Housing

I got a tip from a friend Andrew about a sale of assets by Wells Fargo (WFC) which raises a number of interesting questions.  He sent me the following 14 July article from the Milwaukee Business Journal. Wells Fargo sold $600…

My translation below is of an article from the website Finanzas. House prices accelerated their decline in June, down 10.1% over the same month of 2008, which is three tenths more than the previous month, when housing fell 9.8%,…

R.W. Baird downgraded Starwood Hotels (HOT) from Neutral to Underperform, saying it was downgrading estimates on hotels across the board. This comes via Barrons: Starwood's former strengths are now weaknesses. During the boom Starwood's…

This comes via the Nationwide website: As a responsible lender which aims to support its borrowers Nationwide has responded to market conditions and made an option available which enables some existing customers in negative equity to move…

The Nationwide, the world’s largest building society, is now bringing back the dreaded 125% mortgage.  While the lender claims these mortgages are a “niche product” designed for customers of Nationwide in negative equity, the Financial…

When we saw the Case-Shiller data for April on Tuesday, I noted that New York was the most overpriced metro area in the Composite-20 as prices there were still 70% above January 2000 levels.  This is changing fast.  Bloomberg…

Let’s say you’re an American named Maria living in Southern California.  The year is 2006.  You make $45,000 and your husband David makes another $40,000.  You have two children aged six and four and your two-bedroom apartment is getting…

Apparently the answer to this question is yes.  CNBC is reporting that home ‘owners’ who refinance their mortgages through loans backed by Fannie and Freddie will be able to borrow up to 125% of their homes’ value (hat tip Marshall…

The S&P/Case Shiller Home Price Indices for April 2009 were released today.  The Composite-10 and Composite-20 indices showed a 18.0% and 18.1% decline respectively, making the data less bad than in the previous month.  Nevertheless,…

On the same day that the worst economic growth numbers in the U.K. in 51 years, we also get some news that the British economy may be stabilising. Well, at least house prices seem to be stabilising as Nationwide reported a 0.9% increase in…