Posts Tagged ‘Housing’Cirios Trends — February 2010In this month’s Cirios Trends: In Search of Real Estate Opportunities, check out: The State of the Markets: February 2, 2010 A critical crossroads has arrived. Feature: Real Estate Investing with Your IRA Diversify your nest egg. Around the Bay: Local News Bites Goings on that move markets. Zip Code Spotlight – South San Francisco [...] Are Housing Fundamentals Still Deteriorating?This post first appeared on Minyanville. There’s a good amount of buzz surrounding the Wall Street Journal’s piece on the staggering number of homeowners underwater on their mortgages. This, on the same day the Case-Shiller Home Price Index posted its fourth consecutive month-over-month increase. Mixed signals? Possibly. But in reality, these two seemingly disparate data [...] Keepin’ It Real Estate: Trial Modifications Are CriminalThis post first appeared on Minyanville. The Obama administration is busy touting the burgeoning success of its mortgage modification program. Unfortunately, it’s a farce: Out of one side of his mouth, the President touts a dedication to the besieged middle class, while from the other, lauds a loan modification program which steals money from struggling [...] Keepin’ It Real Estate: Just How Hot Is the Housing Market?This post first appeared on Minyanville. It seems that with each passing month, the data gods deliver more and more evidence that the woe begotten US housing market may finally be emerging from its years-long doldrums. Existing home sales: Up. New home sales: Up. Pending home sales: Up. Home prices: Down, but at a slower [...] Housing Perspective: June Existing Home SalesLies, damn lies and (NAR) statistics. Indeed. The National Association of Realtors (or NAR) released data today showing that sales of existing homes crept up in June, the 3rd consecutive up month. While sales were a touch lower than they were a year ago, the annualized, seasonally adjusted sale figure was up 3.6% from May. [...] By the Numbers – The BottomThis post first appeared in the July edition of Cirios Trends: Getting to the Bottom of the Housing Market It’s everywhere these days: In the news, on the streets. The “bottom” is coming. We have toiled long and hard through the dark days of this “Great Recession” and are now coming to the bottom of [...] Homebuilders Add New Wing to Housing CrisisThis post first appeared on Minyanville. It appears even the embattled homebuilding industry is getting rosy-eyed, finding enough “green shoots” of economic recovery to stick their shovels back into the ground. In May, US builders broke ground on 17.2% more projects than in April, far exceeding analysts’ expectations. Work on new apartment buildings leaped, while [...] Vultures Descend on Mortgage MarketThis post first appeared on Minyanville. In early 2006, when subprime powerhouse New Century went bust, vulture investors began to salivate at the opportunities a collapsing mortgage market would offer up like manna from the trading gods. They started raising money. And lots of it. Billions were poured into so-called “mortgage opportunity funds,” which planned [...] Keepin’ It Real Estate: The Fed Loses the Mortgage-Rate Battle?This post first appeared on Minyanville. Despite the best efforts of the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department, the free market is winning the battle over mortgage rates. Tens of trillions of dollars in support for the financial system can’t change the stark reality: Giving out home loans remains risky business. Borrowers looking to take [...] Deflation Still Clear and Present DangerBy ANDREW JEFFERY This post first appeared on Minyanville. Deflation, the economic beast many feared would devour the next decade, appears to have been vanquished. Or has it? Superficial signs of renewed inflation are everywhere: Oil prices appear to be stabilizing, and concern is growing about future supply shortages (which, by extension, could lead to [...] Mortgage Rates Still Not Allowed to Return to NormalBy ANDREW JEFFERY This post first appeared on Minyanville. Despite Herculean efforts, the Federal Reserve is losing its battle to keep mortgage rates at all-time lows. As fear that we’re headed for imminent collapse slowly wanes, investors’ appetite for risk is coming back. This renewed confidence has helped buoy stocks, and the major equity indices [...] The Five Questions You MUST Ask Your RealtorBy ANDREW JEFFERY This post first appeared on Minyanville. As a growing number of economists, pundits and real-estate professionals assure us the housing market’s worst days are over, prospective home buyers need a trusted advocate to make sure they don’t end up on the wrong side of someone else’s trade. More often than not, that [...] Keepin’ It Real Estate: Beware The False Bottom in HousingBy ANDREW JEFFERY This post first appeared on Minyanville. Residential real estate is about to get very weird. In the coming months, housing-market data is likely to show price stabilization in many of the country’s hardest hit areas. Pundits, government officials and real-estate professionals will loudly proclaim the worst of our real estate woes are [...] Banks Rev Up Foreclosure MachineBy ANDREW JEFFERY This post first appeared on Minyanville. For almost 2 years, we’ve been told government-backed loan modification efforts and foreclosure moratoriums would help ease the pain of the ongoing housing crisis. It’s not working. Despite recent calls to the contrary — this morning’s came courtesy of real-estate mogul Sam Zell — residential home prices are still in free [...] Keepin it Real Estate: The Stabilization FallacyBy ANDREW JEFFERY This post first appeared on Minyanville. Despite recent reports to the contrary, the impending stabilization of the housing market is a myth. While declines in certain markets are coming to an end, real estate, in general, is still in freefall. Last November, amidst a great deal of media fanfare, Fannie Mae (FNM) [...] Keepin’ It Real Estate: Jumbo Prime R.I.P.By ANDREW JEFFERY This post first appeared on Minyanville. Countrywide was to subprime lending what Thornburg Mortgage was to jumbo-prime. Now, both are out of business. Thornburg said it expects to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, ending a nearly 2-year struggle to fend off creditors and survive the credit crunch. The company, once the [...] Housing Perspective: February Pending Home SalesFollowing a pattern set with both existing home sales and new homes sales, pending home sales bounced in February, up 2.1% from the previous month. The National Association of Realtors’ released its monthly index that tracks the number of signed contracts, showing a gain to 82.1, from 80.4 in January. A reading under 100 indicates [...] The State of the Markets – 4/1/09The month of March brought a degree of chaos to the financial markets, and indeed to the country as a whole, not seen in, well, months. The stock market culminated another wave of selling with multi-decade lows, only to rebound in the strongest counter-trend rally since the bear market began last year. The AIG bonus [...] Cirios Trends – April 2009In this month’s issue, check out: The State of the Markets – 4/1/09 “Optimistic pundits declared the housing market’s bottom just months away, while prices stubbornly maintained their distinctly southward trend.” By The Numbers: Housing Inventory “Looking closely at historical months’ supply provides evidence that this measurement can actually be predictive for housing value trends, [...] Keepin’ It Real Estate: Housing Recovery? What Housing Recovery?By ANDREW JEFFERY This post first appeared on Minyanville. This week, 2 data points led optimistic market-watchers to declare the bottom in the housing is nigh: Indeed, one widely read trader-writer proclaimed, “The oversupply of housing that so plagues the market at present will be a figment of our memory a few months hence.” The [...] Housing Perspective: February Existing Home SalesIf you bought a house in February, it’s a 50/50 bet you picked up a foreclosure. The National Association of Realtors released data this morning indicating almost half of all transactions last month involved a bank owned home. Sales jumped 5.1% from January, to an annualized rate of 4.72 million. Prices, however, continued to decline [...] Housing Perspective: March Homebuilder SentimentConditions in the world of building new homes remains poor to quite poor. The National Association of Homebuilders (or NAHB), the industry lobbyist group, released its monthly builder confidence index this morning, which registered a near-record low reading of 9. Sentiment was unchanged from last month, which matched analysts expectations. The builder group is hopeful [...] Keepin’ It Real Estate: Foreclosure Wheel Keeps on TurningBy ANDREW JEFFERY This post first appeared on Minyanville. Despite herculean efforts to stop the foreclosure juggernaut, Americans are still losing their homes at near-record pace. According to RealtyTrac, a firm that sells default data, foreclosure filings rose in February to nearly 300,000, up 6% from the month before. This figure is the third highest [...] Keepin’ It Real Estate: How to Play the Housing ReboundBy ANDREW JEFFERY This post first appeared on Minyanville. There isn’t an economic forecaster or media pundit alive who isn’t angling to be the first to (correctly) call the bottom in housing. Many have tried; they all have failed. But what happens when one’s right? At some point in the future, broad home price indicators [...] |