July 17, 2007

FLASH: US homebuilder sentiment falls to "suicidal"

Come down from the ledge, Bob Toll

Come down from the ledge, Ara Hovnanian

Come down from the ledge, Richard Dugas

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Homebuilder sentiment slid in July to its lowest since January 1991 as fallout from the housing slump and subprime mortgage crisis caused a glut of new homes, the National Association of Home Builders said on Tuesday.

Homebuilders are struggling to unload excess inventories left to them as speculators abandon contracts and buyers find it harder to obtain mortgages. Soaring delinquencies on the riskiest loans have forced lenders to boost requirements for many borrowers, locking out customers who might previously have qualified, analysts said.

41 comments:

Anonymous said...

.
.
single digits soon?

jump off the ledge, Toll Bros.

jump off the ledge, Ara H.

land on Mozillo, he's the bright orange bull's eye below you :-)

Anonymous said...

The homebuilder rating of 24 is below Bush's rating of 29!

Anonymous said...

Don't be too smug these guys laughed all the way to the bank with their stock options and sales

Anonymous said...

dohn u piwick onw!

Anonymous said...

previous post "land on Mozillo, he's the bright orange bull's eye below you :-) "

Now, that's entertainment.


HA

Anonymous said...

That's a coffee-spitting headline dude.

Anonymous said...

"Come down from the ledge, Bob Toll"

Yeah, come down and count your $300 million. Mr. Tool isn't too worried about this bubble bursting, methinks.

Anonymous said...

"The homebuilder rating of 24 is below Bush's rating of 29!"

Next up, Congress' approval rating (people hate the Dems in Congress even more than Bush).

Anonymous said...

"land on Mozillo, he's the bright orange bull's eye below you :-)"

Isn't the bulls eye the super-white Chiclet teeth, surrounded by the orange annulus?

Anonymous said...

Come down from the ledge my @ss!

Jump you phuck'n losers!

I hope they Bob hits the roof of GM pickup, that Ara lands on the hood ornament of Dodge Ram pickup, and that Richard lands in the bed of a Ford F250....

Anonymous said...

If I were one of them I would be feeling pretty good and wouldn't give a rats ass if the company went belly up. I mean, how much money did each one of them make...

Anonymous said...

"The bottom line is that the single-family housing market is still in a correction process following the historic and unsustainable highs of the 2003-2005 period," NAHB Chief Economist David Seiders said in the statement

Hmmm, when did he discover that it was "unsustainable"? He should have known that all along but I don't recall him mentioning it before now.

Anonymous said...

Why would Bob Toll jump off a building? He's got more money in the bank then the total of everyone on this board. It's not right, it's just the way it is.

Anonymous said...

"Soaring delinquencies on the riskiest loans have forced lenders to boost requirements for many borrowers, locking out customers who might previously have qualified, analysts said."

It should read "locking out customers who might have qualified between 2003 and 2006".

Anonymous said...

What does Buffett know that we don't? Are the rumors of him buying into HOV BS?

ALAN DEE said...

I just posted on my blog about this. ITS WORSE THAN PEOPLE THINK. When something isn't selling, what is the normal thing to do? Lower the price right. Anybody wonder why they aren't lowering the prices? They need these high prices to stay afloat. They will sink.

Anonymous said...

Moody's Investors Service affirmed the ratings of homebuilder Toll Brothers, Inc (Toll) and Toll Brothers Finance Corp, but changed the outlook to negative from stable, citing concerns that inventory levels are unlikely to be reduced in 2007.

Anonymous said...

Hold me.

Anonymous said...

The robbery of the century

AsiaTimes: http://tinyurl.com/ysmkh2

By Chan Akya

..... The subprime banana skin has thus claimed a number of victims, including Asian central banks that are forced to hold billions in US dollar securities because of their currency manipulation that pushes up reserves. It almost seems poetic justice that the manipulators are given losses by the very people they think they are helping, namely over-consuming Americans.

I believe that forced liquidation of many portfolios in Asia will create further losses, but American borrowers will emerge in essence unscathed from all this. Holders of mortgage securities do not have any claim on the underlying assets, only on the intermediate companies, which will of course declare bankruptcy, thus leaving empty shells for lenders to pursue. Unlike in previous crises such as that involving the telecom sector in 2002, most of the losses will be absorbed by central banks around the world rather than North American or European commercial and investment banks.

This is one of the greatest robberies of our time, and it will go unreported in essence. Hard-working Asian savers will see their central banks post billions of dollars in losses on the US mortgage crisis in the next few years, but nothing can be done about it given the general lack of accountability across Asia.

A more defensible long-term strategy for these central banks is to cut their reserve holdings by floating their currencies against the US dollar and invest in their own countries instead of in some distant delinquent borrower. What I wrote in the "scalded cats" [4] argument remains valid - Asians simply do not hold their governments and central banks accountable for performance. This allows all kinds of excesses to be permeated on savings in the name of national policy.

With more than $3 trillion in such reserves being invested (wasted) on low-return US and European securities just across Asia, perhaps it is time for citizens to raise the question with their central banks: Just whom are you working for, your citizens or American homeowners?

Anonymous said...

“That’s the shoe to drop that everyone is waiting for."

Anonymous said...

....suicidal?


Anyway we can speed that up?

Anonymous said...

Only thing I can find is this:
http://interestrateroundup.blogspot.com/
Entry for Tues 17 July.

Anonymous said...

Two Bear Funds
Nearly Worthless,
Investors Told
By KATE KELLY and SERENA NG
July 17, 2007 5:30 p.m.

Weeks after the meltdown of two prominent Bear Stearns Cos. hedge funds that bet heavily on the market for risky home loans, the brokerage has told the funds' investors that the portfolios' assets are almost worthless, according to people familiar with the matter.

The assets in Bear's more-levered fund, the High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage Fund, are worth virtually nothing, according to people familiar with the matter. The assets in the larger, less-levered fund are worth roughly 9% of the value since the end of April, these people said. The April valuations were not immediately available, but in March, before their sharp losses, the enhanced leverage fund had $638 million in investor money, while the other fund had $925 million.

Anonymous said...

And they keep building more houses. Don't we have enough houses?

Anonymous said...

Yep, 6:26 nailed it - many of these guys are fantastically wealthy now, and in the end, the rest of us all pay for it. The currency was inflated for the primary benefit of these bozos, and now every time you pay an extra buck for a quart of milk, you can think of the NAR and your local realtor, and of Mr. Ara Hovnanian asking the other builders to raise prices.

BTW, when you're shopping for comparative housing bargains in a couple of years, remember Mr. Hovnanian's invitation to the other builders to collude to raise prices, and make sure NOT to consider Hovnanian properties.

Anonymous said...

Our home sold just two weeks after putting St. Joseph in our yard!

Anonymous said...

TONIGHT WE DINE IN HELL!

Anonymous said...

.......so did Ken Lay!

Anonymous said...

Working hard to get my fill,
Everybody wants a thrill
Payin anything to roll the dice,
Just one more time
Some will win, some will lose
Some were born to sing the blues
Oh, the movie never ends
It goes on and on and on and on

Anonymous said...

Posters on Swan's blog are admitting the truth now.

We are still chicken littles though

Anonymous said...

Da Nile isn't just a river in Egypt. It's a bunch of FB's, realtors, and lenders.

Anonymous said...

``The subprime woes may weigh on the broader U.S. economy,'' said Yuji Saito, head of the foreign-exchange sales department at Societe Generale SA in Tokyo. ``There's a bias for selling the dollar.''

Anonymous said...

there's blood on the dance floor

Anonymous said...

Laughing to the bank?

Not if they invested their ill gotten riches on the Nikkei. Its down over 200pts at 11:00 am local Tokyo time.

Look like it's black Wednesday.

Anonymous said...

but wait a minute. what difference does any of this stuff make? the dow hit 14,000 today. i mean, this whole situation is contained.........ah......isn't it? is it contained? hmmm?

Anonymous said...

Suicidal? Think about what the Bear Stearns investors in the hedge funds just declared worthless are feeling right about now?

Anonymous said...

"Don't be too smug these guys laughed all the way to the bank with their stock options and sales

"

Thanks RIGHT Bob Toll is probably sitting back saying:

THANKS SUCKERS !!!!!!!

HAHAHAHAHHHAHA And thanks pension funds, and stupid people for being BAG HOLDERS!

snicker.

Anonymous said...

"Suicidal? Think about what the Bear Stearns investors in the hedge funds just declared worthless are feeling right about now? "

Yeah, and just think of all the SUCKERS who put their money into those funds, and NOW have LOST !!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHH SUCKERS!!!!!

Anonymous said...

lowest since '91 you say...as in it has been worse?

You are like the global warming alarmists. Oh no today was the highest temp since 1922. Yes and this means what exactly, that temps go through cycles? WOW we should start panicking.

Same with housing. 1991 was god awful. It got better. 2002-2006 was fanrastic. Then it got pretty awful in 2007. And guess what, it will get better again just like it did before.

Anonymous said...

Why would Toll or anyone else be on the ledge? Any one of you would swap places with him in a second. Or do you not like the idea of being worth $100s of millions?

Anonymous said...

The subprime woes *WILL* weigh n
the broader U.S. economy.

No one call tell to what degree,
but this is an absolute certainty.

~~~

Anonymous said...
``The subprime woes may weigh on the broader U.S. economy,'' said Yuji Saito, head of the foreign-exchange sales department at Societe Generale SA in Tokyo. ``There's a bias for selling the dollar.''