Housing

There is a good deal of speculation in the press at the moment over the tricky issue of whether or not Poland will be able to comply with its agreed deficit-reduction deadline on the basis of the latest budget proposals announced by the…

It would seem so from the statistics compiled by the New York Times. The article leads in by suggesting the rich are 'losing their home but given the talk about strategic default earlier in the year (see here), you should wonder whether…

Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance Monthly Survey of Real Estate Market Conditions reports that homebuyer declined in May, as would be expected with the end of the latest federal home purchase tax credit.  The most dramatic drop was with…

This morning Case-Shiller released a report showing the largest price increase in the American residential property since August 2006. Prices for April 2010 in the broad Composite 20 index were up 3.9% year-on-year while prices in the…

Below is the weekly commentary from Comstock Partners. The softening in the economy that we have been looking for is now becoming a reality as a wide sampling of the latest monthly or weekly economic releases clearly indicates that a…

Sales of new homes plunged a record 33% in May to a record-low after the expiration of the federal tax credit subsidy for home buyers expired. Sales were a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 300,000, the lowest since record-keeping…

By John Lounsbury What is the best proxy for demand in the housing market?  How about lumber.  Here is one ugly chart, courtesy of finviz.com (with trend lines added by the author): For large graphic without added trend…

Existing house sales in the US fell 2.2% month over month in May to an annualized 5.66 million rate from the upwardly-revised 5.79 million rate in April. Note that analysts polled by Reuters expected sales to rise to a 6.12 million rate.…

Meredith Whitney was a guest host on CNBC at 8AM ET talking about an anticipated housing double dip. The videos are below. A few comments first.  Whitney was late to the recovery party in 2009 in my view. But I found the recent Rip…

Fannie and Freddie Cost of Fannie And Freddie Keeps Rising - NYTimes.com Related Posts May 2010: Banks Making Shed Loads But Fannie And Freddie May Be “Losing Money as a Matter of Policy” Jan 2010: Manipulating mortgages Sep…