Housing

Last month, Hank Paulson, the U.S. Treasury Secretary, was waxing prosaically about covered bonds and their benefits to mortgage markets. From his comments, one gets the impression he sees this a potential solution to preventing a future…

When it comes to residential property in the US, banks were overzealous on the way up and now they are overzealous on the way down. You have probably heard that banks are cutting HELOCs (home equity lines of credit) like mad. Borrowers,…

House prices are falling at an ever faster rate in the UK, according to Nationwide's latest survey for August 2008. The Nationwide Index was down to 329.5 from 335.9 in July, a fall of 1.9%. The index is down 10.5% compared to August 2007,…

The S&P/Case-Shiller housing index is out for prices for June 2008. So, it's that time of the month again -- let's play the Case-Shiller time machine game. Basically, prices in the U.S. housing market have been falling for about two…

As far back as May, I had warned that commercial property was destined for a bust -- collateral damage in the real economy. In particular, I mentioned the U.S. commercial real estate (CRE) market as a particular problem for local and…

The past few weeks I have been chronicling how Europe is fast catching up to the United States in terms of the magnitude of the housing bust and its effects on its economies. I'd like to turn back to the United States and Northern…

I was listening to a money programme about the credit crunch in the UK this morning on my iPod Wake Up To Money (Podcast). They were discussing ways in which the credit crunch was made manifest to home buyers in the UK. In the broadcast,…

Below are the latest writedown stories from the web that I have seen. For the full timeline of news, visit my credit crisis timeline. Bloomberg recently updated their tally of writedowns to arrive at $503.8 Billion to date. That is on…

For those of you interested in London property prices, the Times has a good rundown borough by borough in PDF. The Royal Borough tops the list with an average price over £1.4 million followed by Westminster at over £1 million. Why would…

What has the housing bubble told us about market efficiency, social psychology and economics? Quite a lot, I believe.In the aftermath of the housing bubble, one thing is for certain: we can throw out the inane "Efficient Market…