Posts Tagged ‘jpm’Keepin’ It Real Estate: Allocating Stimulus to Land BanksThis post first appeared on Minyanville. After four years of searing pain, the US housing market is finally showing signs of life. And even as the causes and relative sustainability of this nascent “recovery” are being hotly debated, traditional buyers and investors alike are jumping into the market for homes with both feet. It now [...] Keepin’ It Real Estate: Why Housing Prices Are Essentially MeaninglessThis post first appeared on Minyanville. It took the Wall Street Journal an entire survey to prove what readers of this column have known for months: The housing recovery, as it plays out, will be a localized event, varying greatly city to city, neighborhood to neighborhood, street to street. The Journal, god bless them, compiled [...] CIT Puts “Too Big to Fail” to the TestThis post first appeared on Minyanville. We have truly become a bailout nation. As regulators mull over the possibility of rescuing CIT Group (CIT) — a small-business lender that counts over 1 million US firms as customers — analysts debate whether the relatively small firm is deserving of a taxpayer-funded bailout. Or for that matter, [...] Keepin’ It Real Estate: Just How Bad Are the New Appraisal Rules?This post first appeared on Minyanville. Appraisers just can’t get it right. During the housing boom, mortgage brokers, real-estate agents, and even borrowers sought out appraisals supporting the highest possible home price. Appraisers, fearful of losing business, inflated their valuation findings, which exacerbated the run-up in home prices. Now, after nearly 4 years of home-price [...] Congress Still Working Against Housing RecoveryThis post first appeared on Minyanville. Banks like Washington Mutual (JPM), Wachovia (WFC), and Countrywide (BAC) — along with Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) — once used mortgage underwriting guidelines that were thin at best, nonexistent at worst. Congress, in turn, pushed for leniency for low-income borrowers and for those with spotty credit, [...] 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 [...] Homebuyers Crash Into Appraisal RoadblockBy ANDREW JEFFERY This post first appeared on Minyanville. Mortgage guidelines have become increasingly strict — not to mention regimented — as the private secondary-mortgage market has all but disappeared in the past 24 months. But according to the Wall Street Journal, appraisals are increasingly becoming one of the biggest hurdles for new purchase and [...] 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 [...] Sayonara, SECBy ANDREW JEFFERY This post first appeared on Minyanville. The horses, pigs, cows, goats, sheep, llamas, ostriches, dromedaries and rhinos have all left the barn, yet the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) still thinks it should be minding the door. In light of its woeful inability to perform even the simplest of tasks — [...] R.I.P. Free CreditBy ANDREW JEFFERY This post first appeared on Minyanville. Remember the good old days? Back when you and the credit crunch were young, and only those “subprime” people over on the other side of town — you know, the ones living wildly beyond their means, dependent on credit for the very necessities of life — [...] 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 [...] Government to Banks: We Recommend Throwing Good Money After BadBy ANDREW JEFFERY This post first appeared on Minyanville. Every month, it seems, Washington dreams up new and fantastic ways to funnel taxpayer money towards a growing list of undeserving recipients. Now, in the latest attempt to coerce banks into modifying delinquent mortgages en masse, the Treasury Department plans to offer cash incentives to lenders [...] 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) [...] Fannie, Freddie to Steal Banks’ Crutches?By ANDREW JEFFERY This post first appeared on Minyanville. With mortgage rates at historic lows, housing prices plummeting, and Washington throwing billions at housing-market recovery efforts, why is it still so damn hard to get a loan? And while the easy answer is that banks are flat-out broke, the real answer may lie in an [...] 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 [...] 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 [...] Foreclosure By DesignBy ANDREW JEFFERY This post first appeared on Minyanville. Many months ago, long before bureaucrats dreamed up their massive, ill-conceived loan-modification programs, the free market found a solution to the mortgage mess. Specialists in handling distressed debt amassed tens of billions of dollars to buy up bad loans at steep discounts. The offending institutions who [...] Keepin’ It Real Estate: A Real Fix for HousingBy ANDREW JEFFERY This post first appeared on Minyanville. While pundits and politicians debate the various aspects of President Obama’s $275 billion housing bailout, one piece of data proves just how misguided federal efforts to revitalize the housing market are: $275 billion could buy more than half of all American homes already in foreclosure. Such [...] Keepin’ It Real Estate: How Good is Zillow?By ANDREW JEFFERY This post first appeared on Minyanville. Americans finally get it: Home prices are falling. This may seem like a preposterous statement, what with the entire global financial system in disarray after the collapse of the US housing market, but we Americans are stubbornly optimistic people, content to ignore calamity as long as we [...] Keepin’ It Real Estate: Capitulation Now!This post first appeared on Minyanville. Finally, housing is starting to act like a market searching for a bottom. Well, sort of. In former boom states like California, Arizona and Florida, distressed sales are driving the local real-estate markets. After a near-complete evaporation of buying activity last year, buyers have been brought off the sidelines [...] Fed Jumps on Loan Modification BandwagonBy ANDREW JEFFERY This post first appeared on Minyanville. “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” – and you certainly can’t fault lawmakers for a lack of persistence in trying to stem the epidemic foreclosures plaguing America’s housing market. Sadly, they insist on trying the same failed strategies over and over again. For [...] |