Free Republic

With full support from the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve continues to weaken the dollar in order to "stimulate" the economy. Such exercises never create sustainable growth, but they sure are disruptive. One destructive result is that capital is misdirected because of false price signals. When the dollar is debased, commodity prices rise and speculation increases. Thus, it's impossible to know what the real supply/demand price is of a commodity or an asset--primarily land--related to the commodity. We see this harmful phenomenon playing out in farmland prices, which went up 12% last year, while doubling over the past decade. Prior...

The next boom for builders may be complaints from angry homeowners Residents of a new housing development in South Carolina fear that fumes from contaminated soil have caused dizziness and blackouts. In Colorado, homeowners say they were led to believe they'd enjoy a recreational lake that never materialized, causing property values to slip. As the housing slump worsens, U.S. homebuilders increasingly find themselves fending off complaints of shoddy construction, unsavory sales tactics, and use of unsafe land. There's no definitive gauge of consumer sentiment toward builders, but several signs point to growing unease. The annual new-home satisfaction surveys done by...

WASHINGTON -- Market experts expecting the home construction lull to end some time soon are going to have to wait longer than hoped. The chief economist for the National Association of Home Builders said new home construction in the U.S. may take until 2011 to return to last year's level. According to the NAHB, monthly construction starts would need to jump by 21 percent to reach David Seiders' benchmark for full recovery — 1.85 million. There were 1.53 million construction stats in April, the Commerce Department reported. At the height of the five-year housing boom in January 2006, construction began...

The housing slump has been painful for millions of people who work in real estate or recently bought a house. For Patrick Killelea, however, this year has been one long victory lap. Mr. Killelea, a 41-year-old software engineer, has long preached that it makes more economic sense to rent than buy homes. He recalls shouting "Wow!" when he heard about September's 9.7% drop in prices of new homes. "I didn't want to gloat," he says. "But then again, maybe I did." For years, Americans who refused to buy real estate at what they considered excessive prices were ribbed for failing...

A Cautionary Housing Tale from Japan by Michael Nystrom September 8, 2006 Cambridge, MA In the summer of 1990, with my freshly minted Bachelor's degree from the University of Washington, I went off to Japan to make my fortune. In the late 1980's if you recall, Japan was the place to be - Japanese management was all the rage, the Nikkei was soaring, and Japanese businessmen were buying up impressionist paintings and prime properties around the world at record prices. Americans were fretting and wringing their hands at the prospect of being displaced as the world's supreme economic power. In...

Being a professional mortgage lender and broker, I like to believe that most of us in the business are honest, reliable and knowledgeable. While this is true to a large extent, the relatively few bad guys in this business make us all look bad. The housing market has cooled and interest rates are on the rise. What's a mortgage broker to do? Well, it's pretty clear that many of them are getting a bit more aggressive in their marketing techniques. Over the last few weeks, I decided to pay close attention to the myriad of mortgage advertisements that constantly bombarded...

It looks like the housing boom is finally over. If you buy now, the risk is high that you'll get zero or negative returns on your investment over the next few years. What, then, should you do? Easy -- focus on affordability. If you can, choose a house in a market where prices haven't gone through the roof, whether it's Buffalo, N.Y., in the Northeast; Atlanta in the Southeast; Youngstown, Ohio, in the Midwest; San Antonio in the Southwest; Yakima, Wash., in the Northwest; or Riverside, Calif., in the West. You'll get more living space, and you won't have to...

If the party is over, folks in the Inland Empire don't appear to have gotten the message. Statewide housing prices dipped slightly in October 2005, according to figures released Monday by the California Association of Realtors. It was the second straight month of slippage, but in both of those months, local housing prices kept on climbing. The median home price in the Riverside/San Bernardino metropolitan area was $394,840 in October, an increase of 1.4 percent from September and 24.2 percent from a year ago. Compare that to a 1 percent drop to a $538,770 median statewide from September, and you...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The five-year-old U.S. housing boom is likely to slow in 2003 and could dampen consumer spending, which has been fueled by the thriving housing market, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said on Tuesday in comments that rattled housing markets. "With home price increases now subsiding, and mortgage interest rates no longer declining at last year's impressive pace, some slowdown in the rate of mortgage debt expansion is to be expected," he told a conference of the Independent Community Bankers of America in Orlando, Fla., via satellite. Shares of homebuilder stocks tumbled as the Fed chairman, while ruling...

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- When gold stocks rise sharply as a group on extremely heavy volume, it's almost always a sign of trouble ahead for the overall stock market. Analysts say the 7.5 percent advance for U.S.-traded gold shares earlier this week -- the sector's largest increase since May 2000 -- points to renewed interest in the metal. It's also a sign investors accept the possibility that the stock market, and the few industries still holding onto gains this year, could come crashing down in coming days or weeks. Gold's price, subdued until this week, is up almost 20 percent...