Housing

Back on the 16th, I posted a link to a Wall Street Journal article by James Hagerty which detailed how the Federal Home Loan Banks were able to prevent asset writedowns because of guideline changes to mark-to-market accounting.  I…

This is a video from Bloomberg Television yesterday. It underscores the fragility of this incipient recovery. You will notice that California is leading the way in terms of foreclosures, one reason the state will 00 bankrupt or be bailed…

When you think about property, you should really be looking at its worth as the present value of future cash flow streams.  This is true for residential, commercial, rental or travel property.  One reason is that property is fungible,…

This report comes via “The Center for Public Integrity”: The top subprime lenders whose loans are largely blamed for triggering the global economic meltdown were owned or bankrolled by banks now collecting billions of dollars in bailout…

This video seems to be making the rounds. I saw it over at Calculated Risk first. The video shows new homes in Victorville, CA, just south of LA, being destroyed because it costs more for the banks to keep them up than to demolish them.…

After a blip in the data last month, Nationwide is reporting that U.K. house prices have resumed their fall.  However, for the second month in a row, the annual price fall has slowed.  In March, the fall was 15.7%. This month we see only…

You might find some analysts looking for some green shoots in the just released Case-Shiller Home Price Index.  For instance, the year-on-year change in house prices showed a slower decline in the latest month (February) than in the…

If you read my recent post on How big banks earned so much money this quarter you would see that much of the income at Wells, JPMorgan, US Bank and others came from refinancing old mortgages. While this may be a boon to present income, it…

House prices increased in March in the U.K. according to Nationwide Building Society. Below is what Nationwide's Chief Economist Fionnuala Earley had to say about this surprise good news: “Spring brought a surprise bounce to house prices…

You might have thought house price declines were slowing. I certainly had hoped so. The latest data from January 2009 from the S&P/Case-Shiller index suggests this is wishful thinking as year-on-year declines hit another record of…