The foreclosure mess continues

August, 13 at 9:42 am

More bad numbers from RealtyTrac this morning:

The foreclosure plague continued to devastate last month.

There were more than 360,000 properties with foreclosure filings — including default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions — an increase of 7% from June and 32% from July 2008, according to RealtyTrac, an online marketer of foreclosed homes. In fact, one in every 355 U.S. homes had at least one filing during July.

We have been warning of the second wave of foreclosures on this blog and unfortunately, we were right.

The jump occurred as several foreclosure moratoriums phased out. They were initiated by many states to give the administration’s foreclosure-prevention efforts time to work. But for many help did not come: The modification and refinancing programs have met with less success than hoped.

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Bloomberg: Home Price Declines Accelerate

August, 12 at 10:48 am

Here is an interesting piece of the article on Bloomberg:

Aug. 12 (Bloomberg) — Home price declines in the U.S. accelerated in the second quarter, dropping by a record 15.6 percent from a year earlier, as foreclosures weighed on values.

The median price of an existing single-family home dropped to $174,100, the most in records dating to 1979, the National Association of Realtors said today.

“I don’t think we’re at a bottom yet in home prices,” said Scott Anderson, a senior economist at Wells Fargo & Co. in Minneapolis. “There’s also a pretty big shadow supply of houses. People are kind of waiting for the bottom but there’s a pent up supply out there.”

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Home prices have not bottomed yet

August, 11 at 3:45 pm

Posted in California Housing Crash, Florida Housing Crash, Real Estate | No Comments »

The U.S. might have 30% of mortgages “underwater”

August, 11 at 2:47 pm

We found this on Bloomberg:

Aug. 11 (Bloomberg) — Almost one-quarter of U.S. mortgage holders owed more than their homes were worth in the second quarter and that figure may rise to as much as 30 percent by mid-2010 as job losses and foreclosures climb, Zillow.com said.

Homeowners are being hurt by price declines. The estimated median value for single-family houses slid to $186,500 in the period, a 12 percent drop from a year earlier and the 10th consecutive quarterly decrease, the Seattle-based real estate data service said in a report today.

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Half of the single-family mortgages in South Florida are “underwater”

August, 11 at 10:30 am

This from the Sun Sentinel:

Nearly half of the single-family mortgage holders in South Florida owe more than their houses are worth, a worrisome reminder of the region’s 3 1/2-year housing slump.

In Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties, 47 percent of the 837,177 single-family home mortgages are “underwater,” according to a second-quarter report released today by Zillow.com, a real estate company that compiles data from public property records.

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Roubini says: Double-Dip Recession still possible

August, 3 at 12:23 pm

CNBC reports the following:

The United States, Europe and Japan still face the possibility of a double-dip recession and at the very least will experience below-potential economic growth for the next couple of years, economist Nouriel Roubini told CNBC Monday.

The double-dip is still possible because of very large budget deficits that are being monetized by monetary-policy authorities

If central banks continue to monetize the deficits, “long-term bond yields may go higher, and they may crowd out the economic recovery leading to a double dip,” he said.

Posted in Politics, Bailout News, The Economy, Real Estate | No Comments »

More bank failures ahead

August, 1 at 2:18 pm

Posted in Bailout News, Politics, California Housing Crash, Florida Housing Crash, The Economy, Real Estate | 1 Comment »

The next wave of foreclosures

July, 30 at 3:32 pm

Excellent report on CNNMoney:

Cities in just four states — California, Florida, Arizona and Nevada — captured 29 of the top 30 places with the highest foreclosure rates, according to a report issued by RealtyTrac on Thursday. Greeley, Colo., was the only outsider, coming in at 29th.

Many cities with populations larger than one million experienced rapid increases in foreclosure during the past six months. Seattle, for example, wasn’t the worst hit city, but it experienced the biggest increase in the rate of filings. While a relatively small 1 in 107 homes received notices, that is a 72% jump compared with the same period a year ago. In second place was Minneapolis, where the filing rate grew by 58.6% to 1 in 90 homes; Phoenix spiked 51.7% to 1 in 22.

Posted in Politics, Credit Crunch, Bailout News, California Housing Crash, The Economy, Florida Housing Crash, Real Estate | No Comments »

Ben Bernanke on PBS - Part Three

July, 28 at 11:21 pm

Posted in Credit Crunch, Politics, Bailout News, The Economy, Real Estate | No Comments »

Ben Bernanke on PBS - Part Two

July, 28 at 10:36 pm