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Blog Details for "HousingDoom"
HousingDoomHousingDoomExpert news and opinion on the US housing market. A must read for anyone who is interested in real estate or considering buying or selling a home. In addition to timely posts on analyzing subjects ranging from subprime mortgages to national home sal Articles
So Much For Treasury?s ?Skin In The Game?? They Are Willing To Use The Taxp
2011-01-19 08:01:00 The Treasury Department yesterday released a report on “risk retention”. It noted that because loan originators had no “skin in the game”, securitization helped fuel the housing bubble. To fight this they said: [A]s the recent financial crisis demonstrated, without reform, risks in the securitization process can detract from these benefits. Leading up to the ... More About: Politics , Skin , Regulation , Housing Bubble , Foreclosure
Housing Starts Up 21%? Let?s Hope Not
2011-01-18 18:05:00 The National Association of Homebuilders hosted their annual NAHB International Builders ? Show this past week. David Crowe, their chief economist had an “optimistic” forecast for 2011: NAHB Chief Economist David Crowe said job growth will provide a stronger stimulus in the housing market than 010′s home buyer tax credits. “This year?s spring selling season will ... More About: Economy , Housing Bubble , Market trends , Housing
What?s To Be Done With The Homes Not Worth Fixing?
2011-01-17 08:01:00 Diana Olick of CNBC did an article last week warning potential homebuyers about some of those foreclosure “bargains” out there. Certainly many starry-eyed Bob Villa wannabes have purchased foreclosures thinking they’d turn a shack into a palace with a little paint and carpet and have ended up over their heads. Olick goes over some of ... More About: Politics , Regulation , Housing Bubble , Market trends , Foreclosure
Foreign Cenbank Holdings of US Obligations Weekly Update ? to January 12, 2
2011-01-14 19:02:00 Last week the amero gap surged as high as -131 basis points before closing yesterday at -108 bp. Time to order up a few more dozen crippled CF-35s This week the Fed’s own holdings of MBS were again unchanged and agencies were also flat. Treasuries, however, took a significant nose-dive reviving an all too familiar ... More About: January , Update , Foreign , Weekly
Foreclosure-Gate Widens: Attorney Practices Questioned Too
2011-01-14 08:01:00 It’s not just the banks that are facing scrutiny for questionable foreclosure practices. In Florida, some attorney practices are being questioned as well. A spokeswoman for the Attorney General’s office had a list: Among the allegations she said the attorney general’s office is examining: Law firms padding bills in order to get higher final judgments ... More About: Gate , Economy , Housing Bubble , Market trends , Foreclosure
Elderly Reverse Mortgage Borrowers Facing Eviction
2011-01-13 15:00:00 I have come out against reverse mortgages on several occasions. I don’t like the way they are marketed and have felt they were potentially dangerous to borrowers. According to a recent U.S. News and World Report article, my fears are justified. [Thanks L!] The government is moving to head off a growing problem with its ... More About: Economy , Housing Bubble , Market trends , Foreclosure , Mortgage
Housing Depression? From CNBC No Less
2011-01-11 20:30:00 When we started in 2006, I was often told that Housing Doom was overly pessimistic. My usual reply was “Who’d be interested in a site called “Housing Moderation”? Now in 2011 apparently even CNBC shares our pessimism: In the past few years, we?ve all been careful to choose our words carefully, not calling it a ... More About: Economy , Depression , Housing Bubble , Market trends , Foreclosure
Housing Bust Creating Declining Cities Filled With ?Bulldozer Bait?
2011-01-07 14:49:00 Anyone who’s spent any time in the Rustbelt has seen their share of vacant boarded up houses. As job opportunities diminished, folks pulled up stakes, populations dropped and the market for their houses disappeared. Cities went into decline. Now a new study by James R. Follain, Ph.D., senior fellow of the Rockefeller Institute of Government ... More About: Economy , Housing Bubble , Market trends , Builders
Foreign Cenbank Holdings of US Obligations Weekly Update ? to January 5, 20
2011-01-07 08:01:00 Greetings again from the Thirteenth District. This Thursday the amero gap closed at -31 basis points ($1 == C$0.9969; a week before it was at exactly par). I’m guessing the Ottawa Fed wants to keep the gap within a +/-300bp range like they did in 10Q4 in case something happens — e.g. a foreign central ... More About: January , Update , Foreign , Weekly
Looking For A House? Why Not Buy In Bulk? Package of 58 Homes For Sale On E
2011-01-06 16:05:00 Is one house not enough for you? Are you looking to be a land baron with just one purchase? It’s easy. Go to Ebay and bid on the package of 58 homes for sale: FLINT, Michigan ? Looking for a house in Flint? How about 58 of them? Anyone with an Internet connection could snatch ... More About: Economy , House , For Sale , Housing Bubble , Sale
Foreign Cenbank Holdings of US Obligations Weekly Update ? to October 27, 2
2010-10-29 16:49:00 Mr. Trend pressed his foot gently on the accelerator this week, with most of the numbers quietly growing by roughly between 5 and 15 percent. The Fed’s own holdings of MBS shrank by a slightly more significant $14.714 billion. Meanwhile cenbanks’ holdings of treasuries grew at a rather more exuberant rate and agencies continued their ... More About: Update , Foreign , Weekly
HD?s Housing Scorecard For Obama
2010-10-29 09:01:00 Monday the Obama administration issued it’s October Housing Scorecard, which provides data and charts to show where the administration believes the housing market is. They issued a press release with the following summary: The latest housing figures show continued signs of stabilization in house prices and high home affordability due in part to record low ... More About: Politics , Economy , Realtors , Housing Bubble , Market trends
Bill Maloni: Bracing for Election Setbacks ? Defending the GSEs
2010-10-28 19:43:00 Doomer friend Bill Maloni isn’t as familiar with Chris Whalen as we are here in the Castle. Chris is co-sponsor with Alex Pollock of AEI’s valuable semiannual seminars on the subprime crisis that started in March 2007, and one of Alex’s crack team of super-bears. In our dreams (and after the election ) we see ... More About: Politics , Election
Should Banks Dump Foreclosures On The Market, Or Trickle Them Out Slowly?
2010-10-28 16:53:00 We’ve talked a lot about the “shadow inventory” held by the lenders. According to RealtyTrac, lenders are currently holding back 600,000 properties. Foreclosures are up and those numbers have to be growing. Back in the 1980s when the S&L crisis hit [It doesn't look much like a crisis given today's situation, does it?] the RTC ... More About: Politics , Economy , Market , Banks
Homebuilders Struggle To Compete With Foreclosures
2010-10-27 09:01:00 Things have been tough for homebuilders in the past few years. With foreclosures now about a third of existing home sales, builders have had a tough time competing on price. Here’s one creative try from Meritage though: [From L's inbox- thanks L!] There has been a lot of speculation that foreclosure moratoria around the country ... More About: Politics , Economy , Realtors , Foreclosures , Housing Bubble
How Many Of These Folks Are Paying Their Mortgage?
2010-10-26 09:01:00 60 Minutes did a segment on “99ers”- people who have run out of their 99 weeks of unemployment. I watched it and thought, “How many of these folks are paying their mortgage? How many of these folks qualify for loan mods? How can the housing market get better when the employment picture looks like this? ... More About: Politics , Economy , Housing Bubble , Foreclosure , Mortgage
BofA Foreclosure Foul-Ups- We Need More Data
2010-10-25 18:32:00 Bank of America has started going through their paperwork or admit to the following: Bank of America Corp. for the first time acknowledged finding some mistakes in foreclosure files as it begins to resubmit documents in 102,000 cases. The Charlotte, N.C., lender discovered errors in 10 to 25 out of the first several hundred foreclosure ... More About: Housing Bubble , Market trends , Data , Foreclosure
Crack of Doom: from Vacantville to Squatterville?
2010-10-25 18:15:00 San Diego area CRE appraiser Jeremy has an intriguing op-ed in the NC Times: Dubious land sales and unrecorded easements among “parcel owners” [in the desert of Bernalillo County NM] have created a Bizarro world in which nobody really knows who owns what, if anything. Residents —- mostly immigrants from Mexico of questionable U.S. residency ... More About: Crack , Doom
The Second Best Game Ever
2010-10-23 16:11:00 I’m blaming my oldest daughter for this post. Last night when I usually would have been perusing housing links looking for something worthy to discuss today, she sent me this link to a post she found on the NBA’s website. Shaun Powell wrote about his favorite game where the Suns lost to the Celtics back ... More About: Game
Foreign Cenbank Holdings of US Obligations Weekly Update ? to October 20, 2
2010-10-23 00:15:00 After remaining unchanged for three weeks The Fed’s own holdings of MBS shrank a significant $12.788 billion. Meanwhile cenbanks’ holdings of treasuries also grew at an exuberant, but not extreme rate and agencies continued their sell-off, this week at a modest clip. This week’s Reuters report1 was, as usual, based on the weekly update from ... More About: Update , Foreign , Weekly
The FDIC Is Moving Out Of Selling Condos And Into Selling CMBS
2010-10-22 18:22:00 Several upscale condominium projects went into foreclosure in Phoenix. They have since been picked up by an investment group, renovated and put on the market. The investment group is ST Residential, led by the FDIC: [Thanks L!] ST Residential is an investment and debt-resolution firm that is 60 percent owned by the Federal Deposit Insurance ... More About: Politics , Selling , Housing Bubble , Market trends , Moving
MERS Looks Like the Key to Foreclosure-gate
2010-10-21 20:23:00 First of all, thank-you Admin for bringing us up again There’s been a ton of significant developments in the last while, and we’ll be commenting, or at least putting some of the best links for breaking stories onto our sidebar soon. However, what I take to be the most significant development in the time we ... More About: Gate , Foreclosure
Looks Like I Owe Angelo An Apology
2010-10-19 09:01:00 Old Doom friend Chris is a strong apologist for community banks and (sub-obscenely) rich Americans, but his group has a heck of a database of bank statistics and many years of interpreting them from a risk perspective. In this long must-read article (get it now, goes behind the pay wall in a few days) he ... More About: Foreclosure
Plenty Of Perks For A Robo-Signing Employee
2010-10-19 09:01:00 My parents told me as I was growing up that I would need a college education in order to get ahead in the world. Mom and Dad were wrong. According to Tampa Bay Online, some robo-signers could make a lot in money and perks, and all they had to be able to do was sign ... More About: Housing Bubble , Foreclosure , Employee
Home Prices Down, But Not As Affordable
2009-12-21 15:08:00 Lower home prices should translate into more affordable homes, right? Apparently not: TAMPA - Home prices may be falling, but many Americans are spending a bigger portion of their incomes on housing, especially in Florida. The Sunshine State ranked second among all states for its share of severely cost-burdened working families, according to the Washington, ... More About: Housing Bubble , Foreclosure
And they don?t buy homes or pay their mortgage
2009-12-20 15:26:00 Check out this interactive map done by La Toya Egwuekwe of U.S. unemployment. This is based on county by county statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor. [In other words, this is not "real" unemployment.] Egwuekwe says: [Thanks L!] According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are more than 31 million ... More About: Mortgage , Homes
Yes Virginia! There is!
2009-12-20 12:56:00 Doom friend Bill Maloni reports 20 inches down at his place near DC. Stay warm, Capitol Doomers! . . . . . . More About: Virginia
VI.E Preview: Consumer or Consumable ? End Safety-and-Soundness for Financi
2009-12-20 08:01:00 … you see the institution’s saying, "Wait! We have to stay in this business line. This is our margin of profit. If you don’t let us stay in this business line, we’re not going to be profitable." That’s a very tough choice. That’s a very tough position for a regulator. - Adam Levitin And especially if ... More About: Safety , Preview , Consumer
Get a million off of asking price
2009-12-19 14:53:00 So how is this for a special- straight from Paradise Valley, AZ- - you can "temporarily" get $1 million off of asking price, and get a 3% cobroke for your agent: [Hat tip M!] Now is the time for your client to become a part of this unique community with prices momentarily adjusted for savings ... More About: Builders , Price
?We Cannot Overcome The Lender?s Incompetence?
More articles from this author:2009-12-18 20:07:00 M told me that he found the following in the Realtor Remarks of a Scottsdale short-sale: REALTOR Remarks: Lockbox removed 11/1/2009. It looks like this one will go to trustee sale despite a reasonable offer being presented to the lender. Another fine example of the inefficiencies and lack of logic on display by a lender. Sorry, ... More About: Realtors , Housing Bubble , Foreclosure , Incompetence 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 |
