And anything else on your mind...
Keep it clean, use tinyurl, don't post full articles, and let me know what I missed
May 11, 2007
BUBBLETALK - New thread to talk about the epic historic housing crash firmly underway
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355 comments:
1 – 200 of 355 Newer› Newest»I thought we were to attack Iran by now, what's the deal? I like having the cowboy image that the rest of the world thinks of the US.
ps, the Vtech massacre does not represent the US - we are a peace loving and giving people.
HOW DID IT EVER GET SO F*CKED UP????? WHO'S JOB IS IT "TO PRESERVE, PROTECT, AND DEFEND" THE COUNTRY? TALK ABOUT A FAILURE!
HP trolls are the most pathetic seen on any board. Everyday the evidence continues to build more and more against them. Please be right about something ONE TIME! Your track record is terrible and you embarrass yourself more everyday. Go blog on Greg Swann's board.
Bill Gross said housing overvalued by 20% on CNBC this morning. The interviewer can't believe it. Bubblevision is loaded with stone cold drunks.
I believe prices in the bubble markets are about 50% too high (450K houses are worth maybe 300K) when it comes to intermediate term corrections (next 5 years).
Over the next 20 years, it may be shown that these places are actually priced 200% too high (450K houses would be worth 150K). This would be inline with historical averages.
This is because we don't know: A) the long term impact of globalisation on U.S. housing trends B) where rates will be C) where energy costs will be D) and where the U.S. economy/ the dollar will be.
For those confused, A) refers to the consolidation of US jobs into afew key sectors, afew key cities. If Detroit (making cars) is ever more import than DC (passing regulations) again, the migration of American workers will reverse. High energy costs and the plummeting US dollar could bring this about quicker than we think.
When the dust settles HP trolls will be the only ones with a house and money, hahaha How do you like me now.
Stop all this talk about crashes and crap, this is real news:
Sanjaya Malakar has won an award, for going through another week on the TV show. He's been named Today's Girl by Maxim Online!
Well, you tools keep on saying there is a crash, but prices are still the same and you still can't buy one. stop crying, you missed out and give it up already!
Nice post on the F-word in california
http://rancid-truth.blogspot.com/
Who is voting for Sanjaya?
"Housing Prices Drop, But Not in Arizona
April 12th, 2007 @ 8:11am by Adam Kress/The Business Journal
For the first time in a very long time, it looks like the average cost of a home is going down.
The National Association of Realtors is expecting a drop in the price of existing homes of seven-tenths-of-one-percent in 2007."
It's the first time since the trade group began keeping records in the late 1960s that they are predicting a nationwide drop.
It's highly unlikely that the average price of a home in Arizona will drop, but the pace of sales is slowing."
http://ktar.com/?nid=6&sid=447706
_____________
7/10 of 1% on a 500K house that's only $4965.00
So how does that equate to panic and doom?
Oh the pain of it all Captain Panic.
It appears that Arizona is attempting to prevent Zillow from offering estimates of home values in the state.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/23sacl
Think that this might have something to do with the obvious direction of home values in AZ for the near future?
http://tinyurl.com/2ycvq4
So, gold is a "horrible investment", is it?
Why does this blog draw retarded people out of the woodwork?
HP trolls are the most pathetic seen on any board. Everyday the evidence continues to build more and more against them.
_____
And what evidence would that be?
Haus said...
It appears that Arizona is attempting to prevent Zillow from offering estimates of home values in the state.
_____
Yeah, it's outrageous. Last I checked, I could still get on Zillow in AZ.
Please be right about something ONE TIME!
______
We've been right about a lot of things, such as "gold will be going up, the dollar will be dropping."
Both have happened since we we started saying those things.
So what's your point, ya sad w@nker?
me said...
Who is voting for Sanjaya?
~
I wrote a bot that is flooding American Idol with votes.
So if he wins, it's my fault.
Anonymous said...
Well, you tools keep on saying there is a crash, but prices are still the same and you still can't buy one.
------
If prices are the same, why are local (Phoenix) builders offering $80k to $140k incentives on new homes?
Why is there a record-high inventory of homes in Phoenix?
Why can't my ex-landlord sell his house for what he bought it for?
I just bought a house. Yes, yes, I know it will probably drop in value, but I made sure I got a decent-quality house, you can bet your sweet @$$ I got a big incentive from the builder, and I did not take out an exotic loan (credit scores well over 800).
So you're wrong, and you're wrong.
Besides that, you're WRONG.
Who's really the tool?
"Well, you tools keep on saying there is a crash, but prices are still the same and you still can't buy one."
"The people who own the country ought to govern it" -- John Jay
Illegitimis non Carborundum
You are all morons. You think implode-o-meter is the definitive proof of a collapse?
WRONG!
Who cares that a measly 59 lenders have gone out of business? Most of them are small-time (Other than New Century) two-bit offices in the ghetto. They represent NOTHING.
When the S&L collapse happened, over 1000 institutions folded.
This is just a blip, and besides the Early Great Bailout has already begun.
SUCKERS.
OK bubbleheads you've convinced me, I surrender.
I too think houses are 99.9% overvalued and will soon cost less than large fries at McDonald's.
I too think Hitler was better than Bush.
I too think illegals should be rounded up and shot on the spot.
I too think everything is a conspiracy b the Jws, from the price of gas to the number of raisins in Raisin Bran.
I too think 9/11 was a hoax along with the moon landing.
I too think 2008 will be 30X worse than 1933.
I too think inlfation right now is at 40% a month and going higher.
Thank you bubbleheads for setting me straight.
To the d|p$h|t who said "evidence continues to build more and more against [us] (HPers)", you have a wee little tiny problem...
THIS - http://tinyurl.com/pj2kh - ousing inventory is rocketing upward, and I do mean rocketing.
Looks like the evidence is building more and more against YOU, Greg Swann.
Correction: Tiny URL for Phoenix housing inventory should be this http://tinyurl.com/pj2kh
just delusional. but good point about the lenders. Most of them sans New Century were mom and pop operations. Until Countrywide, Wamu or a real lender goes under it's a non-story.
hey everyone,
I am closing on my home tomorrow. I will have about $120K in net funds. What is the highest FDIC insured bank out there for me to park this in that you all use?
I know fdic is only up to $100K, so I'll split it up 60/60 between the two highest or something like that.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
I know lots of NORMAL homeowners - everyone of them thinks housing prices are way too high and headed south. The economists and even the media now agree. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are trying to bail out borrowers underwater on their mortgages. Donald Trump is only selling units in NY because of demand from people holding other than US dollars. Lenders are going out of business. We see real prices in bubble markets down 15% according to local observation and professional opinion.
But we are all wrong. The FBers are right. And while I am at it, us HPers are apparently all racist, liberal (or right wing - depending on the poster), uneducated losers making 6$ an hour. Ok then. Whatever makes you feel better.
HP'ers are stupid said...
You are all morons. You think implode-o-meter is the definitive proof of a collapse?
==
Sellin' a lot o' houses lately, are ya, tiger?
To the d|p$h|t who said "evidence continues to build more and more against [us] (HPers)", you have a wee little tiny problem...
==
easy now, re-read his post...he is an HPer I think...
Keith...have you seen the new Yen Based Mortgages? The latest from the OC.
www.whypaydouble.com
yikes
Here in the San Francisco Bay Area I cannot tell you exactly how many homes have been delisted and are now up for rental, but I have been following the market for about 1 year and it seems like too many to count. There has been a spring flurry of posts on Craigslist Rentals of homes/addresses that are familiar from MLS. It takes time for housing to go down, this is just another step on a very long journey. Our destination is going to look completely different from where we started :)
Did anyone else see the taxpayer bailout today?(Bloomberg.com)
Freddie Mac to Buy $20 Billion in Subprime Home Loans (Update2)
By James Tyson
April 18 (Bloomberg) -- Freddie Mac, the second-largest source of money for U.S. home loans, plans to buy as much as $20 billion of subprime mortgages to help maintain the amount of financing available to borrowers with poor credit histories.
``To the maximum extent possible we want to approach this from a market driven kind of approach,'' Chief Executive Officer Richard Syron told reporters today at a housing market summit in Washington led by Senator Christopher Dodd.
Subprime mortgage bond sales have slowed this year after late payments on the underlying loans reached a four-year high of 13.3 percent in the fourth quarter, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. The sale of subprime mortgage bonds had grown to $450 billion last year from $95 billion in 2001, the Securities Industry Financial Markets Association says
Florida Gator
Wow, funny post comments...
Great blog, I'll be back.
According to housingtracker.net, inventory in Albuquerque NM has gone up 97% in the past 12 months! However, prices are not coming down.
I'm wanting to sell my house - and these realtors always say it's a buyers market. I've seen the house down the street I like and it's been on the market with the same realtor on and off for a year. When they pull it off does it reset the time it's been on the market? They always tell me homes sell on avg in my city after 2 mo. - but hell, i've seen that home on the market 3 different times - somethings fishy? I think these realestate agents play with these averages to manipulate the public - they the devil "foozballs for the devil" waterboy
Hey Nonny who's closing...go to bankrate.com to find highest rates.
Geese, HP trolls, well, it reads like there's only one, which is patetic (yup, no h 'cause that's how bad it is...) are well, a bunch of spooge swallowers (well spooge swallower singular ((How does one say that in Spanish by the way???)).
And now, back to Masterpiece Theater!
I think this is it:
Ese troll de HP es la swollowa de la spooga.
Muy perfecto!
anon April 18, 2007 5:19 PM
said "7/10 of 1% on a 500K house that's only $4965.00 [sic - and nice math/communication skillz, Einstein]
So how does that equate to panic and doom?
Oh the pain of it all Captain Panic."
So, yeah, (1) The NAR seems like a reliable source for forward price projections based on recent history and (2) I'm sure the bleeding will stop after 0.7%. That 0.7% is sure to clear out that 55k+ build-up of stucco and chicken wire tract box inventory. In the brown, Mexico-like desert. Good luck selling that 500k crapbox for 496.5k, f@ck-o. I see that happening in today's market. Good information you're quoting there. I think you're right. Genius.
Posters like this raise what I consider to be an important issue, Keith. Free speech. For the dumb. The dumb should not be allowed to speak, or even to post on a blog site. Maybe this is "elitist" on my part, but when someone is so obviously a complete mouth-breathing slaptard, should they really be allowed to poison others' minds with their stupidity? I think not, sir. Sir, I say nay. There are too many out there of borderline intelligence, who's easily-manipulable minds are readily twisted in stupid directions by listening to stupid people. This is basically why we have a housing bubble, right? This is obviously related to the question of whether Nancy Grace ahould have her own show on CNN, but that is a topic worthy of its own blog so I'll let it be here. Let's stop letting stupid people express themselves. It's bad for society and frankly, stupidity offends me.
One could raise the question of how to identify and screen out stupidity; however, in this case, I think it is safe to say that all of those of us of ordinary or greater intelligence can readily identify this poster as a mouth-breather. So let's not overstate the difficulty of this differentiation. Let's just do the right thing, and stop letting them talk.
And anon April 18, 2007 5:19 PM, for the love of God, just stop talking. Your stupidity only serves to harm others; others are dumber and poorer of intellect for having suffered reading your mind-spew. Just do the right thing, accept that you're not very smart, and be quiet.
In an auspicious bit of spin doctoring, the media and the NAR have compressed the housing crisis into a subprime lending crisis. That's right, there is not a impending housing price downfall-only the subprime lenders face imminent bankruptcy and destruction.
The response to this conundrum-no more ARM's-fixed loan rates only.
That'll solve this problem, so we can focus on more urgent matters.
Like stocking up on ramens.
ramen ronin
Ding dong the witch is dead!
I wonder if furious feedback from Bubble Bloggers (who else is wonky enough to care?) quickly stopped this disaster?
http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN1826513120070418
Senators see no need for subprime "bailout"
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Democratic and Republican leaders of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee said on Wednesday they see no need for a federal bailout of the subprime mortgage lending industry.
Both spoke after a morning summit on the crisis among subprime mortgage borrowers, who qualified for loans despite shaky credit, and their lenders. The meeting drew lawmakers, regulators, mortgage industry representatives and consumer groups.
"I'm not interested in (a bailout) at this point. I think this problem can be addressed without going down that route," said Sen. Chris Dodd, the Democratic chairman of the committee.
Sen. Richard Shelby, the most senior Republican on the panel, said he would be "unalterably opposed" to a costly federal program to rescue troubled mortgage borrowers and lenders.
Strategic Lending LLC mortgage ordered to Cease and Desist.
http://finance.idaho.gov/pr/2007/
StrategicLendingLLC.pdf
ALT-A Lender profit sinks 66% percent
Sovereign Bancorp Inc., the second-largest U.S. savings and loan, said on Wednesday its first-quarter profit fell 66 percent, hurt by charges for a cost-cutting plan, a balance sheet restructuring, and losses in a home equity portfolio.
Sovereign joins many other lenders, such as M&T Bank Corp. and SunTrust Banks Inc., in writing down some holdings as the housing market cools and investors shy away from securities they consider too risky.
Sovereign said it has $320 million of "subprime" mortgage exposure, or 2 percent of residential home loans outstanding, and $2.6 billion of "Alt-A" exposure, or 18 percent.
The latter is short for "Alternative-A" loans, which often go to borrowers who cannot provide full documentation of income or assets. The thrift operates about 785 banking offices in eight Northeastern U.S. states.
http://www.reuters.com/article/
bankingfinancial-SP/
idUSN1834157420070418
Another ALT-A Lender reports profits fall 67 pct.
First Horizon National Corp., Tennessee's largest bank, said on Wednesday quarterly earnings fell a steeper than expected 67 percent from the year-ago quarter bolstered by one-time gains as the bank was squeezed by the housing slowdown.
The Memphis-based bank, whose top executive recently retired, also said it planned to restructure through a series of moves that would include a halt to underwriting nonprime loans, closing some mortgage offices
But First Horizon, which expects the moves to boost annualized savings by $50 million, will still underwrite and process so called Alt-A loans, which are provided to borrowers with limited income documentation.
http://today.reuters.com/news/
articleinvesting.aspx?type=
bondsNews&storyID=2007-04-
18T214809Z_01_N18408396_
RTRIDST_0_FIRSTHORIZON-
RESULTS-UPDATE-1.XML
Crash?
http://www.locallinks.com/sunnyvale/sunnyvale_real_estate_blog.html
read "We're in a Crazy Real Estate Market Once Again!"
Rent here is less than 1/2 of what mortgage is.
"There is a speculation that the Bank of Japan will go for another interest rate hike in May," said Shigeru Nakane, senior client manager at Resona Bank.
Bank of Japan governor Toshihiko Fukui said on Thursday that the Japanese economy was growing at a moderate pace helped by solid consumer spending and a gradual easing of deflationary pressures.
"Japan's economy is expanding moderately, as exports keep increasing ... while corporate capital investment continues to rise," Fukui said in a speech at a meeting of the central bank's branch managers.
"Consumer spending is resilient as incomes of salaried workers are gradually increasing," he added.
Looking ahead, Fukui said the Japanese economy "will be highly likely to sustain a long-lasting recovery, as a virtuous cycle of production, income and expenditure will continue."
Fukui said core consumer prices were expected to remain flat for the time being due to cooling oil prices.
"But in the longer term, consumer prices are likely to continue rising."
http://nationmultimedia.com/
worldhotnews/read.php?newsid=
30032187
MAJOR Asia INDICES Down
http://finance.yahoo.com/
intlindices?e=asia
The Nikkei share average <.N225> tumbled 1.8 percent and Hong Kong's Hang Seng <.HSI> shed 2 percent as investors cut back on risky positions, partly on rumours that Chinese growth data later could be very strong and lead to more monetary tightening.
http://yahoo.reuters.com/news/
articlehybrid.aspx?storyID=
urn:newsml:reuters.com:
20070419:MTFH06776_2007
-04-19_06-14-39_T26896&type=
comktNews&rpc=44
China Q1 data delay fuels concern over rate rise
The postponement of first-quarter economic figures by China's statistics bureau could be an attempt by the authorities to blunt the market impact of an exceptionally strong batch of data, analysts said on Wednesday.
Analysts said they were expecting strong figures, including a jump in inflation, which could herald another rise in interest rates.
http://yahoo.reuters.com/news/
articlehybrid.aspx?storyID=
urn:newsml:reuters.com:
20070418:MTFH75503_2007-
04-18_06-59-38_PEK358264&type=
comktNews&rpc=44
anybody thinks this family is an speculator flipper credit hungry sucker that needs no bail out from taxpayers? It happened because of being back on 10,000 dollars payments
http://www.fosters.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070414/CITIZEN_01/104140174/0/NEWS05
No wonder Treasury Henry Paulson wants a weaker Dollar, so US can write off more Debts
The Bush administration has been working for months to persuade other governments to follow the U.S. lead and write off all of their shares of Iraq's debts, which Jabr said total $140 billion. Most of those loans date to Iraq's war with Iran from 1980 to 1988, when the United States, Saudi Arabia and other governments saw Iraq as a buffer against Iran.
Iraq also owes $199 billion in compensation for the Persian Gulf War that followed Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, analysts said.
The Bush administration wants to make debt restructuring for Iraq a centerpiece of an "international compact" at a meeting of Iraq's neighbors and international aid organizations to be held May 3 and 4 in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, diplomatic sources said. So far 52 countries, including the Paris Club of creditor nations, have canceled between 80 percent and 100 percent of Iraq's debts, Jabr said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
wp-dyn/content/article/2007/
04/17/AR2007041701950.html?
hpid=moreheadlines
The Dollar extended its slide Wednesday, hitting a 26-year low against the British pound and approaching an all-time low against the Euro, on growing expectations the interest-rate differential between the U.S. and Europe will narrow soon.
http://www.marketwatch.com/
news/story/dollar-hits-26-
year-low-vs/story.aspx?guid=
%7B938DAA61-58D9-4DF6-960A-
7D27C5B727A4%7D&dist=MostReadHome
U.K. inflation unexpectedly accelerated to 3.1 percent in March, the fastest pace in a decade, sending the pound to $2 for the first time since September 1992 on speculation interest rates will keep rising.
The inflation rate is more than a percentage point above the Bank of England's 2 percent target, requiring Governor Mervyn King to write a letter of explanation for the first time since the bank won independence in 1997. King wrote that policy makers ``must ensure'' price expectations are ``anchored.''
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/
news?pid=email_en&refer=
worldwide&sid=arlndANfXN_o
Credit derivatives may create risks to the financial markets if events prompt investors to exit at the same time, said European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet.
Investors "may react in a way that can suddenly lead to dangerous herding behavior," said Trichet, who was speaking in Boston at the annual meeting of the International Swaps and Derivatives Association, which represents 750 banks and securities firms. "Such situations are also a matter of concern from a systemic liquidity viewpoint."
Credit derivatives are the fastest growing financial market, surpassing bonds and loans as a cheaper way to speculate on credit quality.
Potential herd-like behavior could reduce market liquidity and affect the ability of a "significant" market participant to finance its business, Trichet said. Such problems are low-probability events, he added. The consensus view is that derivatives help efficient risk management.
If liquidity were to fall, "potential loss to the financial system" would be "great," Trichet told delegates at ISDA's conference. "The fear is that a large proportion of market participants may have become excessively complacent."
Trichet's comments echo warnings last year from the Bank for International Settlements, which has monitored markets for central banks since the 1930s, that credit derivatives are too new to have been tested in a crisis.
Derivatives are financial instruments derived from stocks, bonds, loans, currencies and commodities, or linked to specific events like changes in the weather or interest rates.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/
Satellite?cid=1176152830587&
pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%
2FShowFull
workin fo da man,
Gezz, YA THINK!!!!
**************
I think these realestate agents play with these averages to manipulate the public -
NAR: liars
REALTORS: liars
MSM: liars
Bush: liar
Congress: liars
Bernake: liar
Greenspan: liar
Wall St: liars
Everyone is a liar except anonymous posters on a blog, they are all telling the truth.
Sure thing guys.
WHOOP HERE IT IS!!! WHOOP HERE IT IS!!!!
From Barry Ritholtz' The Big Picture Blog:
"Big Drop In Long Island Luxury Real Estate Prices"
http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/
China Economy Surges 11 Percent
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070419/china_economy.html?.v=12
Great JOB Wallmart,GM,Motorola,GE...
Great Chinese companies :-)
PIT
"Crash?
http://www.locallinks.com/sunnyvale/sunnyvale_real_estate_blog.html
read "We're in a Crazy Real Estate Market Once Again!"
Rent here is less than 1/2 of what mortgage is. "
...suckers rally in very few zip codes in santa clara county. I just sold my place at a discount near willow glen and it is a DEAD MARKET here. In fact, the guy that bought my place is selling his condo in one of the crappy condo complexes in Sunnyvale where there are about 7 for sale signs in his complex and nothing moves. My theory is that there are buyers that are doing a "flight to quality" move. Meaning they are afraid of their place going down and think that there are areas in the valley that never go down...So, they try to buy a place there. I have a feeling that this partially drives the high demand seen in a very limited number of areas for March/Feb sales.
Keith censors every comment I make. I only speak the truth. Communist.
Minneapolis - crime and decay
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2007/04/17/northforeclosure/
PIT
Freddie Mac promises $20 billion in subprime help
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/
id/18177504/
WASHINGTON - Mortgage finance company Freddie Mac promised $20 billion in new financing to help subprime borrowers stay in their homes, the company's chief executive said Wednesday.
The funding is aimed at helping "people who may be in the wrong kind of product but who have credit standards that we can put in a more traditional, longer-term, fixed rate kind of product" said Freddie CEO Richard Syron.
_____________________
Take a good look at this "bailout." Looks like a standard governmental CYA ("Cover Your ***") procedure. First, how far is $20 billion going to go in the ongoing prime/subprime mortgage crisis? Over a $1 trillion worth of ARMS are due to reset from 2006 to 2008. Second, how many borrowers will be able to transfer into a standard, fixed-rate mortgage? The reason these borrowers used exotic loans in the first place was because they couldn't quality for traditional loans! Really, this talk of a "bailout" just makes me laugh....
Sold my home today. Well the closing is tomorrow but both I and the buyer signed all the paperwork this morning. Walk-though was done last night, all is done.
I bought for $289K in 2003. Sold for $461K. Buyer sold his home for $1.8M downsizing as he is now retired. I checked zillow and he paid $875K for his home 10 years ago. He is paying cash for my home. Must be nice.
I guess we're both just a couple of stupid FBs who should have been renting all this time huh?
Each to his own I suppose, but you cannot deny that a lot of people made out quite well in this bubble and you are a little pissed off you didn't get to partake in the fun.
No I am taking my proceeds and renting for a while. I got a 6 months lease with a month to month after. By October I'll see how things are and decide whether or not to buy then or keep renting month to month. Either way, I'm happy as hell I bought when I bought as after all expenses, fees, taxes and all other bullshit involved in buying and selling, I'm walking away with $140K tax free profit for doing nothing but living for 3.5 years and all that on an investment of $20K which was my downpayment.
And please don'tanyone chime in with some idiocy about paying interest. I paid interest yes, and I would have paid even more in rent had I rented the same house.
To the person who just sold his home for a nice profit -- good for you. You put 20% down and probably had good credit, etc.
However, to the remainder of us who want to buy and are being fiscally responsible by saving - we are now priced out of the market because of the reckless loans that were offered recently, in addition to the house flipping that went on. Can you blame us for being bitter?
We have the pleasure of reading that these (greedy) lenders and borrowers may get bailed out.......why? I mean really, why?
We want prices to drop. Another poster talks about Santa Clara Co, where I live -- prices are actually stagnant here for now. But who can afford a median price of $745k? Can the market bear that? Of course not. Salaries haven't kept up with those astronomical increases, have they?
Upshot: prices need to come down and come down a lot. They will, because credit standards will be tightened - thus less people to qualify for the loans. Sure the folks who bought recently will be screwed, but if they live in their property for at least 7 years, they should be OK.
It would be nice if banks come up with a plan to sell off their 'about to be foreclosed' homes to people like me with A1 credit!
I've been following this blog for quite a while, and I agree that RE should correct and return to fundamentals...so WHY is California not crashing? Will I ever be able to buy here?
Intelligent "coming to a town near you" bubble article from the UK, but with some spikey responses.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ann_pettifor/2006/10/economists_have_a_blind_spot_f.html
To the person who just sold his home for a nice profit -- good for you. You put 20% down and probably had good credit, etc.
However, to the remainder of us who want to buy and are being fiscally responsible by saving - we are now priced out of the market because of the reckless loans that were offered recently, in addition to the house flipping that went on. Can you blame us for being bitter?
I am that person. It wasn't 20% it was $20K out of $289K buying price. I had excellent credit, 750 FICO at the time IIRC.
Yes I can blame you. I am not being a dick and I have no sympathy for you, sorry. I didn't have a crystal ball 4 years ago. I took a chance and bought into the housing market. I made the right choice. You, for whatever reason didn't buy in and now you're pissed off that you missed out. Well sorry man, that's life.
I wish I had bought Google when it IPOed but I didn't since I thought it was priced too high. Boy was I wrong. But I'm not going to wish for the demise of Google or tech stocks because I didn't get on board. Yet for some reason that's how many renters are acting, like little kids.
As for prices in Santa Clara, yeah $700K+ is steep. But nobody is forcing you to live there. Santa Clara is a place with enormous wealth, why would it shock you that homes are expensive, makes perfect sense to me. The market is bearing that and I think it will.
Look, not everyone is entitled to own a home. I don't know when this mentality set in, but in some parts of the country, Santa Clara, San Mateo, parts of Connecticut, houses are insanely expensive and will never be cheap. You can bitch and whine all you want about it and wish for a 50% crash in prices, but I'm afraid you will be very sad when it doesn't materialize.
If nothing else the government bailout will ensure prices stay high for a long long time.
well heck, jim cramer today recommended home depot stock for a buy......i don't get it......the construction industry is in the tank and will be for a long time......isn't that a major part of what home depot is about?
Bomb Bomb Bomb
Bomb Bomb
IRAN!
Somebody please explain to me how two strawberry pickers from central california (with three children) who's combined income of 30 something thousand, qualified for a $720K loan? Hmmmm....
http://www.gold-eagle.com/gold_digest_05/taylor041707.html
interesting comparison between the united states and pre world war 2 germany......also check out the discussion of the possible price of gold picture and its relationship with m3......
i suggest some of you paper guys take a long hard look at this and please tell me if this sort of talk does not make you nervous.....fiat money is worthless. it is not true money. sooner or later, we all will learn this.....
what is the most startling of this discussion is that the price of food rose by 14,000 percent in pre world war 2 germany.....when you leave to go to the store , you have lost money between the time you leave the house and the time you get to the store........amazing.....we have seen this before in other countries......argentina comes to mind.......hmmm...
Home builder D.R. Horton earnings plunge 85 pct
{yadda yadda crash boom}
Unlike other home builders, Horton said it has no plans to weed out potential buyers who may not be able to qualify for a loan in order to bring down the cancellation rate.
"As I've said to all our salespeople, if a buyer is warm and has a pulse, we want to put them on paper," [CEO Tomnitz] said
-----------------
Was this from
a) Calculated Risk's gimpy guest blogging brother
b) A deranged Housing Panic smackaddict
c) an actual Reuters news wire article
"C" is the correct answer. Once again, YCMTSU.
I wonder, do REIC CEOs go slumming online at HousingPanic?
Is that where they get their really good ideas from?
Honica, was that really you, you sly devil? C'mon, don't be shy.
China's Economy Even Hotter than Japan's
The yen/dollar business is causing bigger and bigger problems for all other currencies. The Chinese who are very responsible fiscal citizens of world trade, are raising their interest rates yet again while Japapn refuses to raise theirs even slightly. The USA auto industry is dying for many reasons and the cheap yen has killed German exports to America. Also, Russia tells the IMF to go jump in a lake filled with yens and dollars.
All the available money for playing take-over games comes from the cheap loan yens/expensive debts dollar business. So anyone dreaming of easy street via mugging some company has to include hedge funds which are the guys who figured out this game four years ago and now utterly dominate all financing today.
The system run by the Japanese benefits their auto industry.
The Japanese set up factories here too but not to avoid currency problems but to avoid the door slamming shut on their scam they are running.
This means the present monetary/lopsided trade situation will continue, nay, grow much, much worse. The news that inflation due to the declining dollar which is hooked to the collapsing yen (see my cartoon of Miz Liberty falling into the pit while Miz Japan hugs her tight) is causing world oil prices to climb. They would like us to think this is due to demand from China but this is false.
Gold is in the news today on several levels, one of which is how it is a gage for inflation.
Gold rises when oil rises. This is because the USA lets inflation rage in order to 'bring the dollars home' if things get out of hand. Since oil makes or breaks inflation, people wishing to save themselves from the dying dollar/yen machine buy gold. This causes the price of gold to rise. People wishing to fool outsiders pretend gold isn't a good deal by using statistics that start roughly when gold shot up in price during the Iran/Iraq war which sent interest rates in America soaring to 12% at one point!
This is why businesses that translate the cheap Japanese savings into expensive American loans are flourishing but this is killing the dollar and so the oil pumpin nations are either switching to euros or are successful in demanding more money for their oil.
Unlike 35 years ago when the Japanese and Saudis were naive about monetary matters and world trade, today they have sent their children to school to learn economics and to figure out the game that is going on and their success is clear: they are buying us out in so many ways. And we lost control of our currency.
The Saudis don't buy our Federal debts all that much, they are interested in purchasing important industries that are key to our power.
The Jewish community, driven out of Europe and to America, is important here, too. They have tremendous influence even though they are only 2% of the population. So much influence, one can't even talk about or find information about their control of our information systems, political systems or business community. But thanks to this power, Israel controls a good hunk of our foreign policy.
Note how a Jewish neo-con, Wolfowitz, is running the World Bank.
Japan doesn't care what the Zionists do to the USA so long as they don't interfere with Japanese domination of the USA in regards to Asian politics. But Japan very much wants to clip China's wings and so do the Zionists who are angry that China is working with Iran, for example. This is why China has been singled out as the whipping boy for American financial problems.
Looks like the same range spread we have. Not to mention Europe. How does China have one year deposits of 6.39% and Japan has savings accounts at 1%? And savings in China are a reasonable 2.79% but with Japan, it sits at .5%? Huh? Hahaha. So, the G7 attacks China for their monetary policies and interest rates while letting Japan continue their rip-off scheme? One that has beggared their own people? And Japan wants to tell oil pumping nations, what to do with their money? Gads.
Just as I suspected, the stock market is flush with all that money sloshing around Asia and the oil pumping nations which can no longer flow effortlessly into high-risk/high interest bearing mortgages is now being used to pump up the stock market. So the typical second bubble effect that causes depressions is now at work with a vengence thanks to Japan slipping the noose over their fake 'weak' yen.
Stocks are shooting up today because Americans were told, this is all good news. Actually, stocks are rising because Japan won its battle with China and has gotten the G7 (minus a very angry Germany) to attack the yuan which is rising in value while letting the crafty ninja yen slip away yet again even as it drops like a rock today in world currency markets: no one, not even the Japanese, want to hold the yen!
OK, the cat is out of the bag! I find it hysterical that Japan could, up until this month, pretend they were in this terrible 'depression' with nearly 100% employment, ballooning FOREX reserves, rising exports, rising profit margins on exports, rising purchases of foreign companies in the USA, etc and on top of all this, the rate of growth in their home economy has been for the last year, over 2%?
And so it goes: as far are Americans are concerned, the Chinese are cheating us. Every paper and media carries this propaganda, this fake story. Virtually none mention the yen. Now they do note the carry-trade depends on super-cheap loan pouring out of Japan but they don't call for the interest rates to be more realistic, do they? So the game continues and will continue until the USA goes bankrupt.
Right on the heels of assembling this story today, I discovered the Chinese are going to snub the G-7. They can do this because they have the world's biggest, baddest FOREX reserves. They, not us and not even Japan, can dictate to China. We can't yell about their currency, we can't force them to hop, hop to our tune. We can't defy them.
http://elainemeinelsupkis.
typepad.com/money_matters/
"Santa Clara Co, where I live -- prices are actually stagnant here for now. But who can afford a median price of $745k? Can the market bear that? Of course not. Salaries haven't kept up with those astronomical increases, have they?"
If you can't afford the price of admission, MOVE SOMEWHERE ELSE,YOU RETARD!!!!!!!
Florida Gator
You know you're a f$#ked borrower when:
your house can be rented to Boeing for making planes
your diet consists of: McDonalds, Olive Garden, Starbucks, and Applebees
everything and EVERYONE in your house is from outside the USA
you shop at Walmart in a Cadillac Escalade
you stick granite tiles in the bathroom but use linoleum in the kitchen
your appliances get dusty
you rent out your wife/husband/whatever for the low price of $29.99 per hour (total costs may vary according to locale)
you watch "Flip That House" and say "hey, that's my house!"
Only you speak English in the neighborhood
your sidewalk has granite tiles but the house has vinyl siding
you run through the house and you pass the same thing over and over like in the old cartoons
the IRS comes and asks to verify that you are a Realtor/janitor making $80000 per year
you use everyone's SSNs except yours
the toilet blows up and you file for bankruptcy
your furniture looks like it was stolen from a college dorm
David Lereah is taking refuge in your basement, and an angry mob of people in Prada and Gucci comes running at your house with shovels and bats
bottled water is from your neighbor's garden hose
your credit score is -483
the combined IQ of your family is the same as the dog's
you dye your hair blond and people think you're a Realtor
"Somebody please explain to me how two strawberry pickers from central california (with three children) who's combined income of 30 something thousand, qualified for a $720K loan? Hmmmm...."
i take it you didn't take core course,....modern wetback economics.....in college.
its simple really......you just loan some money to the wetbacks because you feel sorry for them because they are searching for the american dream too and besides they do jobs that americans won't do, doncha know.......and when the loan starts going bad, good old uncle sam will pick up the tab....gotta love it when a plan comes together......
the banks participate in the destruction of the american middle class and on top of that, they do not lose one penny doing it...
"HOW DID IT EVER GET SO F*CKED UP????? WHO'S JOB IS IT "TO PRESERVE, PROTECT, AND DEFEND" THE COUNTRY? TALK ABOUT A FAILURE!"
ah, its our job.....isn't it?
YCMTSU??????????
Yeah, uh-huh, gold is just another bubble, like housing, gonna crash.
This 5-year chart looks a classic bear market. NOT.
http://tinyurl.com/l6dzn
All you poor dumb b@st@rds who missed the boat on precious metals and commodities can flame me now. Have it, fools.
Oh, maybe read this first.
http://tinyurl.com/2yr5va
Some of you retards had better start paying attention and facing reality, or it's gonna crush you.
YCMTSU:
you can't make this schitte up
YCMTSU:
you can't make this schitte up
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
LOL.
Pulte Homes has acquired 150 acres in Summerlin for $123 million and intends to acquire another 150 acres from the Howard Hughes Corp. by the end of the year.
A new 300-acre Summerlin community, Reverence, is expected to include 1,500 attached and detached homes in numerous price ranges and sizes. The development of the site is expected to begin this fall.
The acquisition takes place during a tough time for Las Vegas homebuilders. Sales have dropped dramatically over the past year and builders have cut back on housing starts. Many builders have even dropped options to purchase land.
"It is a good thing because it shows Pulte has a vision beyond the next six months to a year when things are going to be a little painful," said Tim Sullivan, a San Diego-based real estate consultant who monitors the Las Vegas market. "It is great news for the market. We are talking about its selling homes from 2009 to 2012 and 2015. It is an indication of the long-term belief in Las Vegas."
Given the price paid for the land at $820,000 an acre, no one should assume it will be affordable housing, said Dennis Smith, president of HomeBuilders Research. It shows that land prices aren't falling as some had hoped.
Smith called it a safe purchase given the growth in Summerlin and desirability of that master-planned community.
Pulte buying acreage from Hughes Corp.
Pulte Homes is buying 300 acres of land in Summerlin from The Howard Hughes Corp., with plans to develop a Summerlin village called Reverence.
Pulte closed on 150 acres of the property, which is west of Interstate 215 between Lake Mead Boulevard and Cheyenne Avenue, in December. The builder paid $123 million for the first half of the village, according to records at the Clark County Assessor's office. Pulte plans to close on the second half of the village by the end of 2007. The Clark County Assessor values the remaining 150 acres at more than $70 million. The acreage is Summerlin's northernmost point.
Pulte officials plan to build about 1,500 homes in Reverence. The builder said it would use environmentally friendly, green-building practices at Reverence, which is scheduled to break ground in the fall.
CHEVY CHASE, Md.
the economy is going in the tank and the building business is a dead fish in the water, and these people act like nothing is wrong and continue on, like nothing bad is happening....am i missing something here?
What are your thoughts on this spin:
http://localism.com/article/39287/Salt-Lake-Ranked-Fourth-in-2
Dear Keith,
I have a really good idea. Could you please give HP Trolls an IQ test before allowing them to post their contrarian inane drivle. This would screen out the least amusing Igors of the bunch, and leave us with the entertainment value of the ones that make the cut.
Thanks,
IW
"If you can't afford the price of admission, MOVE SOMEWHERE ELSE,YOU RETARD!!!!!!!
Yeah, well I can still probably buy YOU out, with my Santa Clara salary ----- Growing oranges probably doesn't pay that well!
Yeah, well I can still probably buy YOU out, with my Santa Clara salary ----- Growing oranges probably doesn't pay that well!
Here we go...anyone who dares challenge the HP CW is automatically a) a troll
b) a realtor
c) an FB
d) an orange grower(??)
If your argument is as rock solid as you claim, you could defend it without resorting to childish insults.
That is a valud point. If you think Santa Clara is overpriced, move somewhere else. If you stay there, stop bitching about the price of homes. There is nothing more that gets me pissed off than hearing people complain about something they can control yet choose not to.
And as you should know by now, everyone online is rich, thin and beautiful. Your SC salary impresses nobody.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!
Can't write sh*t mortgages anymore + commodities on fire = this tard
ARREST: Placentia loan officer Dwayne Anthony Kelly was arrested after, police say, they caught him burglarizing a vacant building in Irvine.
Courtesy of Irvine Police Depart
MORE PHOTOS
Friday, April 20, 2007
Loan agent arrested in burglary
Placentia man arrested in Irvine is also a suspect in another copper heist, police say.
By KIMBERLY EDDS
The Orange County Register
IRVINE – A Placentia loan officer was arrested Wednesday after police say they caught him in the middle of stealing copper from a vacant Irvine building.
Dwayne Anthony Kelly, 45, is also suspected of stealing more than $20,000 of copper wire from a Muirlands Street building in February, Irvine police Lt. Rick Handfield said. Surveillance cameras captured a man resembling Kelly breaking into the empty building and stealing 2800 feet of copper wire in February.
Officers were called to a burglary in progress in the 2800 block of Kelvin about 3:45 p.m. Wednesday and caught Kelly with burglary tools, Handfield said.
He was arrested on suspicion of burglary and possession of burglary tools.
Kelly is scheduled to be arraigned Friday at the Harbor Justice Center. He is being held at the Orange County jail without bail.
Contact the writer: 714-796-7829 or kedds@ocregister.com
"If you can't afford the price of admission, MOVE SOMEWHERE ELSE,YOU RETARD!!!!!!!"
So anyone not in the top 5% earnings bracket is a 'RETARD'. How did such a crass person as yourself slime your way into the economic stratosphere? You've lost all perspective - prices obviously must revert to the mean, Fat Cats like you notwithstanding. And thanks for proving once again - you can't buy class.
having nothing in the way of being highly educated enough to pass the Vtech classes almost to the point of doctorate, and being a psychopathic autistic mongoloid in the U.S educational system, or the patience to pay and deal with it, I note at Financialsense.com an article today in its university section called "Sydney Housing Disaster" that bored me about 75% of the way thru, but gave a few laughs in relation to one outcome of armed students
Been to Salt Lake City lately? I was there twice in the last three years and was *shocked* by the empty storefronts downtown. Unless there is a secret boom no one told the rest of us about, I’m thinking that SLC was protected from the housing bubble by the flattening of the fizz attached to the Olympics, which kept their local market from inflating in the first place. And the conservative notions and trend toward temperance in the region may have contributed a bit too.
Builder BK in Tucson. More to come.
http://tinyurl.com/2umaft
"If nothing else the government bailout will ensure prices stay high for a long long time. "
Don't know too much about economics, do you... Dumbshit!
Are you prepared to sweat it out while your investment diminishes day by day or sell now and be done with it?
Here are some of the numbers that might help:
There are roughly 75 million housing units in the USA. About 25 million of those homes are owned free and clear. That leaves 50 million homeowners sharing (roughly) $10 trillion in total mortgage debt. The risk of “resets” (that is, monthly payments that will go up after the introductory period of time) will affect 75% of all mortgages. (Some reports have already indicated that 80% of sub-prime mortgage holders have said that they will have difficulty paying the newly adjusted payments)
4.5 million homeowners will have to come up with lump sum, “balloon payments.” 10 million have taken out piggyback loans to avoid a down payment on their original purchase. 12 million have either two or three mortgages outstanding. And, of the homeowners who have taken out “conventional” loans via FHA or VA, nearly 10% are having difficulty making their payments.
Get the picture? The problem is not safely “contained” in the sub-prime market as Bernanke and Paulson confidently suggest. This is a massive economy-battering tsunami that is sweeping through the real estate market on its way to Wall Street. (60% of the mortgages have been “securitized” and sold off to hedge funds and insurance companies)
By the time the dust settles, the stock market and the mortgage industry will be reeling. We are likely to see the first bank failures since the late 1920s and, perhaps, one or two major hedge funds will go under. Collateralized mortgage debt has been integrated into the stock market, insurance industry and banking business. Any downturn in housing will inevitably ripple through the entire system.
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/
publish/article_1981.shtml
Bomb Threat Closes Mission College In Santa Clara
SANTA CLARA Students and faculty were evacuated from Mission College in Santa Clara on Friday after an anonymous letter threatened that a bomb was planted on campus, college officials said.
The letter was discovered at 10:20 a.m. and the campus was completely evacuated by 11:30 a.m., Mission College spokeswoman Ruth Carlson said.
Campus police "made the call to close the campus. They thought the threat was credible enough," Carlson said.
The college was to remain closed through through Friday night, she said. Authorities continued to sweep the building Friday afternoon and the entrance and exit to the campus was barricaded.
About 10,000 students are enrolled at Mission College, but "Fridays are generally very slow," Carlson said.
Mission College is located at 3000 Mission College Blvd. in Santa Clara.
http://cbs5.com/local/
local_story_110144948.html
Accredited Mortgage Loan REIT Trust (NYSE: AHH.PrA) ("REIT"), an indirect subsidiary of Accredited Home Lenders Holding Co., announced that it was notified by the regulatory arm of the New York Stock Exchange ("NYSE Regulation") on April 18, 2007 that the NYSE Regulation staff will monitor the status of REIT's annual report on Form 10-K and related public disclosures for a six-month period beginning April 17, 2007.
The notice was generated as the result of REIT's failure to file its annual report for the year ended December 31, 2006 with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") on a timely basis. Shares of the REIT's 9.75% Series A Perpetual Cumulative Preferred Shares ("Preferred Shares") are traded on the NYSE. The NYSE action is being taken in accordance with Rule 802.01E of NYSE's Listed Company Manual.
If REIT fails to file its annual report within six months from its filing due date of March 16, 2007, REIT intends to submit an official request to the NYSE to allow the Preferred Shares to trade for up to an additional six months, as prescribed by the NYSE Regulation's notice to REIT.
http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/
provider/providerarticle.aspx?
Feed=BW&Date=20070420&ID=6780756
Auction spotlights high-end condos
Analysts are closely watching whether pre-sales of condos in popular projects such as the W Dallas Victory Hotel and Residences, Tribeca and 1505 Elm Street might fall through.
The reason: Many condo investors finance their purchase with so-called "Alt. A" loans (short for Alternative A), which allow people with good credit scores to borrow with little or no documentation of income. The looser rules allow people to buy more than they typically could afford.
Defaults on Alt. A loans could hurt the luxury residential market in much the same way that subprime lending woes have rocked the single-family residential market, Wilson said.
"You've got to wonder about the sales made using the more aggressive financing methods and how many of those are going to stick," Wilson said. "We're watching what the effect will be on the high-rise purchases. That story really hasn't been told yet."
http://dallas.bizjournals.com/
dallas/stories/2007/04/23/
story2.html?b=1177300800%5E1450082
Another big ALT-A lender missed Earning on Friday.
Credit card giant Capital One, whose bank acquisitions have exposed it to mortgage risks, reported sharply lower quarterly earnings.
Capital One's stock posted its biggest one-day decline in about eight months Friday after the company missed analyst estimates.
The McLean-based company reported first-quarter net income of $675.1 million, down 24 percent from year-ago results. Capital One's mortgage banking business posted a $12.6 million loss in the quarter, and the company lowered its full-year earnings forecast to a range of $7 to $7.40 per share.
"Assuming no improvement in the unusually weak conditions now present in the secondary market for nonconforming prime mortgage loans, including Alt-A, we expect that reduced volumes and margins would result in our mortgage banking business delivering no incremental earnings for the balance of 2007," Capital One finance chief Gary Perlin says in a statement.
Capital One completed its $13.6 billion acquisition of North Fork Bancorp in December.
http://washington.bizjournals.com/
washington/stories/2007/04/16/
daily48.html
Many lenders have reported earnings pressure from Alt-A exposure, including American Home Mortgage Investment Corp., Capital One Financial Corp., M&T Bank Corp. and SunTrust Banks Inc.
IndyMac Bancorp Inc., a California mortgage specialist, on Friday said it tightened its lending standards to combat a difficult market environment.
It also said loan production for the first quarter was $25.9 billion, down 2 percent from the fourth quarter but up 27 percent from a year earlier. IndyMac still expects to earn around a 10 percent return on shareholder equity in the first quarter.
The Pasadena, California-based parent of IndyMac Bank, which is also one of the largest U.S. savings and loans, specializes in "Alt-A," or "Alternative-A," loans, which often go to borrowers who cannot provide full documentation of income or assets.
The company said quarterly loan production would have been down $8.6 billion, or 33 percent, had it put the new standards in place from the start. It said future production levels should decline by a smaller amount.
http://today.reuters.com/news/
articleinvesting.aspx?type=
bondsNews&storyID=2007-04-
20T113204Z_01_N20217382_RTRIDST_
0_INDYMAC-LOANPRODUCTION-UPDATE-
1.XML
62 lenders have now gone kaput according to implode-o-meter
http://ml-implode.com/
http://www.theonion.com/content/cartoon/apr-13-2007
ok keith, here's your THIRD front page story from me you can steal from bubbletalk. ( 1 = chuckie schumer's donors, 2 = DR Horton's CEO).
At least this time acknowledge everyone's good ideas, mkay? Of course you can send me a check and I'll shut up.
"Kelly is scheduled to be arraigned Friday at the Harbor Justice Center. He is being held at the Orange County jail without bail."
Held without bail for stealing copper wire?!? I know commodity prices have gone up due to the falling dollar, but this seems a little over-the-top. Or did the loan officer put the judge in a crazy mortgage the judge is now pissed off about???
Check out these stats from an article from Housing Doom
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,660213729,00.html
If there is no bubble in SLC , why is Utah #1 in mortgage fraud?
"If you can't afford the price of admission, MOVE SOMEWHERE ELSE,YOU RETARD!!!!!!!"
And when people tire of waiting for the prices to fall, and begin moving to other areas of the country, bubbles will loose the last hope they have of SLOW reversion to Y2K prices. You will b*tch and moan that your house is worth only 50% of peak values, bubble markets will be renamed bankrupt markets.
http://tinyurl.com/39a24g
A Dana Summers Editorial Cartoon about Homeland In security.
Rates going up in England Keith and ABN says 50% overvalued:
The City believes an interest rate rise next month is a certainty, with some analysts talking about a possible half-point increase to combat rising inflation. This week's announcement that inflation, as measured by the consumer prices index, had risen to 3.1% spooked the money markets, with "swap rates" - which determine the pricing of fixed-rate deals - rising to their highest level this year. That suggests there may be two further rate rises to come from today's level of 5.25%, though some are pencilling in three quarter-point rises during 2007.
That will be worrying news for the millions of people on variable rate and "base rate tracker" mortgages, some of whom may already be struggling following three rate hikes since the beginning of August. On a £200,000 interest-only mortgage, not uncommon given today's prices, monthly costs will rise by £125 if base rates hit 6%.
Doom-mongers say the coming rises will be the trigger that finally bursts the house price bubble, with some, such as ABN Amro, declaring that prices in the UK are overvalued by nearly 50%. However, Halifax and Nationwide said they did not expect base rate to rise above 5.5% and, while predicting a slowdown, were not anticipating a crash.
http://money.guardian.co.uk/news_/story/0,,2061717,00.html
Real Estate and Development
Report sees housing on decline till April '08
National analysts are at it again in predicting what's going to happen the Las Vegas housing market.
The projected 8.9 percent drop for Las Vegas follows a 5 percent decline in the last 12 months, the magazine reported. The expected drop for Las Vegas eclipses an 8.8 percent decline predicted for Miami. No other city is expected to have more than a 6 percent decline.
The reason behind the decline is that regions that saw the greatest appreciation and speculation during the boom are "now taking the hardest hit - and will continue to do so until all the air is out of the bubble," Money reported.
The expected drop mirrors the prediction by the Nevada Association of Realtors, which reported prices will drop 7 percent to 10 percent by early 2008.
Even the National Association of Realtors isn't painting a rosy picture of the housing market. It announced April 11 that it expects home prices to fall for the first time since it started tracking them nearly 40 years ago.
http://www.inbusinesslasvegas.com
/2007/04/20/realestate.html
Harleysville National 1Q income down 47%
Interim President and CEO Deb M. Takes said the bank has dealt with an increased level of nonperforming assets and charge-offs and has dedicated more resources to resolve "troubled credits."
http://eastbay.bizjournals.com/
eastbay/othercities/philadelphia
/stories/2007/04/16/
daily40.html?b=1176696000^1451012
Fitch Eyes Harborview MBS Class
Class B5 of Harborview Mortgage Loan Trust Inc. series 2006-6 has been placed on Rating Watch Negative by Fitch Ratings.
In addition, Fitch affirmed the ratings on five other classes in the transaction. The rating agency attributed the watchlist placement to "increasing credit risk, posing a potential threat to subordinate bonds."
The deal is backed by hybrid and adjustable-rate mortgage loans secured by residential first liens.
http://mortgageservicingnews.com/
plus/#6
Loan agent arrested in burglary
Placentia man arrested in Irvine is also a suspect in another copper heist, police say.
IRVINE – A Placentia loan officer was arrested Wednesday after police say they caught him in the middle of stealing copper from a vacant Irvine building.
Dwayne Anthony Kelly, 45, is also suspected of stealing more than $20,000 of copper wire from a Muirlands Street building in February, Irvine police Lt. Rick Handfield said. Surveillance cameras captured a man resembling Kelly breaking into the empty building and stealing 2800 feet of copper wire in February.
Officers were called to a burglary in progress in the 2800 block of Kelvin about 3:45 p.m. Wednesday and caught Kelly with burglary tools, Handfield said.
He was arrested on suspicion of burglary and possession of burglary tools.
Kelly is scheduled to be arraigned Friday at the Harbor Justice Center. He is being held at the Orange County jail without bail.
http://www.ocregister.com/
ocregister/homepage/abox/
article_1663939.php
KPMG LLP sued former auditing client Fannie Mae, the biggest source of money for US home loans, for "fraudulent deception" that prevented KPMG from uncovering $6.3 billion in overstated earnings.
Fannie Mae from 1998 until 2004 withheld and distorted its accounting, engaging in "breach of contract, fraudulent misrepresentation, fraudulent inducement" and other wrongdoing, New York-based KPMG said in an April 16 filing with the US District Court in Washington. A Fannie Mae spokesman declined to comment.
KPMG, the fourth-largest US accounting firm by revenue, is countering claims made in court by Washington-based Fannie Mae that it was to blame for the overstated earnings. Fannie Mae in a Dec. 12 court filing alleged KPMG failed to serve its role as an independent watchdog and prevent accounting errors that Fannie Mae says led to $1 billion in costs to restate earnings.
KPMG put the blame back on Fannie Mae, saying the company's misrepresentation caused KPMG to suffer "injury to its reputation, legal costs, exposure to legal liability, costs and expenses of responding to investigations" of Fannie Mae, and other losses.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/
news?pid=20601087&sid=avEE_
75Wm_Ys&refer=home
Law Offices of Brian M. Felgoise, P.C. announces that a securities class action has been commenced on behalf of shareholders who acquired Toll Brothers, Inc. securities between December 9, 2004 and November 8, 2005, inclusive (the Class Period).
The case is pending in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, against the company and certain key officers and directors.
The action charges that defendants violated the federal securities laws by issuing a series of materially false and misleading statements to the market throughout the Class Period which statements had the effect of artificially inflating the market price of the Company's securities.
http://biz.yahoo.com/iw/
070420/0241859.html
" Loan agent arrested in burglary
Placentia man arrested in Irvine is also a suspect in another copper heist, police say......"
when times get tough, the bruthas always return to their roots.....
http://biz.yahoo.com/ms/070420/190736.html?.v=1
novastar stockholders hanging in there........stock price went from over 30 a share to 5 a share and these hedge funds and mutual funds, still hold on.....what am missing here? do they know something i don't? federal bailout in the making ......hmmmm
NovaStar also faces an ongoing liquidity crunch in the subprime mortgage industry. Liquidity in the industry has dried up as delinquencies have soared. Investment banks have been actively making margin calls on warehouse lending agreements. Meanwhile, investors in whole loans and collateralized mortgage obligations have been much more selective.
Even if NovaStar chooses to pare back lending with dramatically tighter underwriting standards and wait for the secondary market for subprime loans to calm down, it is quite possible that past underwriting mistakes will join forces with a deteriorating market environment to wipe out the residual value of the previously issued mortgages that are so prominent on NovaStar's balance sheet.
Delinquencies have soared over the past year. By our calculation, contractual loan delinquencies of 30 days or more measured 9.5% in NovaStar's securitizations in February
If the economy and employment picture take turns for the worse or home price declines accelerate, even a gift from the Fed in the form of lower short-term rates could be largely offset by widening bond spreads as previously eager investors steer clear of these often-junky loans.
Although tighter underwriting is important to NovaStar's survival, the strength of the real estate market is critical. If real estate does not recover, the prospects for NovaStar might be blight.
While many of these concerns are already reflected in the stock, bankruptcy and the possibility of worthless equity claims are more than a remote possibility.
We have recently seen a number of large institutional investors moving into the subprime space, and the industry is likely to evolve rather than simply go away. The question is whether there will be a place for NovaStar.
http://biz.yahoo.com/ms/070420/
190736.html?.v=1
There are roughly 75 million housing units in the USA. About 25 million of those homes are owned free and clear.
That leaves 50 million homeowners sharing (roughly) $10 trillion in total mortgage debt. The risk of “resets” (that is, monthly payments that will go up after the introductory period of time) will affect 75% of all mortgages. (Some reports have already indicated that 80% of sub-prime mortgage holders have said that they will have difficulty paying the newly adjusted payments)
4.5 million homeowners will have to come up with lump sum, “balloon payments.” 10 million have taken out piggyback loans to avoid a down payment on their original purchase.
12 million have either two or three mortgages outstanding. And, of the homeowners who have taken out “conventional” loans via FHA or VA, nearly 10% are having difficulty making their payments.
Foreclosure:______178,656
Preforeclosures:__231,776
Bankruptcies:_____436,527
FSBOs:_____________30,947
Tax Liens:________612,921
LIVE AUCTIONS:__________9
Total Listings:_1,490,836
as of 4/21/07
http://www.foreclosure.com/
Anyone Can be a Hedge Fund Manager These Days.
It's the bad apples that will soon make Hedge Funds the next dot.COM after the SUBPRIME. More Regulations are needed in the Hedge Funds Industry.
Hakan Yalincak, a 22 year old former New York University student, was sentenced this Wednesday to three and a half years in prison. He had managed to convince so called sophisticated investors to pour millions into a non-existent hedge fund.
Yalincak is one of the few in the hedge fund industry, where monies are collected from rich investors and invested in avenues all over the world, whose tribe is growing by the day. There are now around $1.4 trillion dollars of hedge funds and around 3,000 hedge fund managers chasing a variety of assets, mostly risky in nature, to gain extraordinary returns for their investors. And this is causing regulators in India and also around the world, some discomfort.
Hakan Yalincak, a 22 year old former New York University student, was sentenced this Wednesday to three and a half years in prison. He had managed to convince so called sophisticated investors to pour millions into a non-existent hedge fund.
Yalincak is one of the few in the hedge fund industry, where monies are collected from rich investors and invested in avenues all over the world, whose tribe is growing by the day.
There are now around $1.4 trillion dollars of hedge funds and around 3,000 hedge fund managers chasing a variety of assets, mostly risky in nature, to gain extraordinary returns for their investors. And this is causing regulators in India and also around the world, some discomfort.
http://www.financialexpress.com/
fe_full_story.php?content_id=
161902
The risk of “resets” (that is, monthly payments that will go up after the introductory period of time) will affect 75% of all mortgages.
That is not ecen close to accurate. Go check your facts and try again.
when times get tough, the bruthas always return to their roots.....
Yeah, this brother's people have a long history of terror, theft and plunder.
read http://www.portaliraq.com/news/Iraq%27s+oil+production+capacity+could+double%2C+report+says__1112535.html?PHPSESSID=95bcf17c8e5aafbde66e479996d70706
IHS, Inc., has announced the upcoming launch of the Iraq Atlas - a detailed analysis of oil reserves, production and development opportunities.
According to IHS, the Iraq Atlas - which will be available May 9 - "is a unique overview of all known prospects and fields in Iraq." The Iraq Atlas estimates oil reserves in Iraq at up to 116 billion barrels, ranking Iraq third internationally. The Iraq Atlas estimates that there could potentially be another 100 billion barrels of oil in the Western Desert of Iraq.
The melt down is entering phase 2. If you were troubled by phase 1, you are going to be really scared by the next round. This is when real estate starts to fall off the edge into the black hole. Usually this starts about 18-24 months after the peak.
We will see prices drop by 10-20% this year, and another 10-20% in 2008. It could be worse in Ca, Az.,and Fla.
It will continue for another 4-5 years, and real estate won't go back to the peak levels for 15-20 years. Just ask the Japanese! Don't wait this one out! Sell now!
This is a bad oil blog (go see www.theoildrum.com for a good one).
I call shenanigans on the oil supposedly in western Iraq.
Geologically it doesn't seem to make much sense---the areas of Saudi Arabia and Jordan which it abuts are oil-free.
Most of the oil in Saudi Arabia Kuwait, and Iran are all in one fairly small stretch.
However, this mythical West Iraqi oil happens to be under Sunni tribal areas (the actual Iraqi oil is under Shia and Kurds).
This may prove to be a "convenient untruth" for promulgating an Iraqi political settlement before we are leaving via helicopters on the rooftops.
Understand America this is the greatest legal con game ever created. The people who came up with this are geniuses. Why? Imagine you want to get homeowners to "lease" their properties and ensure a continuous business every 2 years. First you get people to buy a home with the 1% teaser to rope them in, knowing that within 2 years they will have to look for financing due to their payments going up..now they come back to you..and what do you do to prevent them from foreclosure..you put them into ANOTHER ARM. See you in 2 years sucker...In effect you are "leasing" your home..and by the way who are coming to these homeowners rescue..THE BANKS..the same guys who created these sub companies to lend you money in the first place..who sucked out the profits and then shut down. Now they are "willing" to help you..What are great game that will go on and on for years to come..as these homeowners WILL NEVER be able to afford a fixed rate..
Yeah, this brother's people have a long history of terror, theft and plunder."
hmmm, this guy has given me some ideas.......there is this new kb home crap house addition going in over near me....perhaps it is time to go and harvest the copper.....how much is number 2 copper a pound, these days?...
Hey keef, Are they trying to pop the bubble over there?
Hear Barbara Corcoran on CNBC Special last night?
She's saying to buy in transitional markets where nobody knows if it's going up or down. Don't follow the herd.
I know she's gotta pump it up. She was on Cavuto 14 months ago talking about how the dip in market activity was absolutely temporary and prices would rise again the following month.
Hear's how I interrupt her remarks:
Buy bargains in buyers markets, best property worst neighborhood, good multiples for rental income, areas on the rise. How does this fit with the current scenerio?
Perfectly except for the multiples on rental income - the bargains aren't bargains anywhere except some obsure town that just got some new distribution facility approval, which you hope will someday rebound the local economy and provide long term stability in uneasy times.
There are some larger cities were you can look and find decent multiples, but why not wait for the housing thing to shake out and see where the local economy is afterwards. After all, real estate is local.
http://www.businessjive.com/nss/darkside.html
discussion of naked short selling.
Here is a story of a bank financing a heroin addict's drug habit. Ain't hard to see why housing bubbles break up. Easy credit, no one says no to a loan.
Economic despair
For all the trolls who think Real Estate is hanging in there or ONLY declining 3%.Go to njrereport.com and look at the LOWBALL section.LOL!A huge dose of reality for the delusional!LOL!I love this stuff!Its all over the place just not NJ!
"Here is a story of a bank financing a heroin addict's drug habit. Ain't hard to see why housing bubbles break up. Easy credit, no one says no to a loan."
But, but, but... This can't be! The HP anonymous troll says that everyone is making $250k a year, that they deserve those $700k McMansions and that we are a bunch of losers for renting and acting in a financially prudent manner. How can the troll be so wrong?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugldfTwYugc
jim cramer , explains how he makes mad money......actually he is a liar and a cheat, but what the hey.....who cares.........right????
"A key piece of information was released yesterday that passed completely without notice by the cognoscenti, who would much rather focus on bogus Ministry of Truth “data” and the utterances of the apparatchiks. March tax receipts in California completely bombed, coming up 7.4% short of forecast. Personal income tax collections were unusually poor, and sales tax collection seems to be confirming the ShopperTrak trends. Year over year personal income, sales & use, and corporate taxes were 5,031 to 5,366, down 6.3%. In February it was 4,100 to 4,276, down 3.9%. Corporation taxes paid remain healthy. The swoon in state revenues is not really new news, but now it appears to be accelerating. This now brings California’s November-March tax tally in at $1.9 billion below forecast."
This sort of makes sense.
Calculation flaw may hide market decline
Michael Rappaport, Staff Writer
Article Launched: 04/22/2007 12:00:00 AM PDT
Why is it that the market can feel like it's dropping - with homes for sale for longer stretches and the number of sold homes down significantly - yet published prices either remain the same or continue climbing?
At least one veteran observer says it might be a fatal flaw in the way we measure housing prices.
John Husing, a regional economist based in Redlands, says it's possible home prices - at least in part of the market - might actually be declining.
"We use the median to determine housing prices," Husing said. "There's a feeling that averaging prices would distort things because of the high end of the market."
The median is the middle number in a distribution; half the numbers are above it and half below.
Consider:
If three homes on the market are selling for $500,000, $450,000 and $400,000, the average price is $450,000, and so is the median.
If the same three homes are $1million, $450,000 and $400,000, the median is still $450,000. The average, however, is $616,667. In that case, the median is more reflective of what homes actually cost.
"But what we have now is a market where the bottom half of the market is strong and the top half weaker," Husing said.
Advertisement
Click Here!
"Affordable housing is selling, but the expensive homes aren't."
So let's look again at our three homes that were selling for $500,000, $450,000 and $400,000. The two lower ones sell for the asking price, but the $500,000 home actually sells for only $470,000.
In that instance, the median would remain exactly where it was before, but the average price would have fallen from $450,000 to $440,000.
Said Husing: "So the way we measure housing prices might actually be hiding a decline in the top end of the market."
Fuzzy math
Traditionally, housing prices are computed using medians rather than averages, because high-end homes can distort the average. As the top end of the housing market struggles, it can cause the average to fall while the median remains steady.
MEDIAN VS. AVERAGE
EXAMPLE 1
1 HOME @ $500,000
1 HOME @ $450,000
1 HOME @ $400,000
Median = $450,000
Average = $450,000
EXAMPLE 2
1 HOME worth $500,000
sells for $470,000
1 HOME @ $450,000
1 HOME @ $400,000
Median = $450,000
Average = $440,000
The median in Example 2 hides a decline.
FACTS & FIGURES
California median price in February was $564,700, up 5.7 percent in the last year.
The U.S. median price was $212,800, down 1.3 percent
The last measure of affordability before it was discontinued was 14 percent.
220,000 new units a year are needed to keep up with California's population growth, but 135,000 new units a year has been the average since the 1980s.
The San Bernardino-Riverside area median price in February was $409,020, up 4.4 percent.
26.4 Billion dollar profit seems like a good deal for Lockheed Martin and Boeing.
How much of that $26.4 B will goes towards Taxes to pay down Treasury debt so that the US deficit would not be so big.
The Washington Times newspaper said on April 20 that Japan expressed a desire to buy 100 F-22 fighter jets worth US$30 billion and the matter will be on the agenda at a summit between U.S.
President George W. Bush and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe slated for next week.
http://english.chosun.com/
w21data/html/news/200704/
200704230030.html
The American F-22 Raptor, put into service in 2004, is often regarded as the first of a new generation of fighters, termed the fifth generation. One of the key design differences between the F-22 and preceding designs is an emphasis on stealth.
The F-22 unit cost is about US$ 120m. 30 x 120,000,000 = 3,600,000,000.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
4th_generation_jet_fighter
30,000,000,000 - 3,600,000,000 =
26,400,000,000
Will tomorrow be "subprime Tuesday?" http://infohype.blogspot.com
From Drudge:
+++++++++++++++++
Al-Qaeda ‘planning big British attack’
Dipesh Gadher
AL-QAEDA leaders in Iraq are planning the first “large-scale” terrorist attacks on Britain and other western targets with the help of supporters in Iran, according to a leaked intelligence report.
Spy chiefs warn that one operative had said he was planning an attack on “a par with Hiroshima and Nagasaki” in an attempt to “shake the Roman throne”, a reference to the West.
Another plot could be timed to coincide with Tony Blair stepping down as prime minister, an event described by Al-Qaeda planners as a “change in the head of the company”.
The report, produced earlier this month and seen by The Sunday Times, appears to provide evidence that Al-Qaeda is active in Iran and has ambitions far beyond the improvised attacks it has been waging against British and American soldiers in Iraq.
There is no evidence of a formal relationship between Al-Qaeda, a Sunni group, and the Shi’ite regime of President Mah-moud Ahmadinejad, but experts suggest that Iran’s leaders may be turning a blind eye to the terrorist organisation’s activities.
The intelligence report also makes it clear that senior Al-Qaeda figures in the region have been in recent contact with operatives in Britain.
It follows revelations last year that up to 150 Britons had travelled to Iraq to fight as part of Al-Qaeda’s “foreign legion”. A number are thought to have returned to the UK, after receiving terrorist training, to form sleeper cells.
The report was compiled by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) - based at MI5’s London headquarters - and provides a quarterly review of the international terror threat to Britain. It draws a distinction between Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda’s core leadership, who are thought to be hiding on the Afghan-Pakistan border, and affiliated organisations elsewhere.
The document states: “While networks linked to AQ [Al-Qaeda] Core pose the greatest threat to the UK, the intelligence during this quarter has highlighted the potential threat from other areas, particularly AQI [Al-Qaeda in Iraq].”
The report continues: “Recent reporting has described AQI’s Kurdish network in Iran planning what we believe may be a large-scale attack against a western target.
“A member of this network is reportedly involved in an operation which he believes requires AQ Core authorisation. He claims the operation will be on ‘a par with Hiroshima and Naga-saki’ and will ‘shake the Roman throne’. We assess that this operation is most likely to be a large-scale, mass casualty attack against the West.”
The report says there is “no indication” this attack would specifically target Britain, “although we are aware that AQI . . . networks are active in the UK”.
Analysts believe the reference to Hiroshima and Naga-saki, where more than 200,000 people died in nuclear attacks on Japan at the end of the second world war, is unlikely to be a literal boast.
“It could be just a reference to a huge explosion,” said a counter-terrorist source. “They [Al-Qaeda] have got to do something soon that is radical otherwise they start losing credibility.”
Despite aspiring to a nuclear capability, Al-Qaeda is not thought to have acquired weapons grade material. However, several plots involving “dirty bombs” - conventional explosive devices surrounded by radioactive material - have been foiled.
Last year Al-Qaeda’s leader in Iraq called on nuclear scientists to apply their knowledge of biological and radiological weapons to “the field of jihad”.
Details of a separate plot to attack Britain, “ideally” before Blair steps down this summer, were contained in a letter written by Abdul al-Hadi al-Iraqi, an Iraqi Kurd and senior Al-Qaeda commander.
According to the JTAC document, Hadi “stressed the need to take care to ensure that the attack was successful and on a large scale”. The plan was to be relayed to an Iran-based Al-Qaeda facilitator.
The Home Office declined to comment.
From the Palm Beach Post: reports from Florida. “How about an early peek at March sales of existing homes, which come out this week? You’ll have an insider’s position for a day, the official Realtors report comes out Tuesday. An early report gives us a heads-up on what Wednesday’s headlines are probably going to say.”
“‘The combination of plunging sales and rising inventories is a symptom of a very, very sick housing market,’ said housing economist Thomas Lawler.”
“Single-family homes: Inventory: 15,028 for sale, compared with 12,737 in March 2006. Sold: 716, compared with 956 in March 2006. Backlog: 21 months, compared with 13 months in March 2006. Condos: Inventory: 17,368 for sale, compared with 13,413 in March 2006. Sold: 640, compared with 1,082 in March 2006. Backlog: 27 months, compared with 12 months in March 2006.”
“‘There is a high likelihood that prices will decline fairly significantly during the remainder of this year,’ Lawler said.”
What is a "self-employed title insurer"? This guy is touting himself as a professional in the real estate industry, and he didn't have the sense to read his loan docs and know there was a pre-payment penalty. Unbelievable.
Ho hum DOW up again, NASDAQ uo again, S&P up again
I'm still waiting for someone on this blog to admit they were wrong in their DOW 7000 predictions from February...Keith, Morth...anyone?
Anonymous said...
Ho hum DOW up again, NASDAQ uo again, S&P up again
I'm still waiting for someone on this blog to admit they were wrong in their DOW 7000 predictions from February...Keith, Morth...anyone?
+++++
I know -I- had offered the thought: "Don't be surprised if the stock market keeps rising."
The collapsing dollar is a big part of it.
Most everything -- stocks included -- costs more in US dollars, cuz US dollars are worth less than they were.
I'll say this one again -- if you are betting the farm on the housing market falling a great deal more, YOU COULD LOSE.
On the other hand, if you need to sell a house at 2005 prices, you WILL lose, or have already lost.
It's just a matter of you realizing the situation you're in, and taking the best action to minimize the carnage.
Let the bank foreclose? Try to get a short sale (remember, you will be getting a big 1099 the next year as the IRS will treat any forgiven difference as taxable income)? Keep desperately hoping that some greater fool will come along and pay you what you need for your house even though there are 20,000 NICER houses in your town with lower price tags?
do chickens eat orange peels?????, i remember avacados at 10 for a buck and one year of cold weather in cali making them sell fot 50 cents apeice, then the weather returned ti normal and they were a buck a peice, so be it oil, houses,food, energy, loss of manufacture, taxes, ect, ect till bailout or collapse, with bailout and the commissions, skimjobs, bribes, rakeoffs, double dipping and insiderism kickbacks make $ for the illumaniti
"I'm still waiting for someone on this blog to admit they were wrong in their DOW 7000 predictions from February...Keith, Morth...anyone?"
ok fine, they were wrong....what else do you want?...
Here go the car manufactureres down the pan - if there's any further to go:
US mortgage woes 'hit car firms'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6586189.stm
According to a recent survey from Yahoo Real Estate and Harris Interactive, 22% of homeowners are at least somewhat concerned about the possibility of foreclosure due to their inability to meet monthly mortgage payments.
The market will be ripe to buy when the sellers are no longer locked down in fear and the buyers are no longer waiting on the sidelines. When everyone has forgotten about housing as an investment, good or bad, I will think about buying again. The problem is - I might be ready for retirement by then. Long before that, I think I will just move on to normal markets in the heartland where prices track inflation and always will.
KPMG LLP sued former auditing client Fannie Mae, the biggest source of money for US home loans, for "fraudulent deception" that prevented KPMG from uncovering $6.3 billion in overstated earnings.
Fannie Mae from 1998 until 2004 withheld and distorted its accounting, engaging in "breach of contract, fraudulent misrepresentation, fraudulent inducement" and other wrongdoing, New York-based KPMG said in an April 16 filing with the US District Court in Washington. A Fannie Mae spokesman declined to comment.
_____________________
++++Now this could get VERY interesting. Because of this lawsuit, Fannie Mae won't be able to hide its cooked books forever....
It really seems as though there is just wholesale denial where I live (Northeast corner). Even though the inventory continues to build to levels not seen since the early '90s and rents are more than half off and going down, prices are only down 4% YOY. I thought people would be more anxious to unload their second properties. Can someone explain what the expression "sticky on the way down" means? That is what the media keeps saying but is it an expression or a documented/viable phenomena? Thank you in advance.
http://orangecounty.craigslist.org/rfs/317283355.html
Subprime Silliness
Lending: Meet the newest members of the victim class — folks who bought homes they couldn't afford, mostly with other people's money. A bailout would encourage more of the same.
What do you say to someone who, essentially, got something for nothing and is now on the verge of losing it? Too bad, but maybe you've learned a lesson? That sounds about right to us. Anything but "help is on the way."
The risk of rushing to save shaky borrowers is at least twofold.
One, bailouts can burn up plenty of taxpayers' money.
Two, the promise of bailouts, now and in the future, will signal to lenders and borrowers that they can continue to make reckless financial decisions without paying the consequences. The moral hazard so created can set the nation up for a real estate collapse far worse than the orderly defrothing we see now.
Foreclosure isn't fun or cost-free, of course. It's a blow to the credit of the borrower and to the balance sheet of the lender, which can easily end up selling the property for much less than the amount originally loaned.
There are undoubtedly some cases in which borrowers have put a great deal of their own cash or equity into the home, only to see it all go out the window. However, to judge from everything we see in the mortgage market and the wider economy, that is not the typical story this time around.
This isn't the Great Depression. It isn't even the 1990s. Most people aren't losing homes because they're losing jobs; in this economy, there's plenty of work to go around.
Nor are people losing much equity. They are simply losing a bet they made when they over-borrowed at a ridiculously low teaser rate, with little or no money down, and didn't stop to think what they would do when the loan was adjusted to the market.
Now millions of them may soon walk away from the homes they couldn't afford in the first place, leaving equally irresponsible lenders to soak up most of the losses. This story is more farce than tragedy, and any risks it poses to the wider economy are properly handled by the Federal Reserve through its power to pump liquidity into the banking system.
Congress should stop thinking in terms of victims and perpetrators. Most of all, it should not rush to make the situation worse.
http://www.investors.com/
editorial/editorialcontent.asp?
secid=1501&status=article&id=
262221397198594
"I'm still waiting for someone on this blog to admit they were wrong in their DOW 7000 predictions from February...Keith, Morth...anyone?"
You talking to me anonypuss? I don't recall saying that, but anything is possible. Dow 2000, Dow 20,000. How am I supposed to know what the money maggots will do?
Subprime Bondholders May Lose $75 Billion in U.S. Housing Slump
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/
news?pid=20601087&sid=
aq3flDbwBCbk&refer=home
Mortgage bond investors who financed the U.S. housing boom are starting to pay the price for slumping home values and record delinquencies in subprime loans.
Mortgage bond investors will lose as much as $75 billion on securities made up of millions of mortgages to people with poor credit, says Pacific Investment Management Co., manager of the world's biggest bond fund. Some of the $450 billion in subprime mortgage-backed debt sold last year has lost 37 percent, according to Merrill Lynch & Co.
Mortgage bond investors have replaced banks and thrifts as the primary source of money for U.S. mortgages. More than $6 trillion of mortgage bonds are outstanding, dwarfing the amount of U.S. government debt by about 50 percent.
Mortgage bond investors will be the ones who will take the losses, not the banks.
Mortgage bond investors are losing money because of places like Riverside County, California, where foreclosures almost tripled last quarter to 6,103 from a year earlier, the biggest increase in the U.S., according to Foreclosures.com.
Mortgage bond investors paid for the decade-long real estate expansion that led to a record 69 percent of Americans owning their own houses.
Home buyers were able to get loans from banks, thrifts and mortgage companies who would then typically sell them to underwriters, freeing up cash for more lending. New York-based Lehman; Bear Stearns Cos., the biggest underwriter of mortgage bonds; Morgan Stanley, Wall Street's biggest real estate investor, and other securities firms packaged loans into bonds and then sold them to mortgage bond investors.
About two-thirds of mortgages get turned into bonds, up from 40 percent in 1990, when the market was $1.08 trillion and the country suffered its last real estate slump, according to data from the Federal Reserve and Fannie Mae in Washington.
Mortgage bond investors are as much to blame as lenders.
``We should hold the servicers' and the mortgage bond investors' feet to the fire on this,'' Bair said in testimony to the House Financial Services Committee last week. ``We did not have good market discipline with Bond investors buying all these mortgages.''
``More money was being lent than should have been lent,'' Congressman Frank said in an interview. Mortgage bond investors ``provided liquidity without responsibility,'' he said.
U.S. new home market may take until 2009 to rebound: S&P
Recovery of the U.S. market for new homes could take another year if trouble in the adjustable-rate subprime mortgage market spreads to other types of residential lending, credit-rating agency Standard & Poor's said on Monday.
"We do not expect to see a recovery for most rated home builders until 2008, under the best of circumstances," the rating agency said in a research note. "In fact, a rebound could easily slide into 2009 if a subprime contagion spreads to the Alt-A and prime products."
Rating agency Moody's raised its forecast on Friday for losses on risky subprime loans originated in 2006 to between 6 percent and 8 percent of the loan principal. In March, Moody's had forecast losses of 5.5 percent to 6 percent.
http://www.reuters.com/article/
bondsNews/idUSN2326950620070423
At a time when Detroit's "Big Three" are closing plants and slashing jobs to revive their ailing business, their Japanese counterparts are busy opening plants in Japan for the first time in decades.
U.S. legislators have revived complaints about Japan's success at the expense of American manufacturers. United States Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., who represents thousands of Detroit-based auto workers, has said that the Japanese have an unfair edge from a weak yen, which makes it easier to underprice American rivals.
Toyota, Nissan and Honda realize that the roots of their success lie in the management and production strategies developed and honed at home
"It doesn't make sense to produce everything abroad," said Tsuyoshi Mochimaru, auto analyst with Deutsche Securities in Tokyo. "The idea is that rethinking quality begins in Japan."
Among the recent boosts in production here:
-- Honda Motor Co. is planning its first plant opening in Japan in 30 years. The new car-assembly and engine plants will be running by 2010, creating 2,200 jobs.
-- Toyota Motor Corp. is adding a new line at a plant in southwestern Japan to double production of engines for luxury models. The engine plant, which opened in 2005, marked Toyota's first plant opening in Japan in about 20 years; the new line, starting in 2008, will add 500 jobs.
-- Nissan Motor Co. completed a second engine facility last year to make engines for luxury cars and other models. It's expanding another engine plant in Yokohama, southwest of Tokyo.
http://nwitimes.com/articles/2007/
04/15/business/business/
docee03e928240622e0862572bc0082
c1a1.txt
Toyota beating GM big time and GM blames housing slow down.
Toyota profit seen beating company estimate -paper
Toyota Motor Corp. is likely to book a 20 percent rise in operating profit and beat its own estimate for the past business year on brisk sales in North America, the Nikkei business daily said on Friday.
Japan's biggest auto maker is set to book an operating profit of 2.25 trillion yen ($19 billion) for the year ended in March, more than the company's projection of 2.2 trillion yen.
http://www.reuters.com/article/
tnBasicIndustries-SP/
idUST7016520070420
Toyota Surpasses GM in Global Sales in First Quarter
Toyota's global sales rose 9.2 percent to 2.35 million vehicles in the first quarter, the company said today. GM's sales gained 3 percent to 2.26 million vehicles during the same period.
``It was obvious that Toyota was going to beat GM this year, but this is much earlier than expected,'' said Yasuhiro Matsumoto, an analyst at Shinsei Securities Co. in Tokyo. ``It's probably the first time Toyota beat GM in quarterly sales.''
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/
news?pid=20601101&sid=
a.lsX628EHZk&refer=japan
GM's Lutz Says Mortgage 'Meltdown' Hits Auto Sales
GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz, who was in Louisville, Kentucky to attend an automotive industry conference, said he did not know how GM's sales had performed in April, but said he expected the whole automotive sector would feel the impact of the stress on the housing finance market.
http://investing.reuters.co.uk/
news/articleinvesting.aspx?type=
basicIndustries&storyID=2007-04-
24T050555Z_01_N23310320_RTRIDST_
0_SP_PAGE_023-N23310320-OISBI.XML
"5 lousy excuses for not buying a home"
http://realestate.msn.com/selling/Article2.aspx?cp-documentid=4706111>1=9323&wa=wsignin1.0
10's of millions of people per day see this article adverised on msn. Who paid for this advertisement represented as news?
Re: DC economy.
This is from another thread but I wanted to add some anctedotal evidence to the mix.
A poster said (paraphrasing):
1) DC used to be small potatoes, now it's big city like NY/LA/CHI
2) DC used to be government/ defense, now it's high tech diversified.
I will agree DC has grown quite fast for an above average MSMA (4.5 million approx). DC, however lacks some of the things found in CA (nice weather, hip culture) and NYC (urban culture, epicenter of industries) while carrying the same negatives (costs, traffic)
My problem is with #2:
I live in the MD burbs and 90% of job growth is Government contracting related. Mostly the same in nearby Baltimore and inside the district. Northern Va has high tech companies, but funny enough, housing prices in the NoVa (or MD/DC) area DID NOT RISE significantly until AFTER THE TECH BUST!!!
I was working with 100+ tech workers in an area software consulting company in 2001. The company went thru over 10 rounds of layoffs - leaving us with 0 employees and closed doors.
Of the displaced tech workers, 90% of them went to homeland security software contractors, 5% to other Gov contractors (NIH/ect), 3% to banking/real estate and 2% to blue chip technology companies.
As to the other 20-30 engineers in my circle of family/friends, 95% of folks I know are working for Gov or gov contractors in the defense industry. The other 5% sell technology to the Government.
Doesn't sound diversified, does it?
Conclusion: outside of NoVa, the area's job base is built entirely on war and security (with some health research/higher education), no matter how many private sector engineers are employed. I would further assume that NoVa's high tech companies are mostly soliciting Gov contracts also.
Think DC immune? Then you better hope for war and endless spending. (I'd also question what the ROI is for these gov tech projects; from what I know, less than 10% of them have ever born fruit.)
Existing home sales tumble in March: biggest one-month decline since 1989
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18289082/
Existing home sales tumble in March
Trade group: Biggest monthly slide in nearly two decades
Updated: 2 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - Sales of existing homes plunged in March by the largest amount in nearly two decades, reflecting bad weather and increasing problems in the subprime mortgage market, a real estate trade group reported Tuesday.
The National Association of Realtors reported that sales of existing homes fell by 8.4 percent in March, compared to February. It was the biggest one-month decline since a 12.6 percent drop in January 1989, another period of recession conditions in housing. The drop left sales in March at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.12 million units, the slowest pace since June 2003.
The steep sales decline was accompanied by an eighth straight fall in median home prices, the longest such period of falling prices on record. The median price fell to $217,000, a drop of 0.3 percent from the price a year ago.
Target says sales slow.
Housing data just released was bad.
Consumer confidence lower than expected.
But on Wall St. bad news means rate cut, so the DOW goes up.
I wonder what a Fed rate cut will do to the dollar and the price of gold???
wow! i like this blog... god, your houses there in the states cost too much! a 1000sqm floor area house here in manila would cost about $312,000
FLASH:
"Home sales: Worst drop in 18 years"
http://tinyurl.com/23g5g2
Don't be snowed when The Corrupt David Lereah spins the horrific drop in home sales by comparing March to February, when any idiot knows the real and only comparison is March 2007 vs. March 2006.
YOu called It Right ON!!!
Those crooked bastard US auto manufacturers deserve to go belly up. For decades I was loyal to them, and they screwed me with crappy quality, poor fuel economy, and by crushing the EV1. I hope GM and Chevron-Texaco rot in hell. I will never buy another Ford or Chevy as long as I live.
Check out this page on Melissa Data, you can see nice sales trends by zip code.
This link is for Paradise Valley, AZ in honor of Keith's favorite bubble market.
http://tinyurl.com/2yxulm
QUOTE "I wish I had bought Google when it IPOed but I didn't since I thought it was priced too high. Boy was I wrong. But I'm not going to wish for the demise of Google or tech stocks because I didn't get on board. Yet for some reason that's how many renters are acting, like little kids"
The difference is that the primary function of a house is not an investment vehicle. It is a structure that provides shelter to human beings from the elements. Would you tell everyone that they had to starve because a bunch of assholes had gone around buying up all the food, then marking it up and reselling it to each other, without every eating ANY of it. Homes as an investment is/should really be of secondary concern. What about young people, still in high school, college, who could not have bought back in 2001, even if they had wanted to? Are you saying this noble country should doom all future generations to be unable to buy houses. That is why one of two things must happen, a) House prices have to decline to a level that reflects what real world incomes actually are, or b) real world incomes have to increase. Of course, it will most likely be a bit of both, although, depsite record profits, corporations seem to loathe to share any of that success with their employees.
It is not that morally/ethically these things should happen, it is simply a question of market forces. The only people who can really buy, are baby boomers, and (although they hate to face it) they will not live for ever. Then who will buy? Not the young, unless these things change.
I thought this story was interesting. It shows how the slowdown in US Housing is starting to affect Latin America.
http://tinyurl.com/2vgpmc
Keith - If you like the book Financial Armageddon, he's got a blog too (that's linking to other bubble blogs).
http://www.financialarmageddon.com/
"Anonymous said...
It really seems as though there is just wholesale denial where I live (Northeast corner)......Can someone explain what the expression "sticky on the way down" means?"
Very simple! Say you have a stock, and it’s doing poorly and you want to unload it. You simply get on AmeriTrade or another such web site, hit sell, hit enter, bye-bye under performing stock. A stock is "liquid", that means when you want to sell it, you sell it, and it’s gone.
Housing, on the other hand, is "illiquid." When you want to sell your house, for whatever reason, you need to come up with a buyer. That buyer has to agree with you that your price is fair and reasonable, or there is no sale. There is no such thing as "AmeriHouse" where you hit sell and the house goes bye-byes.
So now you are going to have to sell your house, for whatever reason. Zillow, your realtwhore, or the guy next door tells you it should go for $500,000 because that’s what he paid for his this time last year.
You put your home on the market for $500,000. A problem arises, the housing bubble is deflating, and homes on your block are no longer fetching $500,000. Now they are selling for $475,000. But you are going to hold out for that $500,000 price tag because "DAMNIT that's what the guy got this time last year, and I'm not gonna take a dime less. After all, I deserve to make what he did"
Time passes, and desperation and frustration takes the place of pride and ego, and the 'price you deserve’, so you finally lower your asking price to $475,000. Again a problem arises, homes on your block are now selling for $450,000. Wounded pride and ego kick in again, you dig in your heels, "I'm not going to take less than $475,000" and the cycle repeats itself.
That is where you get the stickiness in housing bubbles. The house can't be quickly sold on the downslide, until the 'price is right,' TO THE BUYER! As long as the 'price is right' only to the seller (in other words it's the price he DESERVES,) the house sits on the market, and the asking price goes down very, very, very slowly until the seller winds up in foreclosure and/or bankruptcy, or if the seller doesn’t have to sell (he owns it outright) he pulls it off the market.
That's "sticky on the way down"
I am an occasional reader of this blog. I find it quite funny, all of the back and forth about the economy/real estate. In particular, I love the bullish anonymous guy. Over time, a very clear pattern has evolved in which the overall body of positive/upbeat economic data he employs to support his bullish outlook has clearly shrunk. It's actually quite funny. It seems like every time I log on (once every couple of weeks or so) he's got less positive data to back up his argument. I swear I've seen something symbolically similar in a movie or read it in a book. Maybe I'm thinking of the old Warner Bros. Cartoons where a character clinging to a sinking ship would hold out to the last second, finally gripping the tip of the mast and the "plunk" all his support suddenly dissapeared. It's kind of sad but actually kind of funny. It is interesting to see people in complete denial. It kind of reminds me of a married couple who has a nice house, nice cars, the lawn is green but they hate each other and divorce is imminent. The bullish anonymous guy would probably drive buy their house and say their marriage was rock solid. This is a common syndrome in our society, to look at the shiny outer surface and ignore completely the undeiable dysfunction within. Hey, bullish anonymous guy, keep it up. It is very entertaining. I actually imagined this scenario, hypotheitcal of course, where the real estate market collapses, which in turn topples the stock market and we fall into a severe recesion. I come back to this blog and there you are talking about how the economy is great because the dollar is rallying against the Somalian Shilling :)
test
Darn -- I just sold my Somalian Shillings! Who would have guessed it was the next hard currency?
The ripples are hard to read, but certainly the housing meltdown will have some impact on other markets. I have been reading for several months about the hard times the illegal immigrants have fallen on because of the slowdown in construction. I don’t know how those folks are going to pay their $700K mortgages now. Oh – was that part of the problem? Darn!
US Dollar last trade at 81.423
http://quotes.ino.com/chart/
?s=NYBOT_DX&v=i
If the index breaks 80.00 where is the Dollar next support level?
Japan corporate price index rises
The corporate services price index rose 0.6% in March to 94.1 from the year before, marking the fourth consecutive month of gains, according to data from the Bank of Japan.
The rise was underpinned by increases in marine transportation and software service costs, initial figures from the BoJ showed.
The corporate services price index follows prices of corporate services ranging from finance and insurance charges, telecommunications charges and the cost of shipping goods by road, rail, air or sea.
Last month's increase followed a 0.4% year-on-year rise in February.
Month-on-month the price index rose 0.7% in March
http://www.sharecast.com/
cgi-bin/sharecast/
story.cgi?story_id=1227775
More fake reasons for BOJ not to raise rate this Friday.
Japan imports cheap consumers goods from Japanese run factories in China, and BOJ wonders why consumers prices continues to fall.
Japan's consumer prices probably fell at a faster pace in March and the prospect of further declines may prevent the central bank from raising interest rates until the second half of the year.
Core consumer prices, which exclude fresh food, declined 0.2 percent from a year earlier, according to the median estimate of 40 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. Prices fell 0.1 percent in February, the first drop in 10 months. The government will release the figures on April 27 at 8:30 a.m. in Tokyo and the Bank of Japan will decide whether to raise rates later that day.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/
news?pid=20601087&sid=a9h6Z.
pwkUY0&refer=home
The Japanese CPI consists of a weighted statistical assessment and calculation of 596 items approximating the average price of goods and services bought by the consumers nationwide (general price level). The CPI marked a peak in 1998 on a calendar year basis and continued to slide thereafter. Even excluding fresh vegetables the fall reached 1.3% in 2001 as compared with 1998. Five electric items alone, namely personal computers (notebook type), personal computers (desktop type), electric refrigerators, TV sets, and home air-conditioning units contributed 28.4% in the fall of the CPI.
The price decline for these five electric items is largely due to the influence of the massive inflow of low-price products from China. Imports of these five electric items from China in 2001 increased between 2.1 and 88.2 fold as compared to 1998. On an itemized base, their shares in total imports are also increasing substantially. The unit import prices of these products from China for the 1998 - 2001 period (on CIF basis) is only 6.5% - 68.8% of the unit selling price of domestic manufacturers. The impact of this differential is enough to push down prices of the items directly or indirectly in the CPI survey. Statistically, the inflow of large volumes of these five electric items from China is closely linked to the CPI for these items.
The large-scale inflow of low-price electric products from China is to a large extent due to reverse-imports from Japanese companies producing in China or from OEM suppliers on the basis of product subcontract orders. Since it will be difficult to narrow the production cost gap between China and Japan over a short term, the situation will continue. Moreover, in the wake of the digital revolution, we will see further progress in modularization of parts that will make it easier to catch up technically. As a result, the scope of production transfer will expand further and may also extend to the automobile sector. For maintaining domestic manufacture in the light of cost differentials, it is essential: (1) to reduce labor costs by improving productivity, (2) to attach importance to the brand awareness, and (3) to aim for greater efficiency in the non-manufacturing sectors through consistent and bold regulatory reform.
http://jp.fujitsu.com/group/fri/
en/economic/publications/
report/2003/report-151.html
Check out my blog, Second City Bubble for Barak Obama and Chicago real estate controversy!
Obama and Rezko
If the index breaks 80.00 where is the Dollar next support level?
***********
If the US Dollar breaks 80.00 stick a fork in it.
Edgar says check this out....
http://tinyurl.com/2hr9lw
These documents pertain to the CDO's. Some of these CDO tranches are going to be sick soon.....
Who cares about U.S. economic strength? We can all just earn our living buying and re-selling Cabbage Patch Dolls.
Love it!
http://tinyurl.com/3a9vnx
Ron Paul for Prez!!
looks like they are pumping the stock market up to cover the disappearing dollar......cute, real cute........
Anyone see this report on the housing situation in Spain. Behind the USA they were #2 in housing boombage.
http://tinyurl.com/2768vm
what was the stock ticker for oil futures?
Interesting post from Barry Ritholtz over at The Big Picture blog...
Go FICO Yourself: Selling Your Credit Score
in Credit | Economy | Real Estate
Here's the latest scam to hit the Real Estate/Mortgages/Credit/FICO market: Buying and Selling FICO scores to qualify sub-prime applicants for tightened standards.
Kenneth Harney explains how this loophole is now being used:
"When your credit scores don't qualify you for the home mortgage you want, where do you turn? That's an especially timely question now, as banks and mortgage companies tighten underwriting standards for applicants with less than perfect credit.
But federal and state authorities fear that some borrowers are turning to a fast-growing business on the Internet: companies that claim to boost credit scores by transplanting the credit DNA of people with excellent payment histories into the credit files of people with subpar histories -- ostensibly without breaking any law.
The companies claim to raise FICO credit scores by 50 to 250 points by adding low-scoring borrowers as "authorized users" on the credit card accounts of people with FICO scores well in excess of 700. The positive payment information from such cardholders then flows into the files of the persons with subpar credit."
This takes advantage of a loophole in the Federal credit law, which does not limit the number "authorized users permitted on any single credit card account."
As this article makes clear, the law does not "prohibit the rental or sale of authorized user designations. Exploiting that loophole, numerous companies have popped up on the Internet offering to buy and rent out the credit card "trade lines" or accounts of credit card holders with high limits combined with perfect payment histories."
The online firm referenced up top markets itself to mortgage brokers, as a way to rehabilitate sub-prime borrowers, making them appear better than sub-prime to lenders.
The potential for fraud is there -- especially with the way loan originators offload mortgages. As long as everyone involved keeps the loan going for a few months (3-6 months) prior to default/foreclosure, the loans can get easily sold and not represented to the originator.
Consider how easy it is if a few players are in on the fraud: If the appraisers over-value their estimates of the home, it allows excess purchase prices to be paid. The RE agent gets their commissions, the mortgage broekrs get paid, the originator who did the loan got their fee. The buyer who magically qualified for much more house than they could afford gets a seller's concession in cash/check. The Washington Post reported this weekend:
"The basic scenario involves real estate agents who have listed houses that aren't selling. To move the properties, they entice buyers or friends to "submit an offer [for the home] that is $30,000 to $100,000 above the current list price" with the promise that they will get substantial cash at closing.
The real estate agents then amend the multiple-listing-service asking price to match the artificially inflated offer price. A house that had been sitting for months with no takers at $450,000, for example, might be relisted by the agent at $525,000.
Then, working with a cooperative appraiser who has promised to hit the number and an unscrupulous mortgage broker who simply wants the commission, they "change the [loan] documentation to reflect the [artificially inflated] sales price." The loans typically are for 100 percent of the price of the house. The seller nets the price he or she had originally listed -- $450,000 in this example -- and the buyer gets some or all of the $75,000 inflated differential as cash at closing."
I have no idea how prevalent this might be, but on the margins, its potentially pretty ugly . . .
Source:
Psst: Want to buy a better credit history?
Kenneth Harney
Washington Post Writers Group, April 20, 2007 – 12:08 PM
http://www.startribune.com/417/story/1131631.html
Appraisal Inflation
Kenneth R. Harney
Washington Post, Saturday, April 21, 2007; Page F01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/20/AR2007042000887.html
Grrrrrrraaaaaah!!!! Just had to get that out! How can the MSM be reporting a 23% DROP in new home sales as a 2.9% rise in new homes sales. Check out the headline on this story.
http://www.smartmoney.com/bn/ON/index.cfm?story=ON-20070425-000848-1013
AND, they are saying it is because of GOOD weather, after the existing home sales drop was blamed on BAD weather, in the SAME time period. Of course March was better than Febuary, Febuary was disaster, but this March is a disaster compared to last MArch, THAT should be the headline, not this "Sales of New Homes Inch Higher in March" bull$hit. What in world is going on in America, we must be totally, utterly and irreversibly INSANE! That is the thing with capitalism, market forces, you can't just always have the upside. Every now and then things have to contract. We need a good, honest, recession, a cold hard dose of reality. I'm telling the stakes are nothing less than the continued financial future of this nation. And what are our leaders doing, weeks and weeks and weeks of time, work, effort, money on a country thousands of miles away. How about our government startes governing our country, instead of trying to govern other countries. I say, George Bush must be the president of Iraq, not the USA. Our leaders seem more concerned with education, healthcare, etc in Iraq than they do in our own nation.
CDO/RBMS downgrades
Looks like the investors hair cut has finally begun.
RonJon 27 said...
Let's face it. Nobody gives a $h** about what happens to you if you are under 30, and most people who are affected negatively by rising house prices are under 30. You are just a spoiled puke who had the world handed to you.
Nobody gives a $h** that you have to pay 20 times what they did for an education and you have $50k in debt before you even start working for real.
Nobody gives a $sh** that you are going to be left holding the bag paying for the current housedebtors' retirement as Social Security and Medicare cause your taxes to go up 25% while they reside in their billion dollar houses.
Nobody gives a $sh** that you can't afford to live anywhere.
Everybody cares if you default on your mortgage, because that will kill their property value.
Younger folks, you are getting shafted royally!... Too bad you are too busy listening to your ipods and drinking Starbucks to do anything about it!
Yup, I wonder why our Gov isn't importing droves of H1-B doctors like we are Tech workers.
If doctors (boomers) are not abundant, prices go up. If Tech (younger) workers are not abundant, import 'em, outsource 'em, and offshore 'em. Hell, even if they are abundant, import 'em, outsource 'em, and offshore 'em.
Then tell the young to go study engineering - their friends and family meanwhile know better and say "Whatdya crazy? Get your MBA! And learn to outsource!"
U.S. legislators have revived complaints about Japan's success at the expense of American manufacturers. United States Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., who represents thousands of Detroit-based auto workers, has said that the Japanese have an unfair edge from a weak yen, which makes it easier to underprice American rivals.
Japan isn't opening up factories because they have an "unfair trade advantage" -- they're opening up new factories because their cars aren't shit.
I test drove the Ford Focus, Chevy Cobalt, Saturn Ion, Dodge Caliber, Honda Civic, Toyota Corolla, Nissan Versa and Mazda 3 before buying a car.
The American products were laughable. Total shit. Hard, cheap plastic inside the car. Buzzes, squeaks and rattles on vehicles with less than 20 miles on them. And overpriced -- every single one of them was about $3K too much for what you got. The Dodge was the best of the lot, but it was still rattly, buzzy, gutless and got low fuel economy numbers for the segment and size of engine. Not competitive AT ALL.
I quickly narrowed down my choice to the Japanese. The Honda was built in the USA, but the Mazda was the most comfortable, best priced, best handling vehicle. I bought the Mazda.
Comparing the Mazda to the Dodge was like comparing a Mercedes to a Russian Lada. The Mazda outpointed it in every area, for the same price, and had a quality feel that the Dodge lacked. The GM offerings were even worse -- better than the Cavalier, but not much.
Why are the Japanese winning? Because their cars are better in every respect -- handling, quality, reliability, durability, build quality, handling, cost of ownership.
There's no reason why Americans cannot build good, competitive cars -- except that the unions and management are at odds and don't care about what their individual no-compromise demands do to the product (and the customer).
After owning two stinker Chryslers (including a well-maintained one with an engine that blew out at 65,000 miles -- a common occurance with Chrysler 2.7s), I can see the effects of this attitude. Now, it's not just in the durability and reliability but in the actual product itself. The American stuff looks like shit -- it's easily worth half what the Japanese want.
Build a car that doesn't suck ass and that's reliable -- and stand behind it when your engineering screwups cause problems, and the world will beat a path to your door.
if the dollar index breaks 80. what does that mean?
These guys were going to increase the population of Benson, AZ by 500%. Then they thought better of the idea.
http://tinyurl.com/2uq9kl
It is true that the younger generations are literally being robbed, left and right, to fund the groaning masses of obese, diabetic baby boomers, who got a free ride in college, smoking pot and dodging the draft. They didn't save a penny, now they want us to fund their piggish ways for decades more. I say, hurry up and free up the space already, so the world can start to fix everything you made so wrong.
The weaker Yen give Japanese auto makers a $4,000 to $10,000 advantage on every car sold.
"When Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visits Washington, DC this week, we hope he is asked the one trillion yen question:
"When will the Japanese Government trim its excessive and systemic currency reserves and trade surpluses to bring the yen into proper alignment with the dollar?
"One trillion (actually 1,043,703,665,299.36) yen equals $8.8 billion - the total subsidy to Japanese automakers for the 2.2 million vehicles Japan exported to the U.S. in 2006 resulting from Japan's weak yen policy. At 118Y to the dollar, Japan's yen subsidy provides the average imported Japanese car a $4,000 windfall cost advantage over U.S. automakers - a windfall that ranges up to $10,000 per vehicle for higher-end Japanese imported SUVs such as those sold by Toyota under the Lexus brand.
"A Peterson Institute for International Economics report released in March by 30 leading economists calls for an increase of 25-30 percent in the value of the yen to 90 yen/dollar to address 'large and unsustainable imbalances in current account practices.' The report sees such imbalances as one of the principal dangers facing the world economy today and urges policymakers to take action 'to reduce the risks of a crisis that could produce a world recession.'
"Not only does the artificially low yen give Japanese automakers an unfair advantage over American automakers, it has also helped fuel our trade deficit with Japan. Nearly two-thirds of that $88 billion deficit last year was exclusively a result of the automotive trade.
"The Automotive Trade Policy Council, whose members include General Motors, Ford and DaimlerChrysler, urges the Bush Administration to join other leading G7 countries in urging Prime Minister Abe to let the Japanese yen grow stronger."
The Automotive Trade Policy Council, Inc. (ATPC) is a Washington, D.C.- based non profit trade association that represents the common international economic, trade and investment interests of its member companies: DaimlerChrysler Corporation, Ford Motor Company and General Motors Corporation.
http://www.pr-inside.com/
the-one-trillion-yen-question
-to-r104797.htm
Honda Motor Co forecast a surprise 3 percent drop in profit this year citing an expected rise in the yen.
As big US rivals scale back production to reflect a loss of customers to Japanese brands, Honda is to add more capacity in North America, including a new factory in Indiana next year.
At an operating level, Tokyo-based Honda forecast a profit of 770 billion yen, down 9.6 percent from 2006/07.
The forecasts are based on an assumed average dollar rate of 115 yen, against a more favourable 117 yen in 2006/07. Honda expects the euro to weaken by 1 yen to 150 yen.
Room for overshoot? For January-March, Honda’s net profit fell 20 percent to 176.18 billion yen due to a one-off 138 billion yen pension related gain a year earlier. The result beat a consensus estimate for 148.7 billion yen.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/
default.asp?page=2007%
5C04%5C26%5Cstory_26-4-2007
_pg5_29
Recent recall announcement
Honda Motor Corp. said Monday that it was recalling about 165,000 vehicles from the 2005-06 model years in the United States to deal with potential engine problems.
Honda said the recall affected 2005 models of the Acura RL, TL and TSX sedans, 2005 Honda Accord coupes, sedans and hybrids, 2005 Odyssey minivans and 2006 Ridgeline trucks.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/
17689720/
More Recalls
http://automallusa.net/01/
honda/recalls.html
Mazda 3 Forum
http://www.mazda3forums.com/
index.php?board=76.0
Good luck with your Ford
Consumer price in Japan is falling because Japanese consumers are buying Japanese products made in China.
Honda, Nissan, Toyota to procure more auto parts from China to cut costs
The China operations of Honda Motor Co, Nissan Motor Co and Toyota Motor Corp plan to procure more automobile components in the mainland to cut costs, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported without citing its sources.
The business daily said Honda hopes to increase the percentage of locally-procured parts at its Chinese joint venture plant to 80 pct from the current 70 pct in a few years' time, while Nissan will boost local auto parts procurement at its Chinese operations from nearly 60 pct at end-2005 to 80 pct in 3-4 years.
Toyota Motor Corp has begun using mainland-manufactured engines for its Camry sedan, which it started producing in Guangzhou in May this year. About 70 pct of the parts for the Camry are believed to be procured locally and the Japanese automaker hopes to raise the percentage at other Chinese plants, including the one in Tianjin, the report said.
http://www.supplychain.cn/
en/art/?997
Honda built in China.
http://world.honda.com/China/
Toyota To Procure More Chinese Auto Parts
Toyota Motor Corp. said it will buy some Chinese parts to make cars in its operations in China as a way to cut costs and will become the first Japanese automaker to use Chinese steel sheet, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun said. The newspaper said that Toyota, which along with Honda Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co. is increasingly using China as a production base, would be able to save around 30 percent of costs by procuring locally.
The newspaper said Toyota would procure discount door parts and materials including steel sheet from China's leading steelmaker, Shanghai Baoshan Iron & Steel. The company will also consider procuring surface-processed steel sheet used for auto bodies, the business daily said.
Beginning in October 2002, Toyota will use steel supplied by Shanghai Boashan for subcompacts based on the Toyota Platz model to be produced with Tianjin Automotive Xiali Co., it said. The two automakers plan to produce 30,000 of the subcompacts a year, using 2,000 to 3,000 metric tons of the interior steel sheet from Shanghai Baoshan, the newspaper said.
At the same time the DOW broke 13,000, the dollar set a new low today. Of course CNBC only celebrated the DOW's close...
This is how they're selling apartments in Ireland.
http://www.belmayne.com/
It's not quite porn, but getting there ...
Anonymous said...
if the dollar index breaks 80. what does that mean?
+++++++++++++++++++
AMEX Precious and Base Metals Conference Luncheon Presentation
Author: Jim Sinclair
We are right at the point of demarcation, which is .8230. We've touched it 3 times, and we will go through it. That will mean we'll go down to .8057, where again a significant battle will take place. If the market was to slide through that level like a hot knife through butter, then I would suggest that things are much weaker than even I believe. I would suggest that if we bounced three times or more, you are probably looking at .72. If it falls through that level, you are looking at .56. That is not horrible, I've bought 10-year Treasuries at 14 7/8, which equals .56, in the early part of 1980. So I am not suggesting to you anything that doesn't have historical precedent. Do this one thing. Take a look at a monthly chart on the DOW. Do it objectively. No matter what your present persuasion on the future of the US dollar. Take a look at where we are right now sitting on a neck-line of a massive head and shoulders the likes of which few have ever seen in your life. Then start taking a look at how this goes on. Currencies top in an up-slanting head and shoulders conflict, then look at all the times that happened on the way down, I mean an absolute fortune was made there on the reverse of how I trade gold. In other words, in this case, you sell strength short. Then your first transaction is short. Well in a bull market, your first transaction is long, and then you fade each move using whatever tools you use. So that is an increment towards making the final product of your trading significantly valuable.
The need of the authoritarians to start a new bull market in the dollar will come some time between 2012 and 2015.
full transcript of speech here
New epsiodes of "Flip that house!" on TV this week. Until this show is no longer producing new content, the bubble has not reach maximum implosion.
Tucson now 'extreme' buyer's market
Number of homes for sale the highest in 12 years
http://tinyurl.com/3aonlr
Bitter renters, rejoice!!!
U.S. housing slump hits home
As construction jobs drop off, immigrant workers' families to the south are feeling the pinch.
By Marla Dickerson, Times Staff Writer
April 26, 2007
MEXICO CITY — When California's housing market was booming, Lucretia Diaz could feel the good vibrations 2,200 miles away in her rural hamlet in southern Mexico.
Her husband, Carlos Romero, an illegal immigrant living in Los Angeles, wired her $600 a month from his labors hanging drywall and pounding shingles. The remittances bought meat for tacos, sneakers for the kids and a few extras for the family's home in tiny Juquila, Oaxaca.
No more. With U.S. home building in the dumps, Romero is working sporadically and sending little money. Diaz and her three young boys are eating rice and beans. She is watching every centavo.
So are economists who track this crucial southward flow of currency. They are worried by what they see.
Remittances are the financial lifeblood for millions of Mexican families and a crucial source of foreign exchange for their government. The $23 billion that maids, cooks, gardeners and others sent home last year — almost all from the U.S. — topped the amount that multinationals invested in Mexico. But fallout from the U.S. construction industry, which employs 1 in 5 Latino immigrants, is now rippling south of the border. Growth in remittances to Mexico has slowed to a trickle.
After increasing an average of just over 23% a year since 2000, remittances for the first two months of 2007 were just 5.5% ahead of the same period last year, according to Mexico's central bank. The figure peaked in May at $2.3 billion and has drifted downward ever since.
Analysts say tougher border enforcement and workplace crackdowns by U.S. immigration authorities may be playing a role. Still, the remittance slowdown has moved virtually in lock step with the stumble in U.S. home building. Housing starts hit their 2006 peak in May before tumbling 50% by year-end.
Mexico isn't the only country feeling the effect. Growth in money wired to Guatemala, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic and other Latin American nations has followed the housing market slowdown.
Romero, who has been in the U.S. for 10 years, hasn't had steady construction work in six months, and the jobs he has found pay a lot less than they used to. A buddy just gave him a tip about a night position at a Los Angeles restaurant. He isn't thrilled at the prospect of washing dishes or slinging hash on the graveyard shift. But Romero is running out of options.
"Even one day without work is bad. I've gone four days without work already this week," the 38-year-old said anxiously by telephone from Los Angeles recently. "The situation is very bad for me and my family."
It bodes ill for Mexico as well.
The deceleration in remittances is coming just as Mexico's economy is weakening, oil revenue is falling and unemployment is on the rise. In the past, tough times pushed more migrants north and remittances increased, helping cushion downturns in the Mexican economy, said Gray Newman, chief Latin America economist for Morgan Stanley.
But with more U.S. agents patrolling the border and fewer construction jobs waiting on the other side, Newman said, Mexico might be in for a bumpier landing this time. He is projecting 3.3% economic growth for Mexico this year, down from 4.8% in 2006.
"In the past this was the one flow that acted as sort of a shock absorber," Newman said of remittances. "This could be a double whammy."
Nearly 3 million Latinos were employed in the U.S. housing industry in 2006, according to a study by the Washington-based Pew Hispanic Center. Three-quarters of them were foreign-born. Nearly 30% had been in the United States six years or fewer.
Within the construction business, lower-skilled immigrants are more prevalent in the residential sector, which has shed nearly 28,000 jobs since September, a 2.7% decline, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Some experts believe that the slide is actually much worse because the activities of off-the-books day laborers aren't fully reflected in official statistics.
Construction work typically pays better than farm and service jobs, a little over $20 an hour on average, according to government data. Many illegal immigrants toil for less. Still, the industry is considered a big step up from stoop labor in the fields.
Illinois bricklayer Francisco Godinez, a legal resident who arrived from Mexico in 1997, considers himself blessed to have a skilled trade. He landed so much work building subdivisions over the last few years that he wired nearly $25,000 to his family in Michoacan to build their own dream house south of the border.
His tools are mostly idle these days. The paint and flooring on the family's new place will have to wait. Right now his wife and three children in Mexico need money for food and other essentials.
"I'm hoping to find work and send $200 or $300 in a week or so," said Godinez, 38. "Things are really slow."
Money-transfer companies are likewise feeling the pinch. Colorado-based Western Union reported that wire transactions to Mexico increased just 2% in the first quarter compared with the first three months of 2006. Minnesota-based MoneyGram doesn't release volume figures. But spokeswoman Cathy Rebuffoni acknowledged "a slowdown in that market" largely because of sluggish U.S. construction activity.
Both firms also mentioned heightened tensions over illegal immigration as a factor cutting into sales. Analyst Gwenn Bezard, who follows the money-transfer industry, said he believed that tougher border enforcement was crimping the flow of new arrivals to the United States and that employment raids and deportations had spooked undocumented workers. He said some were avoiding places where immigrants congregate, such as major money-wiring chains.
"A lot of people are just staying home because they are afraid of being caught," said Bezard, research director at Aite Group, a Boston-based financial services consulting firm. "The political climate has a lot to do with it."
But in Los Angeles, Romero said his biggest fear was that his family was going without. He prays that the housing market will recover.
"I can do anything. Haul construction materials, put up walls," he said. "At this point, I'll take whatever construction job I can get."
marla.dickerson@latimes.com
The DOW is up again!!! Record high! How the hell does this continue happening?!? All the homebuilder stocks are up too. WTF?
This craigslist thread is priceless!!!! It begins:
"My house has been on the market for 59 days. Best priced in the area. 10 plus home. I dont understand why its not selling. We have dropped it almost 20 grand since first listed. R there still any investors out there? Just wondering."
Then we go into theology and free will.
http://forums.phoenix.craigslist.org/?ID=61747486
Have fun!
Secular bear markets last an average of 17 years... is this downtick in realty a start???????
az_mtb
Strobeck said the market is experiencing new-home price cuts not seen since the 1980s, but Randles remains optimistic.
"I look at this as another part of the real estate cycle," Randles said. "It is not what it was: We were spoiled in 2005. Even though it is a buyer's market now, it is still a vibrant market. It is not a gloomy doomsday situation. We've got great value.
Thanks for the article, I can't believe these realtWHORES believe this SHIT!!!! Makes me laugh everytime I read her comments...HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
Mmmmm... Russian Lada...
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