Any way you look at it, the New Home Sales numbers were down: Sales of new one-family houses in January 2007 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 937,000, accordingto estimates released jointly today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and UrbanDevelopment. This is 16.6 percent (±12.8%) below the revised December rate of 1,123,000 and is 20.1 percent(±9.4%) below the January 2006 estimate of 1,173,000. Note the high margin of error for these figures.  That does cast some uncertainty as to the extent of the decline. According to CNBC: The monthly decline was the sharpest…
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If you listen to some of the cheerleaders in the real estate industry, they have concluded that the housing industry has "stabilized."  One of the reasons given is that speculators have left the market, and now the market only consists of people buying homes for themselves. A quick glance at the Arizona Republic classifieds yields a different story.  Here are some of the funding ads from last weekend: $$$ Private Real Estate Loans That Don’t Cost an Arm & leg Call Dennis 520-XXX-XXXX   12% "Hard Money" RE Equity Loans 602-XXX-XXXX    Bridge Loans $200,000 to 10 million. Direct lenders National/International….
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Lereah’s headline on today’s National Association of Realtors (NAR) press release was "Existing Home Sales Improve in January."  All the Bloomberg pundits this morning were celebrating a 3.5% increase in existing home sales.  According to my version of Excel though, January’s sales number of 6.46 million is LESS than last January’s 6.75 million.  The 3.5% increase was month-over-month.  The seasonal nature of real estate means that year-over-year numbers are always the more significant: Year-over-year sales were down 4.3%.

It’s Lereah Day.[1] Near the end of each month, NAR’s chief economist releases statistics on the previous month’s existing home sales. The Mainstream media avidly follows these numbers and Lereah’s (often hyper-optimistic) comments. The January analysis has just been released.[2]

One of America’s greatest 20th Century poets leads off Doom’s week. Elizabeth Bishop was born in Massachusetts, but spent much of her early childhood in Nova Scotia, at a very small community called Great Village, just east of Lower Economy. Doomers can read this two ways, but it’s really just about a place near the Bay of Fundy.     For M.B.S., buried in Nova Scotia                                         by Elizabeth Bishop           Yes, you are dead now and live only there, in a little, slightly tip-tilted graveyard where all of your childhood’s Christmas trees are forgathered           with the present they meant to give,…
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Last Wednesday the Arizona Republic ran an article on the expansion of Arizona State University’s construction school.  In the print version on page D5 was a list of statistics provided by the Arizona Chapter of the Associated General Contractors. [no link provided]  Here are some of those numbers: The constructioin industry employed about 242,800 people in Arizona last year, representing about 1 out of every 11 jobs statewide.  Another 750,000 people work in fields that support the industry. The state’s General Fund collected more than $1 billion in sales taxes from contractors in 2006. Construction accounted for 9.5% of the…
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Hat tip to L, and kudos to Catherine Reagor for breaking this story: Regulators have shut down Mesa-based Eagle First Mortgage and its more than 75 Valley branches, citing illegal lending practices.The Arizona Department of Financial Institutions pulled the license of the mortgage firm and its broker, David Sanchez, last week. Regulators described more than 100 illegal money transactions, loan activities and hiring practices. The firm, one of the largest that Financial Institutions has shut down, has until March 14 to finish any outstanding loans and close its doors. Implode-o-meter currently lists 24 lenders that have shut their doors since…
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Maybe Super-Freddie will have to go it alone. A few days ago Freddie Mac CEO Richard Syron was pleading with government and regulators to unleash the big GSEs so they could help "stabilize" the mortgage market in its hour of need. Then last Friday Fannie Mae’s boss, Dan Mudd, assured the markets [1] that Fannie’s exposure to the riskiest mortgages was minimal. This did not sound like a company eager to gorge on the same paper that has sunk two dozen warehouse lenders since last December. Still, with audited Fannie financials up to ten months away, we’ll need to study…
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This past week was a "Houston we have a problem." scenario for subprime lenders and the wider financial markets.  Mortgage originations are down, poor loan quality has forced a number of lenders to buy back loans, and our friend Aaron at Implode-o-meter has been busy tracking the body count. As a result of all of this, there are those lenders (not all, but enough) who in their anxiousness to win your business, might not want to interest you in all the messy little details like say, what this loan is REALLY costing you.Hat tip to L, for sending us the…
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This [1] just posted on the IMH web site. ________________________ Notes and References [1]: "Impac Mortgage Holdings, Inc. Reports Net (Loss) Earnings of $(66.3) Million for 2006 Compared to $270.3 Million for 2005: Estimated Taxable Income Was $79.5 Million for 2006 Compared to $142.9 Million for 2005", Company Press Release, PRNewswire – Source: Impac, February 22, 2007. IRVINE, Calif., Feb. 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Impac Mortgage Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: IMH) ("IMH", "Impac" or "the Company"), a real estate investment trust ("REIT"), today reported a net (loss) of $(66.3) million or $(1.06) per diluted common share for 2006, as compared to net…
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It’s the last Friday of a short month.  While the market has slowed though, the news coming out of the housing industry has not.  John and I can’t track down all the news ourselves, so we appreciate it when you send us your links, stories, comments and insights.

Yesterday was a good day for the bears, but there was such a blizzard of information it was hard to keep it all straight. The sidebar must have turned over at least once, so this post will mostly just try to capture links to a few of the stories covering some of the important themes. WireGuy P. Jackson was one of many writers [1] who posted [2] trying to make sense of number 16 (according to Implode-O-Meter) subprimer NovaStar Mortgage’s 4Q earnings reports released late Tuesday. After the company’s stock imploded on Wednesday, losing about a third of its value,…
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Hat tip to the Judge, who sent me an article that temporarily confused me.  I was astounded when In Business Las Vegas was quoting the always bullish Dennis Smith as saying: Don’t be surprised if some homebuilders "close their store" in Las Vegas this year. I don’t often find myself agreeing with Smith- so I read on anxiously.  Unfortunately, he continued in a more familiar vein: "It looks like it’s difficult for the builders to replace the lots they are absorbing," Smith said. "If a builder stopped buying land six months ago, they didn’t stop selling houses. Call any builder…
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OK, so it’s ’007 Year of the Bond, not to mention The Year of the Pig, but do the GSEs really have superpowers? [1] What we do know is that the situation in subprime is calling for a superhero, and when a Fed Governor minimizes the problem [2] you know her minimal problem is significant. So it was timely earlier this month when Freddie Mac CEO Richard Syron showed up with a phone booth under one arm and a change of clothes under the other. His message? If Congress and the Administration let Fannie and Freddie loose, they can help…
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Blanche Evans in a Realty Times article yesterday wrote a sunny piece entitled "Will Investors Buy Homes in 2007?" that would make Lereah proud.  She said of difficulties faced by investors currently: What’s missing for investors, at least temporarily, is the momentum of price appreciation, which allowed investor/speculators quick capital gains that they weren’t seeing in any other form of investment. That means that investors in the current market are moving from flipping homes to buying and holding. The strategy is to take advantage of high inventories to choose wisely, hold longer term and then cash in at the next…
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