’s going to be a long negative haul for housing and there is nothing on the horizon, such as an improving economy, lower unemployment, or climbing wages to stem the flow. There were simply too many homes built during the boom phases at affordability rates that didn’t make sense. Those who can afford to […]

Foreclosure Backlog Hits 30 Months….Average Delinquency Period 537 Days

| March 29, 2011

Robert Shiller today said that inflation adjusted economic statistics are clearly in the double dip.  U.S. single family home prices fell for the seventh month in a row in January, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller index of prices.   In four cities, prices were at their lowest for 11 years, with the overall index down 0.2% between December […]

Record New Home Sales…Auh, Record (Low) New Home Sales That Is!

| March 23, 2011

Well, records are made to be broken…..At just 250,000 annualized, this was the lowest annualized new home sales number ever.  The government continues to say we have a recovery, they are right to some degree. The problem is the whole recovery is being supported by the government….anyone care to guess what will happen without that support.  […]

U.S. Existing Home Prices And Sales Fall February

| March 21, 2011

Sales of U.S. previously owned homes dropped more than forecast in February and the median price dropped to $156,100 from $164,600 one year ago.  Sales of U.S. previously owned homes dropped more than forecast in February and the median purchase price declined to the lowest since the same month in 2002, indicating the housing market […]

2001-2010: Ten Year Prelude To The Keynesian End Game

| March 19, 2011

Notice if you will, the house in the chart below is upside down…..how appropriate! One hundred years of the government’s attempts to mute the natural business cycle are slowly and painfully coming to an end.  A period where the government proactively encouraged consumption until it became 70% of the economy, we produced very little, and […]

B Of A Says Almost Half Of Its Mortgages Are To Be Segregated “Bad”

| March 10, 2011

Interesting….. Bank of America Says Nearly Half Its Mortgages Are ‘Bad’ Washington Business Journal Bank of America Corp. is segregating almost half its 13.9 million mortgages into a “bad” bank comprised of its riskiest and worst-performing “legacy” loans, Bloomberg News reported, citing Terry Laughlin, who is running the new unit. “We are creating a classic […]

Housing Market 101

| March 2, 2011

Ok class, let’s review the current housing market.  So where do we start…how about with inventory! Inventory continues to swell. “There’s just way too many homes out there relative to demand and we’re not going to see that change anytime soon,” says Joshua Shapiro, chief US economist for MFR Inc. Lenders continue to repossess massive numbers of […]

New Home Sales Down 13% To 19K Actual New Homes Sold, It Is The Lowest Monthly Sales Ever Since Records Started

| February 24, 2011

Does anyone really think there is a recovery going on!  ” Less than 500 homes  sold in the over $750,000 and only 19k total new homes were sold. The lowest monthly total ever. (and of the 19K, 53% were vacant lots or under construction). “Sales of new single-family houses in January 2011 were at a seasonally […]

MacroMavens Stephanie Pomboy Talks Real Estate In This Weeks Barron’s

| February 19, 2011

Here is an interesting piece on Real Estate in this weeks Barron’s column Up and Down Wall Street… by ALAN ABELSON For most people, their house, be it ever so humble, is their largest single investment. (And all these years we’ve been suffering under the delusion that a house was, pure and simple, to live in. […]

In The Dumpster

| February 16, 2011

Mortgage Refinance Demand Lowest Since Summer of 2009…..This should be a sign to the wise. 02-16-2011 Mortgage application volume slipped 9.5 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis during the week ending February 11, according to the latest weekly survey from the Mortgage Bankers Association. On an unadjusted basis, the home loan application index was off […]

Banks Want Home Buyers To Actually Put Down (More) Cash

| February 15, 2011

This was a no brain’er, sooner or later you just knew the banks were going to want a larger down payment on the purchase of a house.  How novel to think it might improve delinquencies….Inquiring minds say Duh.  By S. MITRA KALITA    (From The Wall Street Journal) The down payments demanded by banks to buy homes have ballooned […]

Here Is The Governments Idea Of How To Fix The Housing Market

| February 11, 2011

This had better be good, being that the baby boomers will be sellers and the youngsters are broke! The Obama administration unveiled a proposal Friday for winding down mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, spelling out three options for what could take their place and setting the stage for a debate over the nation’s […]

Real Estate Rates Plowing Higher, Above 5%

| February 10, 2011

Real Estate mortgage rates heading the wrong way……. U.S. 30-year mortgage rates have jumped above 5% for the first time since last spring, in a rapid rise that could present a challenge to the still-troubled housing market. The average rate on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages climbed to 5.05% in the week ended Thursday, according to a […]

Home Ownership Rates Continue To Fall

| January 31, 2011

Home ownership rates continue to fall. History tells us that boom bust cycles tend to overshoot both on the upside and to the downside.  More downside should be expected here. In the fourth quarter of 2010, 66.5% of Americans owned homes, down from 67.2% a year earlier and the lowest rate since the end of 1998, according […]

Commercial Real Estate In A Nut Shell!

| January 23, 2011

It looks like the calm before another storm created by CRE loans in the next 3 years. We know vacancy rates remain high and we know values have not recovered. LTV ratios look to be very tight for many a bank CRE loan. As mentioned below, we crescendo in terms of CRE loan maturities between now and 2013. […]

Zillow Says Home Price Drop (26%) Exceeds The Great Depression

| January 20, 2011

By Al Yoon NEW YORK (Reuters) – Home prices fell for the 53’rd consecutive month in November, taking the decline past that of the Great Depression for the first time in the prolonged housing slump, according to Zillow. Home prices have fallen 26 percent since their peak in 2006, exceeding the 25.9 percent drop registered […]

What’s That Old Saying…Records Are Made To Be Broken!

| January 19, 2011

This is a key story: There were a record low number of housing completions in 2010, breaking the record set in 2009.   In 2010, 1 to 4 unit completions were at a record low 506 thousand. This was just below the 534 thousand units completed in 2009. This is far below the previous record […]

Three Steps To Fix The Mortgage Mess

| January 17, 2011

This read actually makes a lot of sense, and it takes the government out of the picture.  We would add one more thing….. that is for most mortgages to be assumable like they used to be.  The negative short term draw back is that like everything the government gets involved with, once they leave, there will […]

From AARP…..Ten Worst States For Retirement

| January 14, 2011

TopRetirements.com gave the most weight to three criteria: taxes, fiscal health and climate. Each of these factors is important, generally speaking, to retirees. On the financial front, high taxes can eat away at limited incomes, while poor fiscal health can force state governments to raise revenue or cut services. A warm climate is a natural […]

The Top 10 Most Affordable Cities In America

| January 7, 2011

The Top 10 Most Affordable Cities In America  Forbes.com   Cost-of-Living Rank Unemployment Rank Housing Costs Rank 1. Oklahoma City, Okla. 12 4 2 2. Pittsburgh, Pa. 6 15 1 3. Buffalo, N.Y. 16 9 3 4. Rochester, N.Y. 25 1 8 5. Nashville, Tenn. 3 23 11 6. San Antonio, Texas 19 9 10 […]

Looks Like The State That Nobody Can Spell Just Made A “Landmark Ruling” Concerning Real Estate Law

| January 7, 2011

Uh….so will this really matter, other then the banks paying a bunch of lobbyists another billion dollars to fix things?  Inquiring minds want to know! Wells Fargo & Co. and U.S. Bancorp  lost a foreclosure case in Massachusetts’s highest court that will guide lower courts in that state and may influence others in the clash between […]

The Wall Street Journal: Housing Recovery Stalls, Conference Board Said Consumer Confidence Fell Unexpectedly!

| December 28, 2010

So, just wondering why this is such a surprise to the media types……Incomes are down (based on taxes paid) according to Trim Tabs, and home ownership maintenance expenses are rising across the board, including real estate taxes.  The baby boomers are net sellers, not buyers.  The middle class is being squeezed. The demographic economic model is to downsize […]

Doug Kass Of Seabreeze Partners….15 Surprises To Watch For In 2011

| December 27, 2010

Doug Kass: Eight years ago, I set out and prepared a list of possible surprises for the coming year, taking a page out of the estimable Byron Wien’s playbook , who originally delivered his list while chief investment strategist at Morgan Stanley, then Pequot Capital Management and now at Blackstone. Importantly, my surprises are not […]

If They Wouldn’t Have Borrowed Out Of The House, Everything Would Still Be Fine….So Who Is Truly At Fault Here, The Banks Or The Borrower?

| December 27, 2010

www.zerohedge.com

The Mortgage Journey

| December 27, 2010

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Cities Forced To Tap Homeowners By Raising Property Taxes…. How Else Are They Going To Pay For Exploding Workers’ Retirement And Health Costs? Inquiring Minds Want To Know!

| December 25, 2010

The new world order will see tax hikes every where, it’s unavoidable! Cities across the nation are raising property taxes citing rising pension and health-care costs for their employees and retirees.  Local officials and government workers say a confluence of factors is driving the increases, including the need to make up for staggering investment losses […]

Houses Are Down 30+ Percent, So Why Do Property Taxes Continue To Go Up

| December 22, 2010

Nationally, property taxes now dominate local tax revenues. The problem is once the local government obtains that gargantuan revenue stream as it has, it becomes the “baseline of dependency” for all future years, and that’s exactly what’s going on now!   But there is a small ray of sunshine here.  A heads up…..Homeowners in most locales can […]

Bank Of America May Wish It Was Bank Of Some Where Else!

| December 21, 2010

WikiLeaks recently said it would target a large U.S. bank.  Bank of America was the rumored victim.  This has now been confirmed. Agence Press France is reporting: Julian Assange confirmed that WikiLeaks was holding a vast amount of material about Bank of America which it intends to release early next year.

A Letter From The Postman……

| December 21, 2010

A group of 52 business and financial luminaries have signed an open letter to U.S. Regulators (Geithner, Bernanke, et al.) on the need for national standards on mortgages. The signators are an impressive yet eclectic group.  As an example, we see Nouriel Roubini; William Dunkelberg (NFIB); Bob Eisenbeis; Chris Whalen and Jim Bianco.  Many of […]

Turn Out The Lights, The Party Is Over!

| December 20, 2010

$2 Trillion Debt Crisis Threatens To Bring Down 100+ U.S. Cities Way to go Meredith Whitney…..Logic says the states will be doing huge (really huge) cut backs and layoffs…..So inquiring minds want to know how the economy can grow in these circumstances. To all of the economists out there, it sounds like Meredith is one of the few that gets it! […]

Home Ownership Rates Continue To Decline

| December 19, 2010

The highest ownership rate of all time was 69.2% around 2005-2006, the low going back to 1965 is 62.9%, and we are currently at 66.9%.  The bottom line: It looks like we have a ways to go on the down side!

All The More Reason To Ask How The Real Estate Bubble Got So Large

| December 17, 2010

Real average earnings have not increased in 50 years…..So the next question is how do people make ends meet?  We don’t know, that’s why we ask the question!  Were we better off in 1972 vs. 2010?  Maybe so….   Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/15-charts-about-wealth-and-inequality-in-america-2010-4#real-average-earnings-have-not-increased-in-50-years-6#ixzz18Q3QqKn9

Economic Tid Bits

| December 16, 2010

Neal Soss at Credit Suisse: We have rising prices in gasoline and food.  That is worldwide.  It is also the warning sign of the worst-case “nightmare scenario.”  It as an “eruption of headline inflation (food and gasoline) with no accompanying pick-up in wages or real growth.”  David R. Kotok of Cumberland Advisors: Through the December […]

Hmm, So What Happened To The Housing Recovery?

| December 16, 2010

Home Mortgage Rates Spike To The Upside

| December 16, 2010

The most recent look at the 30 Year Cash Fannie Mortgage showed a rise by 11 bps overnight, and by a stunning 1% in the last month. At 4.703% the prevailing wholesale mortgage rate is back to the highest it has been since May 2010. And while some have speculated that this inflection in rates would have […]

Interest Rates Rising…Uh Hmm!

| December 9, 2010

Unintended Consequences Chris Verrone over at Strategas points out that the recent sell off in treasuries was “the second largest 2 day sell off in 50 years.”  A move by the 10 year to 3.50% could have serious consequences.  We’re getting dangerously close.

Real Estate On The Ropes

| December 7, 2010

A report out of RealtyTrac talks about “the new normal” thinking! Two-thirds of mortgage holders said they would consider trying to modify loan terms if they couldn’t afford their payment, Trulia and RealtyTrac said. Almost half would think about halting payments altogether if their home value fell below the loan amount. Mounting foreclosures and an unemployment […]

Was The Housing Pending Sales Number Really That Good?

| December 2, 2010

Let’s dig a little deeper on this subject…..Here’s what Bloomberg had to say about this morning’s reported jump in pending home sales (signed sales agreements). Pending sales of U.S. existing houses unexpectedly jumped by a record 10 percent in October, indicating the industry at the center of the last recession is stabilizing as the job […]

Distressed Homes In U.S. Sell At 32%-41% Discount

| December 2, 2010

The other shoe is dropping in real estate.  The banks have a lot of inventory to sell, so this will take a while!  Sales of existing homes, which make up more than 90 percent of the market, declined more than forecast in October amid the foreclosure moratoriums and the absence of the tax credit of as […]

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