House prices fell by 0.8% in November, bringing the annual rate of increase down to 6.9%
Sentiment in the market has weakened, but can be volatile
Uncertainties remain, but underlying fundamentals continue to be supportive
Introduction of final phase of HIPs may reduce available housing supply in the short term

Headlines
November 2007
October 2007

Monthly index * Q1 ‘93 = 100

369.0

371.9

Monthly […]

Mike Larson writes: Every month, I get asked if there’s any evidence whatsoever of a turnaround in the housing industry. So far — every month — I’ve had to emphatically say “NO.”
And I’m going to give it to you straight about the numbers that were just released: They are some of the worst I’ve ever […]

The Nationwide, one of Britain’s biggest mortgage Lenders announced a sharp 0.8% Drop in House Prices for November, the biggest fall for 12 years, bringing the annualised rate down sharply to 6.9%. Whilst at the same time the Bank of England reported a slump in new home buyer mortgage approvals to a 3 year low. […]

The US Federal Reserve is behind the curve. Great consequences have resulted and are likely to continue to result. Many words can be used to describe this group. What come to mind are inept, compromised, corrupted, distracted, ill-trained, but also clueless, deceptive, myopic, overly cautious, and off the market in their focus. When they remain […]

By: Alex_Wallenwein
US Fed vice-chairman Donald Kohn is in a quandary.
I’m sure he’s not alone. It’s just that he happened to be tasked with making a set of statements that would have been far too embarrassing for Bernanke to make. That is especially so after Ron Paul publicly slapped him with his own ledger book, so […]

The U.S. is not only sneezing, it’s struggling to breathe with a bad lung infection. Failing real estate and mortgage markets might just cause the worst recession this country has ever seen.
Meanwhile, to the south in Latin America and to the east in Asia, the world is witnessing huge economic revolutions and spectacular growth.
This has […]

By: John_Lee
This is a follow up to my last article: ‘ Subprime Mortgages Lead to Subprime Currency’ (available here ) in which I wrote:
“The curious mind asks, who holds those $trillions worth of mortgages? Thanks to the genius of the American banking and marketing machine, just about every sizable institution underneath the sun with a […]

The Land Registry reported a 0.1% rise in UK house prices during October, down from the average of 0.7% during the past 12 months and thus bringing the annualised rate down to 8.1%
However, house prices in London fell sharply by 0.6%. The fall was much greater than any other region and represented the first fall […]

The subprime problem, we were told, would not spread to other markets. It would be “contained.” And it has, according to Jim Grant. He quipped last week that it has been contained on planet Earth. The risks coming from rising defaults in the US (now above 600,000 and rising from just 200,000 a few years […]

By: John_Lee
Last Thursday, according to Financial Times, Mr Bernanke told Congress he would support raising the limit on the size of the individual loans eligible for securitisation by the government-sponsored mortgage finance entities from $417,000 to $1m (€680,000, £475,000) on a temporary basis.
He suggested that Fannie and Freddie could pay insurance premiums on these […]

The recent up tick in UK inflation has sparked inflation concerns to continue going into 2008. However the Market Oracle anticipated the recent up tick as a consequence of money supply growth earlier in the year as an indicator of future inflation and that the up tick would prove temporary as many factors converge towards […]

By: Nadeem_Walayat
The credit crunch continues to ripple out across the global financial sector with banks outside of the US just as badly hit as those within the US. Today’s turn is the French Bank Natixis (Frances fourth largest bank) which declared that it has been hit hard by its exposure to the US subprime mortgage […]

By: Gerard_Jackson
What a week that was. Australia’s conservative government gets thrashed by a bunch of unioncrats, lefty journalists and an economic illiterate with intellectual pretensions while at the same time as the US dollar goes high diving. These are certainly interesting times.
The falling dollar has got a number of people running around like headless chooks, […]

Martin Weiss writes: As we warned you here in August … and as I explained on CNBC a few days later … America’s kingpin of mortgages is on a collision course with bankruptcy.Its name: Countrywide Financial
If it goes under, the impact on U.S. financial markets will be immediate; the damage to the U.S. economy, long-lasting.
So […]

Take a Look at Professor Roubini’s Crystal Ball - Reality has finally caught up to the stock market. The American consumer is underwater, the banks are buried in dept, and the housing market is in terminal distress. The Dow is now below its 200-Day Moving Average — the first big “sell” signal. Anything below 12,500 […]

It’s a tough market. It’s tough being short because you fear the bounce. It is tough being long because you fear the fundamentals. So where do you go? You can’t go into cash because you know it is losing value. It is downright foolish to hold bonds because the only thing worse than holding something […]

The British Government’s decision to expand the requirement for ALL UK Home Sellers to provide a Home Information Pack as of 14th December 07, will likely result in a big freeze on transactions hitting the UK housing market from 14th December 07. As fewer properties are put onto the market and thereby less transactions take […]

Mike Larson writes: I don’t know about you, but I ate enough turkey and trimmings to last me through Christmas. That’s okay — I have plenty to be thankful for, so it’s worth celebrating with a big feast once a year!But in the marbled halls of this nation’s leading banks … and the wood-paneled boardrooms […]

As internal debates in the Gulf and Asian nations intensify over the need to continue propping up the U.S. economy, dangerous signals this past week from the Fed, Freddie Mac, and Wall Street may be pushing them to finally let go of the lifelines that have kept America afloat.
Despite clear signs of surging prices in […]

This week we look at inflation. Is it just over 2%, giving the Fed room to cut rates, or will it be closer to 4% by the next FOMC meeting, making a rate cut problematic? How do they get those numbers? When and how can two opposite things be true at the same time? The […]

Yesterday, DataQuick released the Southern California real estate sales data for the month of October. For the first time since probably the mid-1990s all six counties show year-over-year declines in the median price led by Riverside County at -15 percent.

Marshall ” almost all if not all of those gains are here to stay ” Prentice, […]

The housing market analysts are belatedly starting to come to terms with the prospects of a falling UK housing market during 2008. Nationwide takes the first step on that road by now forecasting ZERO house price growth during 2008. This still remains some way from the Market Oracles forecast of a fall of 15% over […]

Mervyn King, the Bank of England Governor belatedly recognised that the credit crunch is likely to strongly impact the UK Economy during 2008 resulting in a sharp slowdown accompanied by rising inflation going into 2008.
The Governor and Bank of England stated:
“We have seen without any doubt a tightening of credit conditions in terms of bank […]

On Monday, Asian stock markets took another drubbing on fears that the credit squeeze which began in the United States would continue to worsen in the months ahead. Every index from Tokyo to Sidney fell sharply continuing the “self-reinforcing” vicious cycle of losses started last week on Wall Street.  The Nikkei 225 average fell 3.3%, […]

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) Survey today revealed that 22.2% more surveyors are reporting house price drops, compared with 14.9% in September. This was worse than market expectations of a minus 20% reading accompanied by a surge in stock on estate agent books of 8.8%.
RICS spokesman Ian Perry stated: “The housing market is […]

This week in Outside the Box I strive to address an issue that I have been meditating on for quite some time. Precisely, how have we arrived at the current credit crisis that now threatens the domestic and global economy. I believe one of the underlying reasons is what is termed the “Minsky Moment,” the […]

Scanning a newspaper or watching the news recently seem more like a covert operation with secret codes and cryptography than anything resembling factual news. In fact, more than once, I have felt compelled to dig through cereal boxes in search of one of those plastic decoder rings that were so popular when I was young.
Approximately […]