Archives: March 2007

Apartment Or Sensory Deprivation Tank?

Posted by: Peter Coy on March 30

Here's the public relations spiel about this new luxury residential building at 20th Street and Sixth Avenue in Manhattan: The development is inspired by the infinite potential of a...

Did Subprime Loans Increase Homeownership?

Posted by: Peter Coy on March 28

Here's an email that Alan White of Community Legal Services in Philadelphia sent to a bunch of reporters this morning. Agree or disagree? There is a useful fiction that is...

How many unsold homes in Fla? THIS many...

Posted by: Dean Foust on March 27

This report from the CBS 4 web site provides a snapshot on Florida's housing market. This factoid says it all: "At the current sales pace, it would take nearly three...

Are there "victims" in foreclosures?

Posted by: Dean Foust on March 26

Journalist Kirstin Downey at the Washington Post has an article today that's burning up the Internet today - and burning up a few bloggers who are staunch proponents of self-determination...

New homes sales: down, down, down

Posted by: Dean Foust on March 26

Remember a couple of months ago when homebuilders were citing home sales data as evidence that the housing downturn had bottomed and stabilized? So much for that. The Commerce Dept....

Guess who is insourcing furniture production?

Posted by: Dean Foust on March 26

I grew up in North Carolina, and the middle swath of the state was the capital of the U.S. furniture industry. No more. All those revered manufacturers -- Broyhill, Drexel...

Home sales up, but....

Posted by: Dean Foust on March 23

What’s wrong with this picture? Amid all the sturm und drang surrounding housing, the government reported earlier today that existing-home sales rose by nearly 4% in February—a surprise given that...

Help for Subprime Borrowers?

Posted by: Peter Coy on March 22

At first glance, helping out subprime borrowers who are in a pinch seems like a no-brainer. How can the government stand by while people get thrown out on the street...

Canary in the coal mine?

Posted by: Dean Foust on March 21

Bill Fleckenstein is a private money manager who has always found time over the years to write a regular column for MSN Money and others. Fleckenstein is a card-carrying contrarian,...

The ultimate irony

Posted by: Dean Foust on March 21

Where in the US can you buy a home for less than the price of a new car? You're probably thinking somewhere in Montana or South Dakota, or perhaps the...

Fallout from the subprime bust

Posted by: Dean Foust on March 20

Much ink has been spilled on the number of subprime lenders that have failed (and if you're keeping score at home, the Implode-O-Meter provides an up to the minute list.),...

Housing Starts Up, But Permits Still Falling

Posted by: Peter Coy on March 20

Starts on construction of single-family homes rose 9% in February, the government said today. But before you get too excited that the bust is over, consider this: The increase was...

Naples, Fla., Still the Most Overvalued; Dallas and College Station-Bryan, Tex., Are the Most Undervalued

Posted by: Peter Coy on March 19

Now that you've read the headline you don't need to read the item--that about sums it up. But in case you want some details: Global Insight Inc., the Waltham (Mass.)...

Homebuilder Confidence Sags

Posted by: Peter Coy on March 19

With their subprime customers getting frozen out of financing, can you blame homebuilders for getting a little more worried? The National Association of Home Builders reported today that the NAHB/Wells...

Apocalypse Now?

Posted by: Dean Foust on March 16

No secret that subprime is the story of the day. A Wall Street Journal story from today (registration required) said that economists polled predicted subprime would depress housing activity this...

Guess Which Stock Is Soaring? Subprime Biggie New Century

Posted by: Peter Coy on March 16

The stock market is a strange jungle. Proof: One of the best-performing stocks of the past two days has been New Century Financial Corp., which until very recently was the...

Mortgage Bankers' Economist: 'The Market Is Working'

Posted by: Peter Coy on March 14

I wasn't too surprised yesterday to hear the chief economist of the Mortgage Bankers Association say--in reference to the subprime meltdown--that "the market is working." There is a school of...

Realtor.com takes on Zillow.com

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on March 12

Home pricing site Zillow.com caused a huge sensation when it started offering its Zestimates on what people's houses are worth. All the attention (and online traffic) has spurred rival Realtor.com...

High-Density Housing Can Be a Good Thing

Posted by: Peter Coy on March 12

I want to tell you about a new book, but first take this quiz: A. The development of tall buildings on the left has denser housing. B. The development of...

The 100-mile Rule

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on March 09

The latest data from ratings agency Standard & Poors shows just how fast the market for sub-prime mortgages has fallen. The agency saw a nearly 28% decline in issuance of...

Kitchen Remodelings Are Getting Deluxe

Posted by: Peter Coy on March 08

Architects say these are the latest trends in kitchens: --Bigger pantries --Wine storage areas --Recycling centers --Duplicate appliances --Computer work areas --Warming drawers --Separate areas for food preparation (and...

The Most Popular Real Estate Websites

Posted by: Peter Coy on March 07

Here are the 20 most popular real estate websites as ranked by Hitwise, which tracks the number of visitors each site gets based on a sample of 10 million Internet...

When real estate insiders grow pessimistic...

Posted by: Dean Foust on March 06

Real estate professionals are inherently optimistic. Home prices going up? Now's the time to buy, before they go higher! Home values collapsing? Now's the time to buy, when you can...

Why Not Grade Borrowers Like Meat?

Posted by: Peter Coy on March 06

I have a modest proposal for our friends in the subprime mortgage industry, who got immensely rich over the past five years making bad loans to people who were in...

The new exit strategy: A short sale

Posted by: Dean Foust on March 05

For all the homeowners who are upside down and can no longer make their mortgage payment (because of either a job loss, divorce, or an option ARM that's resetting higher),...

The Exurbs of New York, L.A., and Miami

Posted by: Peter Coy on March 02

You may have heard that prices are holding up pretty well in New York City, L.A., and Miami. That's true for the cities themselves (leaving aside Miami's overbuilt condo market)....

Home Sellers and Scalpers

Posted by: Peter Coy on March 01

Rafi Mohammed, a pricing expert, makes this interesting analogy between home sellers and scalpers on his blog: The panic that could occur in the housing market is akin to what...

OFHEO Says House Prices Rose in Fourth Quarter--Check Out Your Own City

Posted by: Peter Coy on March 01

The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight says that house prices rose 1.1% in the fourth quarter of 2006 from the third-quarter level. That put them 5.9% higher than they...