Housing Doom Housing Bubble Blog

Yes that’s the actual headline from a story Monday in the Portland Business Journal. Perhaps it’s just a case of truth in advertising.  The story continues …

“Beginning this fall, Marylhurst University will offer its bachelor of science in real estate studies program online.

The program will be delivered in an accelerated format that can be completed in as little as 26 months. All courses in this new program will be administered online in five-week segments. No campus visits by students will be necessary. Students can study at their own pace to work around busy schedules.”

I do believe they’re serious.

Wallflowers at the Alt-A dance

It’s ironic. Some of the best news to come along in months for Freddie and Fannie is contained in a story about how the big GSEs are threatened with a loss of their customary market dominance.[1] It seems F&F have been steadily losing market share during the historic US housing bubble. Even with steady increases in limits to the mortgage loans they can guarantee, escalating house prices have pushed more and more loans into the expanding jumbo mortgage market. Worse, both the GSEs and the jumbo lenders have strict standards with respect to documentation of income, etc. for the borrower. Many of those who can’t meet these standards but who are for other reasons attractive candidates as mortgage customers fall into what’s called Alternative A, or Alt-A. The housing bubble has spawned a horde of new non-conforming Alt-A mortgages, enough so that an industry think tank is now predicting that F&F, excluded from this class of loans, may never again be the dominant players in the US mortgage industry. Things may not, however, be as dire as they seem, at least for Fannie and Freddie.

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