Greg Swann admits that the Phoenix housing market has crashed. I guess the Brown Shirts and Flying Monkeys at HP were right after all, eh?

HP'ers favorite discredited Phoenix realtor Greg Swann (he who shall not be linked) admitted the other day in the Arizona Republic that Phoenix housing prices have crashed 24% from the peak (thanks HP'ers for the lead).

So should we now expect locusts and wormwood? Along with the assorted flying pigs and hot times in hell of course.

He was great at unprofessional name calling and bluster, but if you wanted sound, rational, unbiased housing market analysis, you were MUCH better off going elsewhere. It's the 6% HP'ers - it makes people say and do stupid things.

Here was his hilarious admission this week:

"Values for an average suburban Phoenix home were down 14.66% year-over-year. That doesn’t sound too bad, but prices were down almost six percent just in December. We’re down 24% from the peak in December of 2005, on average"

Yet here he was in 2006, when he was pissing on HP'ers as sewer-living Brown Shirts and Flying Monkeys who would be proven wrong:

"To lurk among the BubbleBloggers and their seething commentariat is to acquire an education in a slice of America invisible from this side of the sewer gratings. Notwithstanding the idiotic economic analysis, which is really no worse than the static-market fallacies paraded as profundities in the pages of the Arizona Republic, these sites — and not just HousingPanic — are infested with a cult-like fever to inflict suffering — at second hand, to be sure — on people who are in fact guilty of nothing except failing to have drunk the BubbleBlogger KoolAde."

"The BubbleBloggers will someday bawl balefully in private, but they will never, ever admit that they have been very publicly very foolish. You will know and I will know and in the secret chambers of their hearts they will know they were wrong all along. But as long as you don’t hold your breath waiting for that contrite admission of error, you should be fine."

So, I guess the question is, when do we get Swanndive's contrite admission of error? And how do his financially devastated former victims (I mean clients - if he had any) get their money back?

I think this embarrassing about-face shows just how bad it's getting for the ramen eaters now. The NAR talking points are out the window, and in a desperate attempt to make 6%, they're trying the one and only thing they haven't tried before:

The truth.

FLASH: D.R. Horton, America's largest homebuilder, in complete and total crash mode. CEO looking for any buyer with a pulse. And you can quote him.

It's rare when I see things that make my jaw drop. Well, here's one from D.R. Horton.

This kind of attitude should have Fannie, Freddie, the Banks and mortgage CDO investors worldwide shaking in their boots.

The housing game is in its last innings, and desperation and fraud are spinning out of control as desperate builders, desperate lenders and desperate homedebtors do anything, and I mean anything, to survive.

Home builder D.R. Horton earnings plunge 85 pct

NEW YORK (Reuters) - D.R. Horton Inc. , the largest U.S. home builder, said on Thursday quarterly earnings fell 85 percent, in part due to charges related to the lower value of land.

The U.S. housing market has been in a severe downturn for the past year, with a mounting glut of homes on the market, increasingly resistant prospective buyers and tighter lending standards.

Builders have responded by slashing prices, throwing in freebies and cutting back on "spec homes" -- those built speculatively without a buyer.

"We face head winds, we believe, and strong head winds, we believe, during the course of the next six to 12 months from , illiquidity in the mortgage industry," Tomnitz said.

"As I've said to all our salespeople, if a buyer is warm and has a pulse, we want to put them on paper," he said.

A record 58,257 Phoenix bag-holders (aka "Desperate Homedebtors") are wondering today "where did all the buyers go"

Ah, a classic and inevitable end of a grand Ponzi Scheme is now unfolding in Phoenix. A sight to behold HP'ers. Textbook.

Phoenix, bottom line, you're screwed. Sorry to say. But it was your own doing.

50% appreciation in 2005? What a joke. Your fake economy was built on the back of a corrupt and out of control REIC, your homes are not worth 100% more than they were just a few years ago, and now your economy will collapse due to out of control mortgage fraud, massive REIC layoffs, out of control illegal immigration, and basic human greed.

Good luck out there Phoenix. You're gonna need it.

Noooooooooooooooo! For the love of god noooooooooooooooooooooo!

This has to be a joke. The single worst urban housing project in the HISTORY OF THE WORLD, the hilarious and horrific "Chateaux on Central" bankrupt condo/castle project in Phoenix, supposedly was taken out of foreclosure by a new lender and will restart. In other words, some fool just bought the "pets.com" of the housing bubble out of foreclosure auction.

Well, that's lovely and all, but dear god tell me there's not one single solitary fool in this world who'd buy one of these eyesores. Even for $100,000, let alone $4 million...

Anyone want to bet the "developer" and "lender" both go belly-up too, with not one single unit sold? Man, I smell a rat. (note - someone in Phoenix keep an eye on this project for us and keep us posted - maybe even go tour the model home and make an offer!)

Chateaux project is revived

Construction of the mini-castles that have been sitting half built on Phoenix's Central Avenue should start again soon.Chateaux on Central got new financing last week, and the foreclosure sale of the property was called off.Mortgages Ltd. is now backing the $65 million development.

And the project's developers are bullish on when they can complete the project and see the first buyer move in.

In November, days after a 30-ton copper turret was lowered onto one of the multimillion homes, Chateaux's lender, Desert Hills Bank, filed to foreclose. Early this year, construction stopped on the property on the northwestern corner of Central and Palm Lane.Then on Jan. 30, Central PHX Partners filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

A foreclosure sale date for the property initially was set for February and was pushed back a few times before being called off.

Scott Coles of Mortgages Ltd. said Chateaux would bring "buyers back to the city."But those buyers will have to have deep pockets. The five-story homes that come with private elevators, wine cellars, maid's quarters, private movie theaters and Viking appliances are priced between $2 million and $4 million.