February 27, 2007

At least 2.1 million vacant homes for sale in America, millions more on the way, and people are still calling "bottom"


Highest number of vacancies every recorded (goes back 40 years). More unwanted unneeded homes being added to inventory everyday by builders and desperate homedebtors. Demand cratering just as supply overwhelms.

Yup, looks like a bottom to me.

Not.

I don't get people who keep calling bottoms. Sure, you have The Corrupt David Lereah - he's paid to lie. But then you get the
Lowes CEO this week saying that even though retail sales at his chain are plummeting, "We are encouraged by indications that our sales trends have bottomed."

Man, talk about missing the memo.

Even Bob Toll isn't calling bottom anymore, realizing he not only looked the fool last time he did that, but that there's this little thing called the SEC, and this little policy called Sarbanes Oxley, and you can't go out and just tell bald-face lies when you're the company's largest shareholder and CEO. No matter how much you want to pop your stock so you can keep unloading.

And finally, with those 2.1 million vacant homes, with millions more on the way, with nobody interested in buying them, my only questions are....

How fricking ugly will this get? And what year will we truly bottom?

Vacant Homes For Sale Cloud Economic Hopes

Amid brightening hopes that the U.S. housing market is stabilizing, some economists are zeroing in on a piece of data that could augur badly for the consensus view: the homeowner vacancy rate.

That figure, an often-overlooked measure of how many homes for sale in the country are empty, has climbed to its highest level since the Census Bureau began tracking it four decades ago. Last week, the bureau said that in the final three months of 2006 there were about 2.1 million vacant homes for sale.

That brought the national homeowner vacancy rate to 2.7%, up from 2.0% a year ago.

15 comments:

tmaioli said...

CBRE Realty Finance, Inc.
(Public, NYSE:CBF)

-2.23 (-13.99%)

tmaioli said...

http://tinyurl.com/3c2eqf

37.96-0.76/ -1.96% 11:45am ET

Countrywide Financial (NYSE: CFC) : CFC, a residential mortgage company, closed at $40.14. Dow Jones reported on 2/22 CFC officer Garcia Carlos Manuel sold 12,500 shares on 2/22, President Sambol David sold 14,000 shares on 2/22, Chairman of the Board Mozilo Angelo sold 70,000 shares on 2/22 and Mozilo sold 46,000 shares on approximate date of 2/9/07. CFC March option implied volatility of 34 is near its 6-month average of 34 according to Track Data, suggesting non-directional price fluctuations. Paul Foste

Anonymous said...

The captain of the Titanic eventually found the bottom as well!

tmaioli said...

LENDERS and other FINANCIALS now getting creamed. Names like C, BAC, WM, CFC, ACF and others now under pressure. Keep in mind, FINANCIALS are also a great proxy...so this is worrisome. I still remember Greenspan and the Fed saying not to worry about the subprime market.

http://tinyurl.com/2zt74c

Anonymous said...

Gotta love this.

My wife contacted a real estate clerk about a home outside Dallas (we live in Cal.)
This clerk contacted us immediately, answered our questions pronto! When he got down to, 'What is it your looking for'? My wife responded, 'we want to steal something'! We haven't heard from him since! :)

Bill said...

Hmm 2.1 million and climbing huh...and how many homeless families do we have in these UNITED States?

Bill said...

SHANGHAI Train wreck!!!

And not one word of it on any MSM Station....

http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/au
/2007/0227.html

Anonymous said...

If it doesn't bottom out and start to recover soon ... as in 2008 or earlier, it will take 30 years to even record a bottom, because baby boomers are retiring and as they dump their overpriced crap in the frozen tundra and run to geriatric friendly states and florida ... it will depress all the areas that are not retiree friendly.
Cool.
Cow_tipping

Anonymous said...

free society equals fair trade

Anonymous said...

GET TO CASH

Anonymous said...

soon realtors will be flingin their own feces!

Anonymous said...

SHANGHAI Train wreck!!!

And not one word of it on any MSM Station....


Uhm you must live on the moon then. That is all I have seen on TV today.

Anonymous said...

Ah yes, the bush built scheitt sandwich is finally starting to rear its ugly face. but hey, 59 million dumbasses wanted it this way.

As the saying goes, be carefull who you vote for, for you may get to reap your consequences of your vote. ROTFLMFAO

Anonymous said...

Still lookin' for that heart-shaped ass.

Paul E. Math said...

The REIC was calling bottom before this decline had even begun. But people who don't follow the housing market with any consistency know only that a bottom has been called now by some housing expert, can't remember who the guy was but he was with some big national real estate organization or something. And it was reported by the national media so that settles it for them. They don't even know what they don't know.