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United States The US now presents some of the best real estate opportunities not only of all developed countries but also compared to most developing markets. Prices in a number of states have declined so much that there is deep value to be found. In fact, there are many locations around the country where properties now sell below replacement cost. As is always the case, nobody wants to even think about buying real estate now that prices in many areas have dropped by 50-60% and yields are higher than seen for decades. Yet just a few years ago at the...

A notary public who signed tens of thousands of false documents in a massive foreclosure scam before blowing the whistle on the scandal has been found dead in her Las Vegas home. NBC station KSNV of Las Vegas reported that the woman, Tracy Lawrence, 43, was scheduled to be sentenced Monday morning after she pleaded guilty this month to notarizing the signature of an individual not in her presence. She failed to show up for her hearing, and police found her body at her home later in the day. It could not immediately be determined whether Lawrence, who faced up...

Every week someone sends me an idea on how to fix various housing problems.  Many want home prices to stop falling and many others want to bail out homeowners because banks were bailed out (as if two wrongs make a right). Others want to stop foreclosures even though the very best thing for most of the people in trouble would be to shed the albatross by walking away. The one thing they all have in common is a misguided proposal to bailout someone at the expense of someone else (typically the government but few figure out the government means taxpayers). ...

As a result of the December 31 presidential signing of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA; H.R. 1540), the Department of Defense, or DOD, is prohibited from funding any LEED Platinum or Gold certification of new buildings for the current fiscal year, unless it submits notification of intent 30 days before the money is allocated. The only exception to the rule is if LEED Gold or Platinum certifications don’t involve additional expense. Under the same legislation, the DOD is required to submit a report to Congress (Sec. 2830) no later than June 30 on energy efficiency and sustainability standards used...

<p>This seems like a really bad idea to me. Talk about crony capitalism. Individual buyers will be shut out from buying these properties.</p>

Normally, when someone asks for the remote, it’s because they want to undertake some serious TV channel surfing. But in one unique home located just 90 minutes north of New York City, playing with the remote control will set the entire wooden house spinning on its axis. This dome home was, in fact, built on an electronically-controlled axle. So with a push of a button, the 3,000-square-foot New Paltz home for sale can rotate 360 degrees. In five orbital minutes, the house, which is on the market for $1.2 million, will turn one full rotation. The owners of this circular...

MERCED, Calif. — Heather Alarab, a junior at the University of California, Merced, and Jill Foster, a freshman, know that their sudden popularity has little to do with their sparkling personalities, intelligence or athletic prowess. “Hey, what are you doing?” throngs of friends perpetually text. “Hot tub today?” While students at other colleges cram into shoebox-size dorm rooms, Ms. Alarab, a management major, and Ms. Foster, who is studying applied math, come home from midterms to chill out under the stars in a curvaceous swimming pool and an adjoining Jacuzzi behind the rapidly depreciating McMansion that they have rented for...

Debunking The Chinese 'Soft Economic Landing' Myth: Short The Bubble December 19, 2011 China’s growth curve has gone parabolic in recent years. For the last couple of decades, China has typically averaged 10% GDP growth, and it has maintained that growth even as a multi-trillion dollar economy. Of course, 10% growth in an economy already worth trillions is an astounding achievement, but it can also lead to severe economic tribulations, such as soaring housing and food prices. China has incurred both of these troubles. As a growing middle class emerges, demand for beef has far outstripped supply growth, and beef...

Agustino Fontevecchia, Forbes Staff 12/19/2011 @ 4:15PM |2,956 views China Waking Up? Central Bank Now Selling Forex Reserves To Support Yuan Marking a clear break with its policies over the last several years, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) announced a second consecutive month of foreign exchange outflows in November, a move designed to support the value of the yuan. China’s currency intervention came alongside a report showing property prices continuing to fall, as Beijing clamps down on what many see as a dangerous real estate bubble. The Red Dragon appears to be waking up. Chinese policymakers are doing everything...

The craze for vacant real estate is due in large part to a lack of attractive alternatives. Strict controls on capital outflows prevent most Chinese citizens from investing any real money abroad. Chinese bank deposits earn very low interest rates -- lower, for the past year now, than the rate of consumer inflation. The public sees the country's domestic stock exchanges, which have endured volatile ups and downs over the last few years, as little more than high-risk casinos. In contrast, real estate, which has not seen a sustained downturn since China first converted to private homeownership in the 1990s,...

WASHINGTON — Who is paying for the two-month extension of the payroll tax cut working its way through Congress? The cost is being dropped in the laps of most people who buy homes or refinance beginning next year. The typical person who buys a $200,000 home or refinances that amount starting on Jan. 1 would have to pay roughly $17 more a month for their mortgage, thanks to a fee increase included in the payroll tax cut bill that the Senate passed Saturday. The White House said the fee increases would be phased in gradually. The legislation provides a two-month...

Data on sales of previously owned U.S. homes from 2007 through October this year will be revised down next week because of double counting, indicating a much weaker housing market than previously thought. The National Association of Realtors said a benchmarking exercise had revealed that some properties were listed more than once, and in some instances, new home sales were also captured. "All the sales and inventory data that have been reported since January 2007 are being downwardly revised. Sales were weaker than people thought," NAR spokesman Walter Malony told Reuters.

"The Occupy Wall Street protests are moving into the neighborhood. Finding it increasingly difficult to camp in public spaces, Occupy protesters across the country are reclaiming foreclosed homes and boarded-up properties, signaling a tactical shift for the movement against wealth inequality." If the so-called president of the US really wanted to do something productive with the stroke of his Executive Order pin he could mandate that all homes in the US be priced at current market values and set 30 year fixed at 4.50 %. Then start a PRO MANUFACTURING-AMERICAN initiative to build products in America where someone earning $8-9...

December 5, 2011, 9:58 PM HKT Ominous Ordos: Dispatch from a Chinese Ghost Town Ordos – a town in the desert of Inner Mongolia – has become a symbol of the excesses of China’s real estate boom. Reports in the local press that property prices in the eeriest of China’s ghost towns had fallen 70% had China Real Time Report on the next plane out there. We found little evidence of a collapse in prices yet. But with sales volume sharply down that could be just around the corner. “You want to know why they were building all those houses...

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - Two self-described Disney "fanatics" have purchased a house in Utah modeled after the colorful home featured in the animated movie "Up." Discovering the house in the Salt Lake City suburb of Herriman, Utah, was a dream come true for Clinton and Lynette Hamblin of Petaluma, Calif. The couple had been looking for a house with some of the same flourishes as the one in the movie, such as a multi-colored exterior or a blue kitchen with retro appliances. They initially looked in California until they saw news reports about the house in Utah that included...

A federal judge sentenced Tony Rezko to 10 1/2 years in prison Tuesday, describing his actions under Rod Blagojevich’s tenure as “selfish and corrupt.” Rezko has already served about 44 months. His daughter burst into tears at hearing the sentence. U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve said she found it offensive that Rezko put at risk the Teachers’ Retirement System by scheming for kickbacks with a board member in 2004. “You put their retirements at risk for your own greed and your own thirst for power,” St. Eve said. A pale, thin Rezko gave a brief statement before he learned...

Are there any other reasons for the short sale of a house besides being underwater, a foreclosure, or some other negative financial situation?

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Home prices dropped in nearly three quarters of U.S. cities over the summer, dragged down by a decline in buyer interest and a high number of foreclosures. The National Association of Realtors said Wednesday that the median price for previously occupied homes fell in the July-September quarter in 111 out of 150 metropolitan areas tracked by the group. Prices are compared with the same quarter from the previous year. Fourteen cities had double-digit declines.

Winding down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was never going to be easy, given the mortgage giants' market dominance and the housing lobby of Realtors, home builders, banks and others arrayed against reform. But if even a Republican House of Representatives can't take a baby step toward a private market after some $142 billion in taxpayers losses, who will? It's a question that House Speaker John Boehner might consider as he reads a letter that Florida Republican Bill Posey and New York Democrat Gary Ackerman are circulating to fellow Members for signatures. The letter supports an amendment to an appropriations...

A monument to honor the Fair Housing movement and the historic struggles against discrimination in housing has taken a step forward in possibly getting its place in the nation’s capital

On Friday, the law firm of Steven J. Baum threw a Halloween party. The firm, which is located near Buffalo, is what is commonly referred to as a “foreclosure mill” firm, meaning it represents banks and mortgage servicers as they attempt to foreclose on homeowners and evict them from their homes. Steven J. Baum is, in fact, the largest such firm in New York; it represents virtually all the giant mortgage lenders, including Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo. The party is the firm’s big annual bash. Employees wear Halloween costumes to the office, where they party...

U.S. homeowners who owe more than their properties are worth got new help on Monday when a U.S. regulator expanded a government program in a step that could help up to one million borrowers. The Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, eased the terms of a refinancing program which helps so-called underwater borrowers who have been on time with payments but are unable to refinance. *snip* FHFA said it was scrapping a cap that prohibited borrowers whose mortgages exceeded 125 percent of their property's value from participating in the Home Affordable Refinance...

Banks Not Wanting to Lend is a myth. It’s a trendy thing to blame the banks for not wanting to lend, but it’s not reality. Don’t get me wrong…most everything else might be able to be blamed on them, but not this. This is what makes the problem in mortgage and housing so fundamentally grave. It’s just not as easy as lowering rates, doing a mass refi event, or pulling Foreclosures off the market. After nearly 5 years, if there was an easy fix (such as printing trillions of dollars in order to try to create inflation) housing would be...

Most people have no idea that Wall Street has become a gigantic financial casino.  The big Wall Street banks are making tens of billions of dollars a year in the derivatives market, and nobody in the financial community wants the party to end.  The word "derivatives" sounds complicated and technical, but understanding them is really not that hard.  A derivative is essentially a fancy way of saying that a bet has been made.  Originally, these bets were designed to hedge risk, but today the derivatives market has mushroomed into a mountain of speculation unlike anything the world has ever...

Congressman: Obama should unilaterally ‘refinance every home mortgage’ [VIDEO] By Nicholas Ballasy - The Daily Caller 11:43 PM 10/21/2011 Virginia Democratic Rep. Jim Moran told The Daily Caller on Thursday evening that President Obama should “refinance every home mortgage” without congressional approval in order to “reset the economy.” “Absolutely, I think [Obama] should do that but there are not a lot of places where he can act unilaterally,” Moran told TheDC during Conservation International’s Oct. 20 dinner in Washington, D.C. “If he chooses to act unilaterally,” Moran said, “the likelihood is that there will be language in the appropriations bills...

There are three distinct factors that are driving these markets right now: earnings, Europe and China. Let’s break it down, shall we? Earnings. I’ve talked a lot about the lowering of expectations for corporate earnings and how they might have gotten too low over the course of the last couple of months. I also said that we could see some upside surprises. Financials, which everyone expected to be absolutely horrible, aren’t looking quite as bad as we thought. In addition to Citi, Bank of America, of which I’m a fan, came out ahead. Goldman Sachs missed—and not as closely as...

By staff reporter Yu Zhixiang 10.14.2011 18:39 Ordos Property Developer Commits Suicide Wang Fujin of Zhongfu Real Estate Development Co. took his life and another co-owner of the property development firm Hao Xiaojian is now on the run (Beijing) – The owner of a property firm in the affluent Inner Mongolian city Ordos reportedly committed suicide after defaulting on private loans from individual lenders. In late September, Wang Fujin of Zhongfu Real Estate Development Co. took his life and another co-owner of the property development firm Hao Xiaojun is now on the run, China Business News reported on October 13,...

By staff reporters Zhang Bing, Zheng Fei and Zhao Jingting 10.11.2011 14:36 Cash Crash for Wenzhou's Private Loan Network Everyone can win and everyone can lose in a Chinese city that plays a risky game of high-interest rate, private lending Dubbed the nation's capital of private financing, the city of Wenzhou offers a textbook example of how non-bank lending has fueled private sector prosperity – and risk-taking – in China. A recent central bank survey said about 60 percent of all local businesses and the vast majority of households are interconnected through the city's private lending system. a It's a...

Paul Pelosi, husband of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, will reportedly make millions of dollars from a previously undisclosed real estate venture in Mrs. Pelosi's home state of California. Mr. Pelosi is a real estate developer and an investment banker and entered into this project with the father of the current Ambassador to Hungary, as reported by The Washington Times earlier this week. Mrs. Pelosi helped the ambassador secure her the post. Angelo Tsakopoulos, a longtime associate of Mr. Pelosi put together the deal that involves Russell Ranch, a residential real estate project. Mr. Pelosi's investment has been reported...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The percentage of Americans who owned their homes has seen its biggest decline since the Great Depression, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The rate of home ownership fell to 65.1% in April 2010, 1.1 percentage points lower than it was in 2000. The decline was the biggest drop since the 1930s, when home ownership plunged 4.2%. The most recent decade-over-decade drop, however, only tells half the story. Home ownership during the 2000s "was really high in the middle of the decade, up to almost 70% at one point around 2004," said Ellen Wilson, a survey...

Over 65 M completed new homes sit unused in China,  along with public buildings/accompanying infrastructure... If the Chinese property bubble pops... what then? The massive public projects under way in communist China today include sprawling housing developments, retail shopping districts, and 'forests' of skyscrapers. Since they were built to support the country's ongoing economic boom and real-estate rush, all these tower block condos, economic centers, and recently-built neighborhoods should be bustling with hard-working Chinese newcomers from the countryside... or so you'd think.But satellite pictures taken earlier this year revealed that China's odd unused-housing stock glut has only gotten worse, if anything: they indeed...

Yesterday, Deutsche Bank Economist Jim Ma and his team came up with a report, turning somewhat more bearish on China after the Hong Kong/Chinese markets got really killed. They are now expecting GDP growth to slow to or below 7%, and are worried about the exports picture (and among other things). On the real estate market, Jun Ma and associates told an interesting story on the latest development. In recent weeks, the number of phone calls received by an author of this report from China-based property agents has increased several fold, indicating a significant rise in the urgency for developers...

The Truth About China: An Economy On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown Patrick Chovanec, An American Perspective From China | Oct. 3, 2011, 7:29 AM I just returned from a trip to New York, where earlier last week I gave a talk at the Council on Foreign Relations. The topic was the question on everyone’s mind these days: the outlook for China’s economy. Over the past several weeks, a number of news reports and market figures have caught my attention, which appear to indicate that China’s economy may be approaching a crisis. I use the word “crisis” in the...

Home prices are unlikely to recover before 2020 and mortgage defaults will persist for years, says a survey of bank risk managers out Friday. The survey conducted by the Professional Risk Managers’ International Association for FICO, found that 49 percent of respondents do not expect housing prices to rise back to 2007 levels for another nine years. Only 21 percent of respondents said they would. The findings, which authors called “a decidedly pessimistic outlook”, are a sharp reversal from cautious optimism the survey respondents expressed late last year and in early 2011. In addition, 73 percent of surveyed bankers say...

Who’s the largest owner of REO (bank-owned) inventory in the country? The taxpayers! That’s right. You and me. Mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, along with the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), are currently holding approximately 250,000 foreclosed homes. That’s roughly half of all unsold, repossessed properties. Plus, these government-backed agencies may soon be forced to repossess 830,000 more homes currently in some stage of foreclosure. What’s a government to do with so many distressed properties? Unloading them into the market would only further depress values, while damaging the fragile U.S. economy that depends on real estate stability. Holding the...

Existing Home Sales SMASH Expectations With 7.7% Spike Joe Weisenthal Sep. 21, 2011, 10:01 AM Strong numbers. Still historically anemic, but a 7.7% uptick in home sales is well above the 1.7% gain that was expected. On an annualized basis, there were 5.03 million sales vs. 4.75 million expected. The full announcement from the NAR is here. Original post: Besides the FOMC party at 2:15, this is the one big economic datapoint of the day in the US. Analysts expect annualized 4.75 million existing home sales vs. 4.67 million last month. We'll have the number here live at 8:30. (Whoops,...

A list of empty homes in a sought-after London borough is to be made public after a 'squatting supremo' won the right to have the information released in a landmark victory. Camden Council has been told it must disclose the list of vacant properties in its area by a judge who said squatters were good for society and should not be regarded as criminals. The ruling was made despite backing from the police, who agreed with the local authority's fears that disclosing the list could attract criminal damage, arson, drug-related crime and the organised 'stripping' of vacant properties.

On the campaign trail, 2012 presidential hopeful Rick Perry plays up his humble roots as a dryland cotton farmer from rural Texas. He rarely, if ever, mentions that he has become a pretty savvy real estate investor during his more than 25 years in office. The Fort Worth Star Telegram reports that Perry's income has soared as he has climbed the political ladder in Austin, thanks largely to a handful of lucrative real estate deals that have made him a millionaire. When Perry was first elected to office in 1985, as a state representative from Haskell, he and his wife...

With our economy continuing to falter, the discussion of leveraging our nation’s vast energy resources to create jobs is taking on renewed importance. Despite a well-established link between energy production and job creation – just observe the unemployment rates of North Dakota (3.3%) and Oklahoma (5.5%) and you’ll see it – some have sought to downplay the economic opportunities provided by the development of our abundant offshore and onshore resources, while others strangely claim that the opportunities for offshore production have actually increased. For example, Duke University’s Bill Chameides recently wrote that “drilling activity in the [Gulf of Mexico’s] deepwaters...

American Banker’s Kate Berry has a fantastic piece of reporting today, under the headline “Robo-Signing Redux: Servicers Still Fabricating Foreclosure Documents”. Among her discoveries is this document, dated August 3, 2011, wherein Tonya Hopkins signed over a mortgage in her capacity as Assistant Secretary of Sand Canyon Corporation. The problem with this? Sand Canyon hasn’t been in the mortgage business since 2009, and Tonya Hopkins doesn’t work for Sand Canyon: she works for American Home Mortgage Servicing Inc.

The region's housing market slowed in June, showing signs that Washington's booming home prices are now exposed to the same economic strains the rest of the country has weathered.In addition, new data shows that the slowdown began earlier this summer than originally thought, according to a new S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices report.Home prices in June fell 1.2 percent from a year earlier, the report said. Prices for May were also adjusted to show a 1.7 percent decrease in area home values after more sales were reported. May home sales originally showed a 1.3 percent uptick. Summer slowdown in housing market...

Recent falls in the stock market and growing concerns over the cloud hanging over the U.S. economy has prompted more home buyers to cancel real estate deals or continue to sit on the sidelines, analysts say. The National Association of REALTORS® said in a recent report that home buyer cancellations in the last two months increased about 10 percent from a year earlier. Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist, says the increase is due to low appraisals that do not match the mortgage amount, “overly stringent” lending standards, as well as waning buyer confidence. “The typical home buyer gets rattled when...

“How can the government help me?” This seems to be a growing sentiment among the American middle class. “The land of opportunity” is quickly becoming the “nation of the needy.” Here’s a question I received from a reader just last week: “I am not happy with how things are going since the Bush Administration allowed tax cuts for businesses and the wealthy. These cuts were supposed to end for those who just keep earning more off the middle class. My question is: I am told that investors can invest as little as $1000.00 in real estate, and make a living...

Today 08/13/2011 I started the process of documenting accusations against Barack H and Michelle L Obama for real estate and tax fraud committed in 02/2006 which are still ongoing as of 2011 on the “buffer zone” parcel of land that was deeded by Rezko to the Trust, Trust # 10209 of The Northern Trust Co. that owns 5046 S Greenwood Ave., Chicago, IL 60615. Firstly I filed a Tax Fraud Report with the IL Revenue Office in IL.. ..Step two will be done on Monday 08/15/2011 when I request all records from the Cook County Treasurer’s Office concerning 5046 S...

It’s an idea so beautiful in its simplicity and so perfectly targeted to cure one of our biggest national headaches that many readers will be slapping their foreheads in one of those, “I could have had a V-8″ moments. The housing market is still in the tank and the government has been forced to foreclose on countless properties which now sit vacant, generating no tax revenue. The nation’s coffers are running dry and we have to tackle our debt problem. But nobody wants to raise taxes. What to do?Why, you kill two birds with one stone, of course! We’ll let...

If you don’t mind an old saloon and two empty jails then this historic ghost town in South Dakota is for you. For sale: The majority of the land within the Township of Scenic, South Dakota, totaling about 46 acres. Over the years, since 1906, it has been a thriving town mostly of visitors for the convenience of fuel, groceries, hunting, fossil hunting and the world famous Longhorn Saloon. And the price? $799,000. Population: 9. The nearest town might be 50-miles away, but reporters, television crews, and millionaires are making plans to visit this small town located on the edge...

The Federal Reserve Board on Tuesday requested public comment on a proposed rule under Regulation Z that would require creditors to determine a consumer's ability to repay a mortgage before making the loan and would establish minimum mortgage underwriting standards. The revisions to the regulation, which implements the Truth in Lending Act (TILA), are being made pursuant to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The proposal would apply to ALL CONSUMER MORTGAGES(except home equity lines of credit, timeshare plans, reverse mortgages, or temporary loans).

Senior officials with President Obama's administration are looking at the possibility of renting out homes in foreclosure. According to published reports, taking foreclosures off the market and renting them is seen by some as one way to stabilize the housing market. This issue comes up for consideration at a time when monthly rental rates are soaring. They find home prices falling which they attribute to high foreclosure levels. Tupelo Realtor Brenda Estes says there are more than one hundred homes in foreclosure in a six county area of North Mississippi. She says renting them out is not the solution. "I...

Real estate professionals often get bashed when they suggest that “now” is a good time to buy property. While critics can have many subjective opinions based on their unique experiences, math always tells the truth. What do the numbers say about buying property today versus renting? Let’s take a look at a typical property for sale, located right at the center of the nation in Kansas City, Missouri. It’s a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom home in the upscale suburb on NE Howard Street in Lees Summit. It is fully renovated with a new kitchen, new bathrooms, updated plumbing, electrical and...