Free Republic

There are still too many houses House prices have pulled out of their free fall, but don't expect them to recover until we work through a huge property glut. By Colin Barr, senior writer Last Updated: November 11, 2009: 9:08 AM ET NEW YORK (Fortune) -- The lights are on in the housing market. But at more and more places, nobody's home. House prices have risen in recent months after a long plunge, according to the National Association of Realtors and the S&P Case-Shiller national index. Fewer Americans owe more than their property is worth, according to a report this...

The "For Sale" signs are just starting to sprout, but already experts worry that this spring home-buying season in the United States will be even grimmer than the last. Despite tentative signs of recovery in hard-hit areas like California and Florida, the broader housing market is far from hitting bottom, economists said. Across much of America, prices are likely to keep falling through 2010. So the March-to-June season, when most homes are bought and sold, will be bad this year - perhaps the worst since the market began to spiral down in 2006. Across the nation, 19 million houses and...

Hopeychangey Anarchy In the US! (Hat Tip: Michelle Malkin) So let me get this right. Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and Liberal Congress encourages (read: forces) banks to enable people take on mortgages they cannot afford... ... the banks come looking for their money, the banks get blamed and demonized by the Liberal media and Liberal Congress... ...the banks suffer historical losses, stocks fall, the government steps in to help the banks... ...the banks are blamed and demonized for misusing the funds, the president calls for pay caps on bank executives... ...the president offers $275 Billion to bailout out irresponsible home-owners...

If you couldn't tell from my post below, I think the McCain housing plan is a disaster. It's Dodd-Frank on steroids. I didn't get the chance to ask any questions in the conference call earlier, but here is what was one my mind: 1. Why are you replicating the Dodd-Frank legislation bailout in your plan? Their plan gave $300 billion to FHA to guarantee failed mortgages. It passed in July. Shouldn't we give that some time to work? 2. Why does your plan empower the Treasury Secretary to buy up these failed mortgages and renegotiate them? Shouldn't that power be...

If I read one more article on the depressed housing market I'm going to overdose on Zoloft in an abandoned builders model home and wait for the repo guys to find me and call 911. Enough of the housing market news already. There's lots more going on than meets the eye here. Some huge dangers but some equally huge opportunities. Here's what I mean: 1. THERE ARE TOO MANY HOUSES FOR SALE- No kidding. Really? Not so fast here. Except for some truly overbuilt markets we have about a 9-12 month supply of housing inventory versus the normal 6 months....

In California, thousands of homeowners are having their assessments reduced under a decades-old state law, and lower tax revenue because of the weaker housing market is likely to start placing a strain on state and local governments. A study last month by the U.S. Conference of Mayors predicted that California would...

When Casey Johnson and his wife moved to San Diego County three years ago, they couldn't find a home in their price range. So they did what they thought was the sensible thing. Rather than over-leverage themselves with a risky mortgage, the couple rented an apartment in La Jolla and waited patiently for the housing market to drift back to earth, hoping they hadn't missed their chance to become homeowners. The value of a rate freeze Graphic The value of a rate freeze click to enlarge But now the government-brokered plan unveiled Thursday by President Bush to ease terms on...

It is easy to call yourself a supporter of economic freedom and the rule of law amidst a rapidly rising economy. Now with dark clouds of the recent rise in mortgage foreclosures—and more expected on the horizon—political expediency has eroded the support for free markets in some of its perceived champions. Even self-proclaimed devotees of the late Milton Friedman, President George W. Bush and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, sound more like critics than Friedman supporters. In the wake of a perceived mortgage crisis both have attempted to use the coercive power of government to solve the problem. Both plans center...

If you thought Hillary Clinton's government takeover plan for health care was bad, wait 'til you see what she has in store for the housing sector. As always with the Clintons, the market is the problem and Big Nanny is the solution. Unfortunately for taxpayers, Hillary has bipartisan company in the Bush administration on this issue. Their election season prescription? Rewarding bad behavior. Punishing responsible behavior. Doing more harm than good. In case you've been living in a cave, there's a painful credit crunch underway. The culprit is the subprime mortgage -- a species of risky home loans to buyers...

No one knows how severe the slump will be, but economists and real estate experts interviewed by The Times, and who were willing to make predictions, said prices could fall 15% to 25% before turning back up. Most said values would continue falling through at least next year, and some thought the market wouldn't reverse course until 2010. That could translate to big declines for home buyers who bought at the peak of the market, which various measures place in late 2006 or early 2007. For example, a home that sold for $800,000 in 2006 could fall to $600,000 over...

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said today that a major real estate appraisal company conspired with one of the largest mortgage lenders in the nation to inflate the appraised value of homes. Cuomo is suing First American Corp. and its subsidiary eAppraiseIT, accusing the companies of caving to pressure from Washington Mutual to use a list of preferred "proven appraisers" who he alleges provided inflated property appraisals. First America in a statement issued this afternoon said the Attorney General's lawsuit "has no foundation in fact or law." "The Attorney General's allegations, largely based on a handful of e-mails that...

As mortgage delinquencies rise, more homeowners will need to negotiate workouts with mortgage companies. When you fall behind on payments, your chances of getting cooperation from the mortgage servicer are better if you follow the following guidelines: Respond to the mortgage company's phone calls and letters. Academic researchers have found that, in about half of foreclosures, the delinquent borrower never talked to the servicer. ... Keep a folder in which you note all communications with the lender, especially the names of people to whom you talked on the phone, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development advises. Follow up...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The outlook for the housing market looks bleaker than ever. Foreclosures are skyrocketing. Home prices continue to fall. And forecasts for a recovery keep getting pushed back. Meanwhile the collapse of the subprime lending market has spread to the financial markets, sparking fears that tighter credit will have a broader impact on consumers and the economy. Current Mortgage Rates Type Overall avgs 30 yr fixed mtg 6.26% 15 yr fixed mtg 5.93% 30 yr fixed jumbo mtg 6.68% 5/1 ARM 5.91% 5/1 jumbo ARM 6.13% Find personalized rates: The U.S. government has downplayed the risk of...

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...

FORECLOSED: Tuscan Hills Development The lender has repossessed developer Mayer-Luce’s ambitious Tuscan Hills development in Desert Hot Springs. “Yes, Mayer-Luce was the borrower and we have foreclosed on the property. We took back the property,” said Jeffery Lubin, President of Scripps Investments and Loans as he confirmed for Desert Local News that the Tuscan Hills project is no longer part of the Mayer-Luce development portfolio. Scripps Investments and Loans, a private equity lender based in La Jolla, California, provided over $38 million in financing for the Tuscan Hills project. Documents obtained by Desert Local News show the property was sold...

San Diego County's home-building industry entered the new year in “slowdown mode” and will likely see the fewest building permits issued in a decade, the California Building Industry Association said yesterday. The association's chief economist, Alan Nevin, who also works for San Diego-based MarketPointe Realty Advisors, said between 10,000 and 12,000 houses, condos and apartments are likely to be built this year, compared with nearly 12,000 last year. The last time San Diego permits dipped below 10,000 was in 1996 at the tail end of the last major recession when 6,868 permits were issued, according to the Burbank-based Construction Industry...

Things have come full circle. Location counts again. That's why the East Bay towns — along with a few other places around the state, including neighborhoods in Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Pasadena and Silicon Valley — are still reasonably hot. There are more people who want to live in these areas than there are available houses.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said on Thursday the U.S. economy was pulling away from the shoals of a sharp housing-sector downturn and that the outlook for growth was "reasonably good." "Most of the negatives in housing are probably behind us," Greenspan said at a conference sponsored by the Commercial Finance Association "The fourth quarter should be reasonably good, certainly better than the third quarter." The government reports on third-quarter economic growth on Friday. After shooting ahead at a 5.6 percent annual clip at the start of the year, the economy advanced only 2.6 percent in...

You always thought those mysterious fees at closing were a total scam. Congrats! You were right. Here's what you can do to avoid paying through the nose. Technology has magically lowered the price of buying everything from stocks to airline tickets. But home buyers now pay eight times the closing costs they paid 40 years ago. Here's how residents of one Minnesota street were overcharged again and again on their home purchases, many by thousands of dollars. And why your street probably isn't all that different. When Lewis Leung was buying his two-bedroom ranch in St. Louis Park, Minn. in...

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...

A new batch of real estate data gave the media a chance to pull out its recipe for half-baked reporting on the housing market. On July 25, a housing report released by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) performed better than expected but ABC and NBC’s July 25 evening newscasts spun the story negatively, with NBC even floating talk of a housing “bubble.” Neither network mentioned that five days earlier Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke assessed the housing slowdown as “orderly” or that NAR chief economist David Lereah forecasted in January that the housing market would “normalize” from its record-setting...

Single-family home prices finished 2005 with gains of more than 10 percent for the year, according to the latest report from the National Association of Realtors. The median home price in the United States jumped 13.6 percent last year, thanks mostly to big increases over the first three quarters. "Although home sales have eased, the tremendous momentum in price appreciation was sustained in the fourth quarter because tight inventories still favored sellers," NAR chief economist David Lereah said in a statement. The hottest metro market in the United States in 2005 was Phoenix, Ariz., where the median price soared 48.9...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Swathes of U.S. Gulf Coast homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina scar the region's landscape, but eventual rebuilding will stoke an already torrid national housing market, economists say. The disruption in the region's energy supply, sparking record oil prices and crimping consumer spending, are seen thwarting aggressive interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve. Mortgage rates are sliding as a result, keeping U.S. home sales near record levels. "Down the line, and we usually find this after natural disasters -- and this disaster sticks out as being the worst -- the normal process is immediate destruction of...

Homebuilders led the stock parade this week with a fantastic 11 percent gain. This is a group that hedge funds and bubbleheads love to hate. All the bond bears have been dead wrong in predicting sky-high mortgage rates. So have all the bubbleheads who expect housing-price crashes in Las Vegas or Naples, Fla., to bring down the consumer, the rest of the economy and the entire stock market. None of this has happened. The Federal Reserve has effectively mopped up excess cash and calmed inflation expectations. That's why bond rates are hovering around 4 percent, with most mortgage rates about...

Cheap money and refinancing have fueled an unparalleled boom/inflation of real estate prices across the nation. Most gains have been cashed out via the equity loans that have provided a supplemental "income" for households to keep this economy spending. It’s the costly S&L tragedy all over again. I’ve been thinking about real estate, equity, liquidity, CMO’s, GSE’s, and bubbles. Home ownership was a central component of the American dream. It was the foundation of community, security, accomplishment, and family. However... all that has been eclipsed because "renting" from lenders is NOT ownership. You see, real estate has evolved from being...

Nationally, median home prices gained 8.8 percent in the fourth quarter versus the same period in 2003, according to a National Association of Realtors (NAR) report. The median price was $187,500, which means that half the homes tracked cost more and half cost less. Of the 129 markets tracked, 62 areas had growth of more than 10 percent. Over the past 12 months, Las Vegas home values showed the biggest gains. The median price of an existing single-family home in and around Sin City were up 47.3 percent. In Riverside and San Bernardino counties near Los Angeles prices were up...

No boom lasts forever, and in countries like Britain and Australia, the housing market has suddenly turned lower, leading to discussions of how a plunge can be avoided and what will happen if it is not. The American housing market received a scare yesterday, with a report that the pace of new-home sales slipped in November as the median price of a new home fell to the lowest level in a year. But mortgage applications indicate that a rebound has begun, and in any case, prices of new homes can fail to capture price trends for existing homes in areas...

Has anyone given any thought to the impact outsourcing of high paying professional jobs will have on the housing market? As a loan officer and previous hi-techie who got cast aside, I have to wonder what the outsourcing trend will do the housing values, especially in Kalifornia. When one's Debt to Income becomes too high, then they cannot get a loan to buy houses. Bankruptcy is not an option since there is normally a 4 year waiting period after the BK has been discharged. Open for discussion.

Construction rises in December, making sector 'the shining light in the recovery'. By Jeannine Aversa ASSOCIATED PRESS Thursday, January 22, 2004 WASHINGTON -- Residential construction activity picked up in December, helping to make all of 2003 the best year for home builders in a quarter-century and underscoring the critical role the sector played in the economy's resurgence. The Commerce Department reported Wednesday that housing construction increased by 1.7 percent last month from November to 2.09 million units. For all of last year, the number of houses for which builders broke ground totaled 1.85 million, up from 1.7 million in 2002....

Real-estate boom bittersweet as prices keep rising in most expensive cities. Many can't afford to buy By David Leonhardt New York Times FORT WAYNE, IND. - On a tree-filled boulevard known as doctors' row, the four- and five-bedroom brick Tudor homes that are the jewels of Fort Wayne's housing stock were selling for about $150,000 two decades ago. At the time, some homes in the nation's most desirable suburbs, such as Brookline, Mass., Sausalito, Calif., and Great Neck, N.Y., cost the same. Over the last 20 years, however, the nation's housing market has been cleaved in two, and the break...

<p>By late 1981, economists were sure that the recession that had begun in July was over. Forecasters surveyed by BusinessWeek thought the economy would grow nearly 3% in 1982. Wrong. The economy actually shrank more than 1% that year.</p> <p>Could the conventional wisdom be wrong again? Sure. Despite a spate of favorable data, pessimists argue that the U.S. faces a long period of slow growth--or even a "double-dip" recession. They worry that the mild 2001 downturn left in place the imbalances built up during the late 1990s. "The recession was too shallow to create the efficiencies that a longer, deeper recession would have," says Donald H. Straszheim, president of Straszheim Global Advisors in Westwood, Calif.</p>