From the category archives:

Housing

Homeownership Rate Drops

February 2, 2010

Great graph over at Calculated Risk about home ownership rates. CR points out that home ownership rates are now back to the year 2000 level. CR thinks we may get to 66%, which is where it was in the late 1990s. CR points to demographics as the reason home ownership is higher. The average before [...]

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Housing Storm or Eye of the Hurricane

November 26, 2009

If you listen to the news media today, you might hear how housing prices have stabilized and that the worst for housing is over. For this entire year, the media has reported how February sales outpaced January’s while March’s topped February’s and so-on. Just this week, October sales came in 10% higher than September. Compared [...]

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What Does the Increase In Mortgage Rates Mean

June 10, 2009

As the 10 year Treasury climbs, mortgage rates ride their back. Thirty year mortgage rates have jumped from the lows of around 4.75% to 5.57% this week. This may not seem like a large jump, and historically, current rates are still fantastic. But, the jump is having an impact on the housing market and bank [...]

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Free Markets At Work

May 24, 2009

Good article in NY Times about the Phoenix real estate market. Apparently, there are numerous investors, many out of state, who are buying Phoenix properties and renting them back to the previous owners. Often times, they rent to the troubled owners at a lower price than their mortgage was originally. It shows that left to [...]

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U-G-L-Y You Ain’t Got No Alibi

May 18, 2009

The Federal Reserve reported today that delinquencies increased substantially in the first quarter of 2009. You will notice a substantial rise in residential real estate, commercial real estate, and credit cards. The only one of the three that isn’t at an all time high is residential real estate, which is still below the S&L crisis [...]

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Greenspan Calls End of Housing Decline

May 12, 2009

Alan Greenspan caused the market to reverse its downward trend today when he was speaking to the National Association of Realtors (NAR) when he said that housing was stabilizing. Oh joy, the man who caused the bubble and didn’t see a bubble forming is calling for a bottom. During the speech, he reiterated that he [...]

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Long Road Ahead for Housing

May 6, 2009

Here is a good post at Barry Ritholtz’s blog, The Big Picture. It discusses how 22% of all homes in America are underwater. If you account for paid off homes, that number jumps to 33%. Scary. The blog post also notes a recent survey where 31% of Americans would put their home on the market [...]

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Building Role In Housing Mess

April 24, 2009

As the housing market continues its slump, one of the hardest hit segments of the economy has been the home builders. But, these folks may be more responsible for the demise of the real estate market than just overbuilding homes. Many of these builders added mortgage loans and title services to their businesses. They created [...]

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