Housing Doom

Qatar’s $40 Billion Fund May Seek 10% Stake in EADS / petrodollar impact

http://immobilienblasen.blogspot.com/2007/02/petrodollar-impact-qatar-40-billion.html

I thought this one was interesting: [hat tip L!]

Report finds residential real estate underperforms other assets

Don’t count on home equity to come through with a significant portion of retirement funding, cautions a new report by Fidelity Investments. According to the study, home values underperformed stocks and bonds over every five- and 10-year period from 1963 to 2005. Home values have been slightly above the returns on treasury bills during the same time, according to the report, "The Equity You Live In: The Home as a Retirement Savings and Income Option."

wanted to add something to the petrodollar link

here is a very good interview with the sheikh of qatar on petrodollars

http://www.bloomberg.com/avp/avp.htm?clipSRC=mms://media2.bloomberg.com/cache/vDmGNihdPLYU.asf

Report finds residential real estate underperforms other assets
…
Over the more than 40-year period, real compound returns on stocks outpaced that of residential real estate, according to the study, with 5.95% average annual returns on stocks compared with 1.35% in realty. …

The median price of new homes in the United States has risen since the early 1970s, with an average annual appreciation rate of 5.9% since 1963.

?? How could a house appreciate by 1.35% when median price was growing by 5.9% over the same time frame?

There’s something wrong with the math or the wording.

NVMike (comments ##3,7) -

As Mrs. M might say: “If this author came in soaking wet and said it was raining, I’d still check.” Ms Hoak has written some really awful articles over the last several months, but she gets massive exposure in the MSM. Indeed she has the honor of exposing perhaps Doom’s original egregious REIC quote: “The downside of real estate is better than the downside on just about anything else”, that written last August in a story almost perfectly backwards from the present one.

Returning to business, that 5.9% figure fails the smell test. There’s no hint how that figure was arrived at. I think you’d get something close to that if you added all the nominal increases going back to ‘63 and divided the sum by 44, but I’m only guessing. Her alluding to the three down-periods might suggest a calculation that brain-dead.

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“Report finds residential real estate underperforms other assets”, by Amy Hoak, MarketWatch / Yahoo Finance, February 14, 2007.

The median price of new homes in the United States has risen since the early 1970s, with an average annual appreciation rate of 5.9% since 1963. But there have also been sharp corrections three times during the time period. It’s one thing if the homeowner is able to “ride out” the sharp downturns; it’s another if they’re considering the home as a potential retirement asset in the near future, the report said.

hi john,

i´ve made a post in back in september.

to be honest i´ve really forgotten this data and have only found it putting up the new fnm and fre post.

have to read it twice this morning……

http://immobilienblasen.blogspot.com/2006/09/fannie-mae-could-be-hit-hard-by.html

Rip Van Winkle / hussman

http://www.hussmanfunds.com/wmc/wmc070220.htm

The New Road to Serfdom

http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthread.php?t=966

I’ve been away from the US for nearly forty years, and found this deeply shocking. Is this, like, normal?

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“The Theme-Parking, Megachurching, Franchising, Exurbing, McMansioning of America: How Walt Disney Changed Everything”, by T. D. Allman, Photographs (in the magazine itself, although a telling one heads the online version) by David Burnett, National Geographic, March 2007.

The megachurch is the culmination, at least so far, of the integration of religious practice into the freeway-driven, market-savvy, franchise form of American life. The emergence of Orlando’s largest megachurch, the First Baptist Church, from a small congregation into a powerful, wealthy organization, parallels Orlando’s own transformation. The turning point came, as in many Orlando stories, when a sense of mission intersected with a real estate opportunity.

signs of a market top / kass

http://immobilienblasen.blogspot.com/2007/02/signs-of-market-top-kass.html

lbo madness / refinancing within months…..

http://immobilienblasen.blogspot.com/2007/02/lbo-madness-refinancing-within-month.html

Citigroup Property closes $1.29 billion fund

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/citigroup-property-closes-129-billion/story.aspx?guid=%7BFF2DC700%2D0EB9%2D499F%2DAC8B%2D2DDEF7918DF9%7D

that is really the big big ?

U.S. Current-Account Deficit Deserves Some Noise

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=aWuQCgZ0ewDU&refer=home