During the recent housing boom, U.S. house prices seemed to shoot up faster than crabgrass. Homeowners enjoyed an average increase of 54.4 percent in the value of their houses between 2001 and 2005, as measured by a house price index produced by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO).1 However, as Tip O’Neil, the […]

Filings in the U.S. were up 47% in March from a year ago, leaving a wake of vacant homes and overgrown yards for state and local governments to contend with. Even lenders are trying to help troubled borrowers.
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The San Francisco Bay Area housing bubble is beginning to deflate. Home sales are in the midst of a 24 month decline, and median prices are falling throughout the nine-county region. To determine what will happen next, we’ll take a look at a similar housing bubble that occurred in Japan less than 20 years ago.
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Larry Elliott reports on the fresh evidence of the severe downturn in the US housing market with a sharp drop in the sales of new homes…
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Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson delivered an upbeat assessment of the slumping real estate market on Friday saying, “All the signs I look at” show “the housing market is at or near the bottom.”

Baloney.
Paulson added that the meltdown in subprime mortgages was not a “serious problem. I think it’s going to be largely contained.”
Wrong again. […]

Mike Larson writes I hate to sound like a broken record … I really don’t enjoy being tagged as the “doom and gloomer” of the bunch here … I wish I could do something fun like my good friend Sean Brodrick, who gets to traipse through Canadian uranium mines and tell you all about the […]

Pick up in house price growth seals a May interest rate rise
• Pace of house price growth picks up in April, but trend still shows a gradual cooling
• Market demand has been supported by movers, but this too is beginning to wane
• Too rapid an increase in rates could destabilise the market
• Current economic conditions […]

Forclosures surge across the United States, with 62% rise in Illonois on 12months ago. Illinois ranks as the 12th state in foreclosure terms.
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Indian property executives told that their property boom would end in tears.
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Trouble in Squanderville - Two years ago, anyone who wrote about the housing bubble was dismissed as a conspiracy nut. Now hardly a day goes by that the headlines aren’t splattered with the details of the massive meltdown in the real estate market.
What changed? The facts are essentially the same today as they were back […]

Traditional home sells for £7.1m in part of the city once shunned by rich
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The home price declines in Silicon Valley are anything but hidden for most people trying to sell their homes, but it doesn’t seem to show up in monthly and weekly reports that show slight YoY gains in the median prices. I have used Santa Clara County as a proxy for Silicon Valley and it is […]

Mike Larson writes I hate it when my dire forecasts come true. But my job is to call it like it is, and help you make sound investment decisions. So I keep my emotions out of the process, and focus on reality.
And when I look around me and see what’s going on in the markets […]

Following last week’s release of MBBG net lending figures for February, further information now available on lending to individuals shows that:

February’s gross mortgage lending was £14.9bn, 7% more than the £14.0bn in February 2006. In line with seasonal patterns, February was well down on January’s £16.6bn.
There were 167,000 mortgages approved (for all purposes) in February. […]

The U.S. housing market, long considered vulnerable by many economists, is now on the verge of suffering a serious collapse in many regions. Commodities guru and hedge fund manager Jim Rogers warns that real estate in expensive bubble areas will drop 40 or 50%. Mainstream media outlets like the New York Times are reporting breathlessly […]

“Three Rules of Work: Out of clutter, find simplicity; from discord, find harmony; in the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” ~ Albert Einstein
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that our next piece would cover the “new rules of real estate,” as post-bubble asset deflation indicators dominate the landscape. Meanwhile, our latest article generated […]

How the suckers robbed themselves in America’s biggest ever Ponzi scheme…
WHO’S AFRAID of falling home prices in the United States?
Bond investors might welcome a slump, says Bill Gross at Pimco. Head of the world’s largest bond fund, he now forecasts “an ongoing bond bull market of still undefined proportions” thanks to US interest rates falling […]

I think that some heads are going to roll when Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson are forced to admit that the subprime mortgage problem is not contained.  In my previous professional life, I worked as a sales person for a software company.  We as sales people were often referred to as […]

First-time buyers hit by double whammy

New first-time buyers face double whammy of house price and rate rises
Higher house prices alone add £75 to typical first-time buyer monthly costs compared to last year. Interest rate increases bring this up to almost £120
Locking into a fixed rate loan this time last year would have saved a […]

A new trade and national advertising campaign launched in February advising landlords who let a room in their home or run a business, of the need to declare their earnings and pay tax on any profit.
Landlords who let multiple properties could be considered to be running a rental business. They should go to the HM […]

Following last week’s release of MBBG net lending figures for February, further information now available on lending to individuals shows that:

February’s gross mortgage lending was £14.9bn, 7% more than the £14.0bn in February 2006. In line with seasonal patterns, February was well down on January’s £16.6bn.
There were 167,000 mortgages approved (for all purposes) in February. […]