The Home Front
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Killer Bees and the Housing Crisis
Continue reading… 4 CommentsThe national foreclosure crisis has slashed home values, put families on the street, and now, it seems, played a key role in a fatal bee attack on a helpless Chihuahua.
The 3-year old Chihuahua, named Stubby—which was born with only three legs—was killed Tuesday by an angry swarm of bees that had nested in a vacant property located near the dog owner's home, according to the Tucson Citizen.
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Fresh Distractions for Housing Daydreamers
Continue reading… 1 CommentAre you a real estate day dreamer? If so, Trulia.com has new distraction for you.
You can check it out here.
From the press release:
Trulia Snapshot is therapy for home buyers, real estate enthusiasts, college-age dreamers, ready-to-upgrade home owners, your mom, my mom and everyone from the interested to real-estate-obsessed. It satisfies our universal need to gander real estate photos, prices and locations online.
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Housing Starts
Continue reading… 0 CommentsAssociated Press: "Rates on 30-year mortgages jumped this week to the highest level since mid-March as investors began to worry about what the Federal Reserve will do to combat growing inflation pressures."
The Wall Street Journal: "The home-mortgage industry takes advantage of consumers' confusion to charge some people much higher fees than others, according to a study prepared for the Department of Housing and Urban Development."
The New York Times: "The F.D.I.C. said the combined profit of the financial institutions it regulates plunged 46 percent, to $19.3 billion, during the first three months of the year."
Reuters: "In some areas of California, so many foreclosed homes are available to buy on the cheap that real estate agents are discouraging prospective sellers from even putting their houses on the market."
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Forget That Condo—Buy This Jail
Continue reading… 0 CommentsFirst-time home buyers looking to terrify unsuspecting dinner guests should get moving on this delightful county jail in Skowhegan, Maine, before some exiled dictator or evil supervillain snaps it up.
That's right, the 14,000-square-foot lockup will be emptied later this year when a nearby facility opens for business, according to the Associated Press, providing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for creative buyers.
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Next Housing Market to Crash? Seattle
Continue reading… 45 CommentsFew American cities have weathered the national housing crisis better than Seattle. According to the recently released S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, home values in the drizzly gem of the Pacific Northwest have fallen a modest 4.4 percent over the past year—a cakewalk compared with former housing boom hot spots like Las Vegas (-25.9 percent), Miami (-24.6 percent), and Phoenix (-23 percent).
But that may soon change. In a recent interview with U.S. News, ZipRealty CEO Pat Lashinsky predicted that Seattle's so-far resilient housing market would suffer big losses relatively soon. Excerpts:
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Housing Starts
Continue reading… 0 CommentsThe Wall Street Journal: "Before we replace angst about housing, mortgages, and credit markets with anxiety about rising oil prices, consider what we've learned in the past several months. We had a housing bubble; that's now obvious. But how did it happen?"
The New York Times: "America's home-buying season, when for-sale signs sprout like dandelions, is shaping up to be even worse than expected this year, with prices falling, sales slowing, and few signs of a turnaround emerging."
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A New Foreclosure TV Show!
Continue reading… 5 CommentsNo matter what you think about the controversial housing legislation moving through Congress, at least we can all agree there just hasn’t been enough TV coverage of the nation's foreclosure epidemic.
So, for all of you begging for a closer look at a process that's now shattering communities, gutting home values, and threatening to drag the entire country into a recession, meet real estate agent Tom Bruzzesi, the star of The Foreclosure Shoppe—a new realty/reality TV show focusing on Florida's treacherous real estate market.
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Home Prices: Worst of the Worst
Continue reading… 2 CommentsNot long ago, Zillow Blog ran a post listing the areas of the country where home prices had appreciated the most from the first quarter of 2007 to the first quarter of 2008.
Now, Zillow is turning the tables and looking at the markets that saw the steepest declines.
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Kenny Rogers's Home for Sale
Continue reading… 6 CommentsWhy listen to his albums when you can buy his whole house? That’s what serious Kenny Rogers fans should be asking themselves these days, in light of the news that the country music sensation has put his Atlanta home on the market.
From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
The busy singer/actor/photographer/businessman/designer has put the Buckhead home he has lived in with his family for the past 17 months on the market for $7.95 million. Heather Steiner, an agent with Atlanta Fine Homes Sotheby's International Realty, is handling the sale.
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Housing Starts
Continue reading… 0 CommentsThe San Jose Mercury News: "Online real estate brokers will be guaranteed full access to listings of homes for sale under an agreement announced by federal officials Tuesday."
Bloomberg: "Home prices in 20 U.S. metropolitan areas fell in March by the most in at least seven years, pointing to weakness in the housing market that will constrain economic growth."
The Wall Street Journal: "The Minnesota legislature's passage of a housing bill has created a dilemma for the man who could veto it: Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican seen as a potential running mate for John McCain."
The Los Angeles Times: "Obama, in the midst of a three-day swing of potential Western battleground states, used the struggles of a Las Vegas family facing foreclosure over skyrocketing mortgage payments to illustrate what has emerged as a key theme of his campaign—the nation's sputtering economy."
The New York Times: "But at the same time, new criticisms have surfaced that Mr. Bernanke has fanned inflation and contributed to the decline of the dollar by aggressively cutting interest rates. Some say he has put at risk billions in public funds by accepting devalued assets like mortgages and auto loans as collateral for loans to financial institutions."
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Extreme Makeover Homes for Sale!
Continue reading… 53 CommentsTurns out that some of the cash-strapped families that were given their dream homes on ABC's hit show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition have put the properties on the market.
"Some are for sale because the owners can't afford the upkeep and taxes (kind of hard going from an 800-square-foot home to a 3,500-square-foot home) and others because of changes to the family," according to Zillow Blog.
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Home Prices Rise! (and Fall …)
Continue reading… 2 CommentsDespite the release of a happy-seeming set of housing figures, the nation's real estate market swan dive continues.
Providing a much-needed zap of optimism, a government report issued today found that the average price of new homes was up 3 percent in April from the previous year. That's on top of an above-consensus 3.3 percent increase in sales from March.
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Housing Starts
Continue reading… 0 CommentsThe Ne w York Times: "The auto industry is getting sideswiped by the housing crisis."
The Wall Street Journal: "Home sales are rising in some U.S. metropolitan areas where lenders have slashed prices on foreclosed properties."
The Washington Post: "In neighborhoods across the region, a potent recipe is brewing on the front lawns and in the back yards of thousands of homes emptied by foreclosures. The combination of a rainy spring and a flood of the unkempt houses has local governments increasingly concerned about public health and struggling to keep nature at bay. As more people move out, the grass grows taller, the water puddles up and the wild things move in."
Bloomberg: "In the midst of the worst surge in mortgage defaults in seven decades, foreclosures in U.S. towns where soldiers live are increasing at a pace almost four times the national average, according to data compiled by research firm RealtyTrac Inc. in Irvine, California."
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Watch Out! Home Prices Are Headed Even Lower
Continue reading… 1 CommentAlthough the decline in existing-home sales reported today was less than expected, the swelling backlog of unsold homes—which grew from a 10-to-11.2-month supply—means more pain is in store for the already-downtrodden housing market.
The National Association of Realtors' existing-home sales report for April, released Friday, showed that sales fell 1 percent—slightly above consensus estimates—from March and are now down nearly 18 percent from last year's levels. At the same time, total housing inventory climbed nearly 11 percent. Median existing-home prices are now 8 percent below April 2007 levels.
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Housing Starts
Continue reading… 0 CommentsMarketWatch: "U.S. home prices fell a seasonally adjusted 1.7% in the first three months of 2008—the largest quarterly price decline on record, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight reported Thursday."
Associated Press, via Yahoo: "Rates on 30-year mortgages dipped below 6 percent this week, falling to their lowest level in five weeks."
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Bank Chairman to Struggling Borrower: 'Disgusting'
Continue reading… 3 CommentsCountrywide Financial Chairman Angelo Mozilo called a struggling borrower's efforts to remain in the home he has lived in for 16 years "disgusting." According to the Los Angeles Times, by hitting "reply" when he apparently meant to hit "forward," the well-tanned banker sent the following E-mail to one of his beloved customers:
From LoanSafe.org, via L.A. Land:
This is unbelievable. Most of these letters now have the same wording. Obviously they are being counseled by some other person or by the internet. Disgusting.
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Areas Where Home Prices Are Rising the Most
Continue reading… 0 CommentsWhile median American home values posted their steepest year-to-year drop in a dozen years during the first quarter of 2008, a number of areas actually reported increases, according to a report by Zillow.com. Of the 160 metro areas covered in the report, only 30 did not decline from the same period last year. Here are the best performers:
Region Median Price Year-Over-Year Change Mobile, Ala. $120,500 11.8% Jacksonville, N.C. $135,500 6.7% Burlington, N.C. $132,500 6.3% Yakima, Wash. $126,500 5.2% Oklahoma City $104,500 5.0% Pueblo, Colo. $121,500 4.9% Winston-Salem, N.C. $133,000 4.7% Redding, Calif. $279,000 4.5% Raleigh-Cary, N.C. $220,000 3.8% Grand Junction, Colo. $219,000 3.7% -
Housing Starts
Continue reading… 2 CommentsThe Washington Post: "Most leaders of the Federal Reserve viewed their decision to cut interest rates last month as a 'close call,' according to minutes of the meeting released yesterday, a document that made it clear that the Fed is probably done with rate cuts for the foreseeable future."
The Wall Street Journal: "Moody's Investors Service's problems in rating complex debt instruments known as CPDOs show the difficulty in assessing new, untested products with the same scale that conveys the financial strength of blue-chip companies or the U.S. government."
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Latrell Sprewell vs. Jose Canseco
Continue reading… 6 CommentsEx-NBA star Latrell Sprewell launched an impressive campaign to unseat former slugger Jose Canseco for the title of America’s least-sympathetic housing crisis victim when his Milwaukee-area home was foreclosed on last week.
Sprewell spent 13 seasons in the NBA with the Golden State Warriors, New York Knicks, and Minnesota Timberwolves, making the all-star game four times. But he is best known for choking then coach P.J. Carlesimo in 1997.
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Committee Approves Housing Rescue
Continue reading… 0 CommentsThe housing rescue took a big step closer to enactment today when Republicans and Democrats joined to pass the measure through a key Senate committee by a 19-to-2 vote.
From the Associated Press:
Eight Republicans joined Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee to advance the housing rescue package. It also includes tougher regulations for government-sponsored mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
