Archives: May 2008

The Candidates and the Crisis

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on May 28

Barack Obama visited Las Vegas, one of the hardest hit housing markets in the nation, and used it as a backdrop to unveil his fix for the mortgage mess....

Case-Shiller index makes the bottom of the housing market look more distant

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on May 27

S&P/Case-Shiller first quarter home price indexes released May 27 should be a reality check for anybody still arguing that the real estate market is bottoming out. The national index showed...

Home prices down and unsold listings way up

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on May 23

The big news in the April existing home price report released today by the National Association of Realtors wasn’t the 8% drop in median home prices or the better-than-expected 1%...

Angelo's at it Again

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on May 21

The Los Angeles Times has a piece today about an accidental email exchange between Countrywide chief Angelo Mozilo and a borrower trying to renegotiate his home loan. Angelo's angry...

This American Life, $1,000 bottles of Mortgage Bubbly

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on May 20

The public radio show This American Life had a great program on the housing bust on Sunday. It was called the Giant Pool of Money and it detailed how Wall...

Lowe's Gets Hammered

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on May 19

Big home improvement chain Lowe’s posted weak numbers today, a 19% decline in earnings, same store sales were down 8%. The stock dropped 2%. It was already 30% off...

Sales up, Prices still down in California

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on May 19

Has the giant and once-red hot California market hit bottom? I am reminded by the words of my former colleague who recently decided to put his house on the...

Donald Trump has found a buyer for his $100 million Palm Beach mansion

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on May 16

The Donald gets what The Donald wants. Well, at least when it came to his 80,000-square-foot Palm Beach mansion on County Road, which it looks like Donald Trump will be...

Is home construction activity really up?

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on May 16

Let me quickly dispel any notion that the 8.2% surge in housing starts in April reported by the Commerce Department on May 16 was a positive sign for real estate,...

One Man, Nine Foreclosures

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on May 14

On the same day the RealtyTrac reports that the nation’s foreclosure filings surged 65% in April to 243,353, Reuters has this wild tale of one man responsible for nine of...

The Millionaire Next Door

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on May 13

Well even with the housing market’s collapse and the stock market’s tumble at least some people are still rich. That’s according to the latest data from the market research...

NAR puts a good face on some really ugly housing data

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on May 13

It must be be getting tough for the National Association of Realtors to put a positive spin on the real estate market when prices in most of the more than...

"Mortgage Loan Welfare"

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on May 08

Figuring out a solution to the foreclosure crisis is turning out to be a divisive issue. Nobody wants to see people get kicked out of their home, but as my...

The Painful Cost of Foreclosure

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on May 08

Everyone knows the price of foreclosure on home owners. They lose a place to live, their credit rating, whatever down payment they made, their hopes, their dreams. New numbers...

Trulia, madly, deeply

Posted by: Peter Coy on May 07

Amid all the horrendous news on housing, one heart-warming thing about writing for this blog is seeing readers come to the aid of other readers. The best example is...

Builders offering price guarantees to lure buyers

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on May 07

Builders have been heavily discounting prices hoping to lure buyers back to the market. Prices for brand-new construction in some communities are very tempting and even comparable to bank-owned foreclosures,...

Your house is so underwater you need a submarine to get in the front door

Posted by: Peter Coy on May 06

You bought at the peak of the market. You put next to nothing down. (Maybe you even took out one of those 105% LTV loans to cover closing costs.)...

Is the National Media being too Harsh?

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on May 06

I came upon this little summary of recent housing data from Realty Times columnist Kenneth R. Harney yesterday. He argues that although recent the data still shows declining sales nationwide,...

Out of the frying pan, into the Fannie Mae

Posted by: Peter Coy on May 06

Douglas Duncan, who was chief economist of the Mortgage Bankers Association, sent a blast email today to all his business contacts saying that it's his first day as chief...

Don't Sell Your Beach House

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on May 01

There was an interesting article in today’s San Jose Mercury News talking about the latest census data and California’s demographics. White middle-class residents are leaving the state. The Hispanic...