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Realty News

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REALTY NEWS

Real Estate News Articles published in 2010:

04/20/2010	-	1st-Time Homebuyers Drive Housing Market in March
DSNews.com		First-time homebuyers accounted for a record-high share of purchases last month, according to new data released this week.

04/19/2010	-	BofA Proposes 9-Month Forbearance Plan for Unemployed
DSNews.com		Bank of America says it is considering giving unemployed homeowners nine months of no mortgage payments while they search for a new job.

04/19/2010	-	Excess Inventory May Impede Housing Recovery
DSNews.com		Although housing is beginning to stabilize, excess inventory and shadow supply may hinder continued recovery, according to the April 2010 Economic Outlook released Monday by Fannie Mae's Economics & Mortgage Market Analysis Group.

04/19/2010	-	Builders Urge Extreme Care in Restoring Housing Finance System
NAHB		As Congress begins to debate how to reform government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Bank System, NAHB on April 14 called on lawmakers to ensure that the federal government continues to provide a backstop for the housing finance system to ensure a reliable and adequate flow of affordable housing credit.

04/19/2010	-	Health Care Tax Changes to Have Little Impact on Principal Residence Sellers
NAHB		Among the many policy changes in the recently enacted health care legislation, builders and the residential construction industry should be aware of two tax policy changes in particular:

04/16/2010	-	More Evidence of a Bottom in Housing
Seeking Alpha		According to March data released today, U.S. housing starts have risen 30% from their all-time low (April '09). In addition, building permits increased 38% over the same period. And not surprisingly, the Bloomberg index of home builders' stocks bottomed last July and has since risen over 50%. And as I've pointed out before, the prices of home equity-backed securities are rising sharply. If this doesn't add up to a clear picture of a bottoming in the residential construction market, I don't know what would.

04/15/2010	-	White House: How Do We Solve Mortgage Crisis
Housing Predictor		How should we solve the U.S. mortgage crisis? That is the BIG question White House officials are starting to ask representatives of the lending industry, academic experts and consumer groups in efforts to come up with a plan to reform the nation's troubled mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

04/15/2010	-	Fannie Mae Director Outlines Program to Turn Homeowners into Renters
HousingWire		The director of Fannie Mae's deed for lease (D4L) program outlined the initiative during Thursday's Texas Mortgage Bankers Association (TMBA) servicing conference.

04/14/2010	-	Housing Recovery Gains Traction
Housing Predictor		The government's mortgage modification program is on track to produce up to 4-million loan modifications, according to White House officials. The plan started to aid the ailing home market has prompted banks that are not part of the program to modify mortgages, gaining traction towards a housing recovery.

04/13/2010	-	Multiple Foreclosures Slam Home Market
Housing Predictor		Multiple foreclosure properties mortgaged by investors contribute to more than a third of all homes being foreclosed, according to a new study conducted by Housing Predictor. The crisis is leading investors who once bought the property in hopes of turning a profit to increasingly call bankers to ask for mortgage modifications and forgiveness, but few are having any luck.

04/13/2010	-	Hovnanian: The Rebound in Housing Starts Is Supported by the Data
Seeking Alpha		After reading my housing starts post from yesterday, Hovnanian Enterprises (HOV) CEO Ara Hovnanian was kind enough to have his investor relations department send over some additional information on trends and demand for U.S. housing starts.

04/13/2010	-	Baby Boomers on the Move: Snuggling in or Launching Out?
MarketWatch		Whether it's in the Sunbelt or the Rustbelt, a move across the street or across the nation, Baby Boomers are still willing to move to a new place when they retire, according to the 2010 Del Webb Baby Boomer Survey released today.

04/12/2010	-	Foreclosure Crisis Forecast Cut
Housing Predictor		The foreclosure crisis has produced a ripple effect across the U.S. economy, triggering downward pressure on home prices and the national economy. But for the first time in its history, Housing Predictor is lowering its foreclosure forecast.

04/12/2010	-	Foreclosure inventories hit record
MarketWatch		The inventory of foreclosed homes in the U.S. hit a record in February, a sign that the real-estate crisis is lingering, according to data released Monday by a leading mortgage processor.

04/08/2010	-	Consumer Spending Has Held Up Because People Aren't Paying Their Mortgages
Seeking Alpha		I've been somewhat perplexed by how well consumer spending has held up, at least on a relative basis, given that 1) "underemployment" is above 20 percent and the number of long-term employed is at a record; 2) income has not kept pace with consumption; and, 3) the housing industry is nowhere near a recovery (and the foreclosures just keep on coming).

04/07/2010	-	MBA Reports 1.2 Million Households Lost During the Recession
DSNews.com		A study released Wednesday by the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) showed that an estimated 1.2 million households were lost from 2005 to 2008, despite the population increase of 3.4 million in the study area. MBA says this decline in households was likely a significant factor to the excess supply of apartments and single-family homes currently on the market.

04/07/2010	-	Early Reaction to HAFA Program
DSNews.com		The administration's Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives (HAFA) program hasn't even been in effect for a full week, and positive feedback is already coming in.

04/07/2010	-	What Housing Inventory Picture Really Looks Like
Seeking Alpha		The federal government has tried every manner of strange intervention to foolishly support the price of real estate. The trend in unit sales shows very little evidence of success (see below).

04/06/2010	-	Housing Bail Out to Top $2-Trillion
Housing Predictor		The U.S. government housing rescue program is on target to spend more than $2-trillion on bail out efforts, according to a review of government allocations. The effort marks the largest amount spent on record to aid real estate markets in a downturn, and is intended to help push the economy in the direction of a recovery.

04/06/2010	-	Americans Continue to Value Homeownership, Survey Shows
DSNews.com		Although millions of families across the nation have been adversely affected by the foreclosure crisis, the majority of Americans still have a positive sentiment towards homeownership, Fannie Mae found in its National Housing Survey.

04/02/2010	-	Signs of Life in Sand-State Real Estate
The New York Times		SAND is not a good foundation for a house, and it certainly wasn't a good foundation for a housing boom. But now home prices are starting to recover in some so-called sand states.

04/02/2010	-	Recovery-less Recovery: Unemployment Duration March 2010
Paper Economy		Nothing says recovery less than a steadily increasing pool of unemployed workers facing the specter of a quickly increasing average (and median) length stint on unemployment.

04/01/2010	-	Freddie Mac Announces REO Auction Blitz Ahead of Tax Credit Deadline
DSNews.com		Freddie Mac is riding the wave of the homebuyer tax credit, hoping it will be incentive enough to entice deal-seekers to snatch up foreclosed properties it has repossessed in the hard-hit Las Vegas and Southern California markets and put a dent in the GSEs swollen inventory of REO properties.

03/30/2010	-	Millions of Homeowners to Get Money
Housing Predictor		The U.S. government's program to bring relief to homeowners in jeopardy of foreclosure is designed to bring tailor made solutions to the 10 states in the program. The plan, known as the Hardest Hit Fund (HHF) is being administered through the Troubled Asset and Relief Program with $2.1-billion for homeowners in distress.

03/28/2010	-	6 Million Homes Compose Shadow Inventory in Housing
Housing Predictor		The shadow inventory of homes and other residential properties exceeds 6 million, which will prolong the recovery of the U.S. housing market. The inventory of properties that have not yet been completed as foreclosures, but are under distress represent a growing inventory to be absorbed by the market.

03/31/2010	-	House Flippers in U.S. Crowd Courthouse Steps in Hunt for Deals
BusinessWeek		During the U.S. housing boom, even amateur investors could buy and sell a property within a couple of months and turn a profit. Today there's nothing amateur about house flipping.

03/30/2010	-	Consumer confidence rebounds to 52.5 in March
Big Builder Online		Americans' confidence in the economy rebounded in March after a February plunge but remains relatively weak amid a tough job market, according to a private research group's monthly survey released Tuesday.

03/26/2010	-	White House Adds Help for Underwater, Unemployed to Housing Plan
DSNews.com		The administration unveiled major expansions to its foreclosure prevention plan Friday – expansions designed to help underwater and unemployed homeowners and push it closer to meeting President Obama's goal of helping 3 to 4 million borrowers save their homes

03/25/2010	-	New Home Prices Have More Room to Fall
Seeking Alpha		Over the past 48 hours, the Census Bureau and the National Association of Realtors have announced new and existing home sales, respectively, for February. As expected (at Financial Armageddon, at least) neither set of data points offered any real encouragement for those who keep harping on about a recovery in the sector.

03/24/2010	-	New Home Sales Reach Record Lows in February
Seeking Alpha		The Commerce Department reports that new home sales reached all-time record lows last month, below the levels seen in early-2009 at the height of the financial market crisis.

03/24/2010	-	Big cities see gains as boomers delay retirement
Big Builder Online		Battered by recession, more older Americans are staying put in traditional big cities to hold onto jobs, creating slowdowns in population growth at once-popular retirement destinations widely found in the South and West.

03/17/2010	-	The New Foreclosure Trend
Seeking Alpha		From the recent Lender Processing Services report comes the chart shown below depicting the latest foreclosure trend - non-foreclosures. That is, where borrowers stop making mortgage payments but stay in the house.

03/03/2010	-	Company Targets Shadow Inventory with 48-Hour Short Sales
DSNews.com		Loan Resolution Corporation said Wednesday that it is implementing a pre-approved short sale program to help the 8 million homeowners who are currently delinquent on their mortgages. The company says its streamlined process can turn a short sale decision within 48 hours.

03/01/2010	-	Builders, Lenders Team Up to Save The Housing Market
HULIQ		The trend is particularly strong in hard hit areas like California, Las Vegas, and Arizona where housing projects grew rampantly until the bubble burst leaving many developers and builders either belly up or barely surviving.

03/01/2010	-	New rules favor flipping to move foreclosures
East Valley Tribune		Flipping used to be a dirty word in residential real estate, but not anymore. A recent policy change by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is encouraging flipping to foster more sales of foreclosure homes that were badly damaged by the previous owners or others.

02/26/2010	-	Paulson's Real Estate Recovery Fund Making Big Bets On Cheap Land Out West
Business Insider		John Paulson's Real Estate Recovery Fund is betting on land in Arizona, Colorado and Nevada.

02/26/2010	-	Obama Considers Foreclosure Ban
DSNews.com		President Obama and his administration are floating an idea to prohibit lenders from foreclosing on a home unless the borrower has been considered for the government's Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP).

02/25/2010	-	Industry Pushes for Extension of Admin's Refinance Program
DSNews.com		The Obama administration's Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) is set to expire on June 10. It's a central component of the federal government's foreclosure prevention efforts and is currently one of the only mortgage relief programs to help underwater borrowers refinance into more affordable loans.

02/24/2010	-	MBA Develops Forbearance Program for Unemployed
DSNews.com		The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) has put forth a concept for a new forbearance program that would allow borrowers who have lost their jobs to remain in their homes while they seek new employment. According to the proposed program, loan servicers would reduce the borrower's mortgage payment for up to nine months while the homeowner looks for employment.

02/24/2010	-	New Housing Aid Will Target Hardest Hit States
Nuwire Investor		As part of the new housing rescue measures, additional federal aid coordinated by local agencies, through the Treasury Department, should soon reach at-risk mortgage holders in California, Florida, Michigan, Nevada and Arizona. The $1.5 billion plan, which could be extended to other struggling states, promises transparency while targeting relief to the communities that need it most. See the following article from Housing Predictor for more on this.

02/23/2010	-	11.3m Homeowners Now Underwater: First American
Housing Wire		11.3m homeowners now owe more on their mortgages than the value of their home at the end of Q409, with the Sand States taking four of the top five negative equity, or underwater, markets according to research released by First American CoreLogic.

02/22/2010	-	Slow Recovery May Be Leading to Serious Housing Shortages
Nation's Building News		Even as foreclosures continue to flood some of the worst-hit housing markets in the country, economists are beginning to sound the warning that todayÕs extremely low levels of new residential production could lead to significant housing shortages, especially among market-rate rental apartments, as household formation rates return to normal.

02/22/2010	-	Poll: Economists see 'healthy' expansion under way
Big Builder Online		Economists expect the recovery to remain "firmly on track" over the next two years though job growth is likely to remain slow, according to a new survey.

02/21/2010	-	80% of delinquent homeowners forecast to lose their homes
Arizona Real Estate Notebook,		John Burns Real Estate Consulting is a well respected national real estate economic consulting firm that focuses on new home builders as clients. They released a study last week estimating the United States has a shadow inventory of 5 million houses that will hit the market over the next few years.

02/20/2010	-	Builders Expect FHA's New Guidelines to Cost Them 10-15% of Sales
RISMEDIA		The housing market is still far from recovered, but builders in Southern California, Texas and the Northeast report that prices are increasing, either by way of reduced incentives or outright increases to base pricing, according to John Burns Real Estate Consulting February survey of new home builders.

02/17/2010	-	Parsing January's New Residential Construction Report
Seeking Alpha		Today's New Residential Construction Report continued to indicate a weak recovery for the new home market showing the continued year-over-year increases to both permits and starts.

02/11/2010	-	Citi's Foreclosure Alternative Allows Homeowners to Stay for Six Months
DSNews.com		As one of the nation's largest mortgage servicers, CitiMortgage is still contending with a deluge of foreclosures that just doesn't seem to be abating, despite stepped up mitigation efforts and government relief programs. On Thursday, the company announced a new pilot initiative that will allow distressed CitiMortgage borrowers to avoid foreclosure and remain in their homes for six months if they agree to sign over their property deeds to the lender.

02/10/2010	-	Are Home Prices Headed for a Double-Dip?
Seeking Alpha		A new report by Zillow shows that mid-2009 home price gains are increasingly turning into home price declines and that some major markets may soon see a dreaded "double-dip".

02/10/2010	-	Double Dip in Home Prices Threatens One in Five Markets
DSNews.com		Despite what seemed to be a flattening – and in some cases even a reversal – of home price declines last year, there are signs that the dreaded double dip is developing in as many as one in five markets, according to data released Wednesday by Zillow.

02/05/2010	-	FTC Rule Bans Up-Front Fees for Modifications
DSNews.com		The Federal Trade Commission has proposed a new rule that would prohibit third parties, including loan modification specialists and loss mitigation attorneys, from collecting payment for foreclosure prevention services until after they obtain a documented offer from a lender or servicer for a modification or other form of mortgage relief.

02/05/2010	-	More Homeowners Paying Credit Cards Before Mortgages: TransUnion
DSNews.com		A new study developed by TransUnion confirms that the new payment hierarchy — where consumers pay their credit cards prior to their mortgages — is continuing, with the trend occurring more readily than ever before.

02/03/2010	-	Battling Back, Home Builders Cut Prices, Work Faster
The Wall Street Journal		Home builders have lost half their share of the U.S. housing market in the past two years, largely because of competition from cheap foreclosed houses. In 2009 only 7.6% of the homes sold were newly constructed, down from the average of about 16% over the previous two decades.

02/03/2010	-	Don't Trust Pending Home Sales Data
Seeking Alpha		Pending home sales were up slightly in December from a month earlier and substantially from a year earlier, but this has less meaning than it used to. Pending home sales have correlated closely with actual sales closings historically. This can be seen in the following graph. It can also be seen that this relationship has broken down in 2008 and 2009.

02/02/2010	-	U.S. Home Ownership Rates Continue to Fall
Seeking Alpha		A smaller percentage of Americans owned their own homes in the 4th quarter of 2009 than at any time since 2000. In the 4th quarter 67.2% of Americans owned their own home, down from 67.6% in the third quarter and two full percentage points below the peak set in the fourth quarter of 2004.

02/01/2010	-	Bad Karma for Homebuilders: Starts Up, Sales Down
Seeking Alpha		The housing market news was been dismal last week. It has occupied my attention with two articles plus an Insta-blog. Last week, David Rosenberg, Chief Economist for Canada's Gluskin Sheff, posted an interesting discussion, with the following two graphs:

01/28/2010	-	Sun Belt Cities Continue to Lead Foreclosure Stats
DSNews.com		Cities in the Sun Belt continue to post the nation's highest foreclosure rates. According to the year-end metropolitan foreclosure report released by RealtyTrac Thursday, four states accounted for all top 20 foreclosure rates among large metro areas in 2009.

01/27/2010	-	New Home Sales Drop Back Near All-Time Lows
Seeking Alpha		Can it possibly get any worse for the homebuilders? Apparently so, given the most recent data on new home sales as reported by the Census Bureau a short time ago.

01/27/2010	-	Why the Decline in New Home Sales Is Bad News
Seeking Alpha		New Home Sales fell 7.6% in December from November to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 342,000. This was well below the consensus estimate of a 366,000 annual rate and even 8.6% below the year ago rate of 374,000. The major consolation in the report was that November was not as bad as first thought (the New Home Sales data is notorious for very large revisions) with a rate of 370,000 rather than the first reported rate of 355,000.

01/22/2010	-	FHA to Provide Early Relief to Struggling Homeowners
DSNews.com		In an announcement Friday, HUD said homeowners with mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) who are experiencing financial hardship are now eligible for loss mitigation assistance before they fall behind on their mortgage payments.

01/22/2010	-	Pool of First-Time Homebuyers May Be Drying Up: Report
DSNews.com		First-time homebuyers were the most visible segment of the home purchase market during a turbulent 2009, but new data released this week shows the market presence of this lucrative buying segment began to fall off as last year drew to a close

01/21/2010	-	Surge in Short Sale Requests Unlikely to Impact Housing Market
DSNews.com		Although short sales are likely to increase in 2010, the jump in these transactions is unlikely to have any real impact on the housing market, according to a new study by Housing Predictor

01/21/2010	-	Small Wonders
MarketWatch		New-home buyers responded to the tough times in 2009 by opting for smaller houses, driving down the average size of a house built in the U.S. for the first time in 27 years.

01/20/2010	-	Housing Starts vs. Skeptics
Seeking Alpha		Recovery skeptics are making a big deal of the fact that housing starts fell 4% in December (seasonally adjusted). Recovery fans are excited about the 10.9% rise in building permits, which would point to higher starts next month. I look at both these series and see signs that activity has probably stabilized and may be rising.

01/19/2010	-	NAHB Forecasts 754K Housing Starts by 4Q10, 1.22M by 4Q11
Big Builder Online		The pace of housing starts will speed up this spring, slow and perhaps reverse course at mid-year, and then re-accelerate next winter and into 2011, the National Association of Home Builders' chief economist forecast today.

01/14/2010	-	Foreclosures Eclipse Record in 2009
Housing Predictor		A record 2.8–million U.S. properties had foreclosure filings filed against them in 2009, representing a 21% increase in the number over the previous year and 120% above 2007, according to RealtyTrac's annual year-end report.

01/14/2010	-	U.S. Foreclosures May Rise to 3 Million This Year
Bloomberg.com		A record 3 million U.S. homes will be repossessed by lenders this year as high unemployment and depressed home values leave borrowers unable to make their house payment or sell, according to a RealtyTrac Inc. forecast.

01/12/2010	-	Home Prices Drop as Seasonal Chill Sets In
DSNews.com		National home prices fell 0.3 percent in November, the Denver-based default and valuation firm Integrated Asset Services, LLC (IAS) said Tuesday.

01/12/2010	-	Top 10 states for foreclosure
Bankrate.com		There's no humor in this top 10 list: The states hardest hit by foreclosure. And it's especially unfunny for homeowners and agents in Nevada, Florida, California and Arizona, who've languished in the top four for most of the real estate recession.

01/11/2010	-	Builders Warn of Debilitating Provision in Health Care Bill
Nation's Building News		As Congress moves to craft a final health care bill in the coming weeks, NAHB is leading the fight with other like-minded business groups to strip a jobs-killing provision in Senate legislation H.R. 3590 that would derail the fragile housing and economic recovery by placing a major financial burden on builders. The measure was approved by the Senate on Christmas eve by a 60 to 39 vote.

01/11/2010	-	Sun Belt struggles to begin recovery
Southern California Public Radio		On the surface, economic stress in some of the Sun Belt's hardest-hit counties appeared to ease in November. But beneath some positive numbers is a region struggling to rebound from the damage of the housing crisis and recession, according to The Associated Press' monthly analysis of economic stress in more than 3,100 U.S. counties.

01/10/2010	-	Huge Rise in Walkaways
Housing Predictor		A growing number of homeowners are doing what was once unthinkable – strategically walking away from mortgages, and the trend is showing huge signs of increasing with the approval of academia.

01/07/2010	-	Short Sale Madness
Housing Predictor		Distressed home sales in which the lender cooperates to cut the amount of principal owed are likely to increase in 2010, but the number of short sales is unlikely to have any real impact on the housing market, according to a new Housing Predictor study.

01/07/2010	-	Rental Vacancies: One More Pressure on Home Prices
Seeking Alpha		Housing rents have plunged to a 30 year low, according to Reiss & Co (a real estate market research company) as reported by Ilaina Jonas at Reuters. Apartment vacancies rose to 8% in the fourth quarter, also a 30-year high. The Reiss data is collected in metropolitan areas.

01/07/2010	-	Unemployment Plagues 25% of Distressed Homeowners: Study
DSNews.com		It's hard to argue that the hardships of unemployment aren't having a notable effect on the mortgage industry and pushing some borrowers into the at-risk column. An analysis of 400,000 homeowners in 2009 shows that nearly one in four needed access to employment services to help them keep their homes.

01/07/2010	-	Forty Percent of People Fear a Double-Dip Recession: Report
DSNews.com		In the most recent Wealth Hazards Worry Index, 40 percent of respondents believe the U.S. economy could enter another recession in 2010 if the government does not provide a stimulus plan. According to the index, 32 percent are unsure if this double-dip is imminent, and only 28 percent of people are confident no recession will occur this year.

01/07/2010	-	U.S. Housing: The Big Picture
Seeking Alpha		The typical essay I write in these pages is 700-1,500 words or so. Today's essay will be setting an all time record because my first 1,000 words are the following:

Last update: 05/04/2010