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NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The besieged housing market has even further to fall before home prices really hit rock bottom. According to Fiserv (FISV), a financial analytics company, home values are expected to fall another 3.6% by next June, pushing them to a new low of 35% below the peak reached in early 2006 and marking a triple dip in prices. Several factors will be working against the housing market in the upcoming months, including an increase in foreclosure activity and sustained high unemployment, explained David Stiff, Fiserv's chief economist.

Want a Truly Healthy Housing Market? Here Are the Five Essential StepsThe housing market will remain crippled until we eliminate perverse incentives to financialization and speculation, Fed/Federal intervention and all subsidies/giveaways.If there is one goal that the financial cartels, their politico apparatchiks and the public might actually agree upon, it would be restoring the housing market to health. This is because the financial cartel, their politico lackeys and homeowners would all benefit from the stabilization of housing values at current levels:1. SDI (systemically dangerous institutions) a.k.a. too big to fail banks, would avoid insolvency by keeping all their mortgage assets...

Real estate industry warns of consequences Fearing another blow to a still-fragile housing market, real estate agents are pushing Congress to grant a long-term extension to the National Flood Insurance Program, which is set to expire this month for the 10th time in two years. Established by Congress in 1968, the program provides coverage to more than 5.6 million home and business owners in more than 21,000 communities nationwide that have adopted floodplain management plans in an effort to mitigate flood damage. Though private insurers sell the policies and administer claims, the federal government sets rates and assumes liability for...

Of the many financial reforms in Dodd-Frank, a requirement that lenders retain a share of the risk in mortgages they sell to investors seemed like a no-brainer. If lenders were on the hook, too, the thinking went, they would tighten standards and avoid the kind of defaults that contributed to the collapse of the housing market and the financial crisis. But now that a rule to implement this provision has been written, critics say the requirement will make it so hard to get a mortgage that it will further depress the housing market and undercut a struggling economy. “I’ve been...

The housing boom in Australia is now an escalating bust. Many Australian homeowners put every cent they had into their homes and they needed double incomes to just scrape by. Unfortunately, those jobs are disappearing in a construction and commercial real estate bust.  I warned about this event for years, but in Australia, like everywhere else "It's Different Here" until it's not.  60 Minutes Australia picked up the Secretly Broke story in "The Big Squeeze". Click on link for a 60 Minutes video. Here is a partial transcript.ALLISON LANGDON: To the world, Tracy and David Dodd are the very model of Australia’s...

WASHINGTON — US home prices have sunk below levels seen during the "Great Recession," according to data revealed Tuesday, sparking renewed pessimism about a key pillar of the spluttering economic recovery. Unless you are selling a house in Washington or buying one in Minnesota there is little cause to celebrate the state of the US housing sector. Despite ultra-low borrowing rates, experts say a steady flow of repossessed homes onto the market, tighter bank lending rules and high unemployment have kept prices at rock bottom.

Americans have lost more than $4 trillion in assets since the housing market collapsed in 2006. Risky government mortgage lending regulations helped inflate prices beyond reason, but those policies have not gone away. Instead, they've just moved into a new home, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). Unless Congress acts to renovate eligibility requirements for borrowers, we could see an even worse financial disaster unfold.~snip~Participating lenders are caught between the Scylla of penalty for denying loans to marginal borrowers and the Charybdis of sanction for having too many defaults on their books. It will only get worse: The FHA has...

The fragility of the UK housing market becomes more apparent with each passing day. And anecdotal evidence of the balance of power shifting towards buyers and away from sellers comes with news of the return of the gazunderer! Gazundering happens after buyer and seller have agreed a price but at the last moment before contracts are due to be exchanged, the buyer demands a final discount on the price. Home sellers then have to chose between writing off weeks or months of planning and accepting substantially less than they originally agreed. This can happen when the supply of property exceeds...

A watchdog group is questioning whether Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer could have been more transparent over a year ago in voluntarily disclosing the extent of her past mortgages with the company Countrywide. But Boxer aides strongly argue that the watchdog group’s complaints are without merit and suggest the questions are suspiciously timed, considering how the California senator is locked in a tough re-election fight. Boxer, as chairwoman of the Senate Ethics Committee, led a yearlong investigation beginning in 2008 into whether two Democratic senators acted improperly by being part of a VIP Countrywide program that gave influential clients favorable treatment....

The latest numbers suggest we're fi nally at the beginning of the end of the housing correction -- no thanks to Washington. Last Thursday's numbers from Realtytrac seemed like bad news. In August, foreclosure auctions hit their second-highest monthly total in the report's history: 147,003, up 9 percent over the month before and up 2 percent over August last year. That's 7 percent below the peak month, March of this year. And the immediate precursor to foreclosure sales -- bank repossessions -- hit their all-time high in August: 95,364, up just 3 percent over July but 25 percent over August...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Mortgage loan originators will have to be fingerprinted and sign up to a central registry to do business in future, according to final rules issued on Wednesday by the Federal Reserve and other regulators. The rules are part of the Secure and Fair Enforcement for Mortgage Licensing Act of 2008, also called the S.A.F.E. Act. They were issued by the Fed, Comptroller of the Currency, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, Office of Thrift Supervision, Farm Credit Administration and National Credit Union Administration.

Washington's efforts to keep the housing market afloat are brew ing up another mortgage melt down -- except that this time, Uncle Sam will start off holding the bag. Mortgage rates hit new lows last month as investors gobbled up residential, mortgage-backed securities -- MBSs, the very financial instruments that triggered the subprime crisis. Short-term, that will allow many cash-strapped homeowners to refinance and lower their monthly interest payments -- help to the beleaguered housing market. But it represents a ticking time bomb -- which will blow up in the face of the taxpayers. Until April 1 of this year,...

I recently sold my home and I am currently looking to buy a new home here in Tallahassee, Florida. So my only source on this is MYSELF.. for now.. and I am looking for FReeper input on my question. Like every other town in America our housing market is in crisis.. that is NOT breaking news.. what I am finding out here in Tallahassee, and likely in other cities across america is that there seems to be an INTENTIONAL manipulation of the market going on that I can't put my finger on. When I find a home in short sale/foreclosure,...

President Obama's latest bid to "boost" the housing market does nothing except prolong the pain -- and put taxpayers on the line for billions more in inevitable losses. Sooner or later, market forces will have their way; housing will find a bottom and finally start to heal. Using taxpayer money to delay foreclosure has already proved both frighteningly expensive and a repeated failure -- but the administration is still at it. Obama's first "rescue" effort sought to pay delinquent homeowners and their banks to modify defaulted loans -- an attempt to stop foreclosures and keep a lid on inventories. When...

President Barack Obama's failure to manage the economy is apparent is in the housing market where more than 4 million families now face foreclosure.

More than 11.3 million homeowners -- nearly one-fourth of all Americans with a mortgage -- owe more on their loan than their home is now worth... More than 10% of people with mortgages owe 25% more than their home is worth. The number of underwater mortgages increased by about 620,000 from the third quarter... Another 2.3 million mortgages had less than 5% equity in their home, which could be wiped out if home prices fall further. Underwater mortgages are concentrated in few states: California, Florida, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan and Georgia. In Nevada, 70% of mortgages were underwater. In California, more...

Commercial Real Estate Apocalypse 2011-2012 Housing-Market / US Housing Feb 22, 2010 - 01:06 PM By: Mike Shedlock Inquiring minds are digging deep into a 190 page PDF by the Congressional Oversight Panel regarding Commercial Real Estate Losses and the Risk to Financial Stability. Executive Summary Over the next few years, a wave of commercial real estate loan failures could threaten America’s already-weakened financial system. The Congressional Oversight Panel is deeply concerned that commercial loan losses could jeopardize the stability of many banks, particularly the nation’s mid-size and smaller banks, and that as the damage spreads beyond individual banks that...

During the second Presidential debate in October of 2008, candidate Barack Obama was asked to comment on the recent failures in our financial system. Setting what would be one of the prevailing themes of his campaign, and beyond, Mr. Obama made the following statement: "Let’s, first of all, understand that the biggest problem in this whole process was the deregulation of the financial system." Is deregulation truly the cause for what is going on in our economy today?If that is the case, then why are the least regulated sectors of the financial market, the least impacted by the credit crisis?Hedge...

It was introduced to the House on December 14 of 2000 by a Republican. Co-sponsored by three Republicans and one Democrat, it was never debated in the House.Its companion bill was introduced in Congress the very next day (just hours before Congressional Christmas break) by a Republican. Co-sponsored by three Republicans and two Democrats, it was likewise never debated in the Senate.It was immediately incorporated by reference into an omnibus budget bill that was passed by a vote count of 290 to 60 in the House. The Senate version passed by “Unanimous Consent.”It was signed into law by President William...

The labour force contracted by 661,000. This did not show up in the headline jobless rate because so many Americans dropped out of the system. The broad U6 category of unemployment rose to 17.3pc. That is the one that matters. Wall Street rallied. Bulls hope that weak jobs data will postpone monetary tightening: a silver lining in every catastrophe, or perhaps a further exhibit of market infantilism. The home foreclosure guillotine usually drops a year or so after people lose their job, and exhaust their savings. The local sheriff will escort them out of the door, often with some sympathy...

"This has been a phenomenal year for the economy," wrote Jeff Harding in a Daily Capitalist post. Housing numbers show things will only get worse in 2010.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Sales of previously owned U.S. homes jumped to the highest level in nearly three years last month, the latest sign the economic recovery was gaining steam after growing below expectations in the third quarter. The National Association of Realtors said on Tuesday that existing home sales rose 7.4 percent to an annual rate of 6.54 million units in November. It was the fastest pace since February 2007 and above analysts' 6.25 million-unit forecast. Separately, the Commerce Department said U.S. gross domestic product grew at a 2.2 percent annual rate in the third quarter instead of the 2.8...

A fifth-straight monthly gain for the Case-Shiller Index Tuesday and Monday's stronger-than-expected existing home sales report is giving renewed hope to the housing bulls. "Disregard them," says Barry Ritholtz, CEO of Fusion IQ, who notes the existing home sales number was juiced by sales of cheap condos and various government programs. Meanwhile, the Case-Shiller results were below expectations.

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...