For the neophytes who’ve been thinking of getting into the world of foreclosures, I thought I would share this story: About seven years ago, Mr. Twist and I were in the market for a home.  We looked at a home in southeast Chandler, in the Phoenix SE Valley.  It was a large home with about an acre and a half, built around 1980.  I thought it needed updating, but at the right price, I thought it would be perfect.  Mr. Twist did not share my sentiment.  His talents far exceed my own when it comes to remodeling, and he was…
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Hat tip to PhxRealtor for the early notice last night, and also to M for letting us know we’ve crossed the 50,000 line.  This is from M: Total number of properties found   50,005 We reached the bottom last fall??  There has been a 25% increase in inventory in less than 90 days and sales are down 25% YOY in the  spring "buying season"!!  Wait till Q 3-4 when sellers really start to panic.   

It’s Op-Ed Friday, and today’s headline was shamelessly stolen from as bearish an Inman News article as I have seen.  They were quoting the U.K. Telegraph which states: America’s housing slump is more serious than widely believed and risks setting off a full-scale global crisis, Morgan Stanley has warned in a note to clients. The US bank said the sudden deterioration in the sub-prime sector knocked away the "cornerstone" of US household consumption and threatened contagion to a broader nexus of complex derivatives. "US sub-prime has the potential to turn into a real financial crisis. We do not make this…
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I owe my friend D___ a lot. His piercing remark at a donut shop last summer got me thinking hard about the prospects of the non-conforming mortgage sector and resulted in a post that may be worth re-reading even today. The text below remains basically unchanged. Where noted some links have died or been changed. The loss of access to the Fitch release [9] and Lingling Wei’s excellent and important article [15] are especially unfortunate. New readers of Housing Doom may be under the impression that the subprime crisis sprang up overnight, but this vintage post demonstrates the signs were…
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You would think that with all I read on increasing foreclosures, stagnating home sales and subprime lenders in meltdown, it would be pretty tough to scare me.  At least that’s what I thought until I read this from Bankrate: In the survey conducted by Gfk Roper, homeowners with mortgages were asked what type of mortgage they had. A stunning 34 percent of the homeowners had no idea. Here is the survey breakdown: 57% Fixed-Rate6%  ARM3% Interest Only34% Don’t know Compare this with the following information from Global Insight:

We talk a lot about the Phoenix housing market, but we rarely mention the market for the dirt underneath.  I thought Doomers would appreciate this update from M: Here’s a quick update on land parcels.  It’s a disaster…worse than housing.  Ever since the builders started "dumping" all their land and options, prices and volume have "fallen off a cliff".  SOLDS (LAST 30 DAYS)   247ACTIVES                      10,982 Absorption ratio measured in YEARS!!!  Three years and eight months….in case you were  wondering.  As you would expect, most commercial and infill residential lots are doing OK,  the glut of inventory is in the outlying areas.M

From the "You can’t say you weren’t warned department": I ran across this September 2005 article by Les Christie article on CNN Money entitled Housing Prices Can Go Down.  I rarely use articles of this vintage, but this one has material worth revisiting: "I think Americans are not well aware that many markets are risky," says Ingo Winzer, president of Local Market Monitor, which sells real-estate market analysis to corporate and consumer clients. Those investors should realize that price reversals do happen, even if only locally rather than nation-wide. A look at the not so distant past reveals numerous examples…
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The New Home Sales Report was released this morning by the Commerce Department:According to Reuters: New single-family home sales fell to an annual rate of 848,000 units from a downwardly revised rate of 882,000 in January, the Commerce Department said. Analysts polled by Reuters were expecting February sales to rise to 985,000 from the previously reported rate of 937,000 units in January The monthly decline was the second straight and the volume of sales fell to their lowest level since June 2000, when they hit 793,000. This represents a 3.9% decline month-over-month and 18.3% year-over-year.

John has escaped Doom castle this morning in pursuit of real life activities.  John is generally in charge of Igor’s care and feeding in the morning, so don’t worry if your comments take a little longer to post today.  When I can get Igor to stop chewing on them, I’ll dust off your comments and stick them up. The New Home Sales Report is out today- and as of Sunday evening, pundits were already declaring that February’s report will be a positive indicator for the market.  According to Bloomberg: Sales of new homes in the U.S. probably rebounded last month…
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Thank you M  for the latest Phoenix update!: ALL MLS [data from ARMLS] Sold March 1-24  ’07  3,968Sold March 1-24  ’06  5,144Percent change:  -23% Total inventory as of this morning:  49,533

Real estate doesn’t crash, Prices are "sticky" on the way down.  Sellers will not quickly give up appreciation.  You’ve probably heard variations on those themes from several sources. [including me] But those statements are not always strictly true.  Real estate prices can "crash," although that is not generally the expected outcome when a housing boom cools: How do booms usually end? Our look at history suggests that stagnation in home prices is often the most likely outcome. Of the 54 boom episodes prior to 1998, 45 did not see a subsequent bust. In these cases, nominal home prices rose by…
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Long time readers know that I love the mixed bag that is Realty Times.  One of my favorite columns is Ask Realty Times, which was fielded yesterday by Peter Miller.  There was a question asked yesterday that could have been written by a great many sellers across the country.  While Miller’s advice wasn’t bad, I thought I would run the question by Doomers- I suspect that there might be-um, alternate suggestions. [Please keep it clean and anatomically possible!] Here’s the question: My husband and I listed our home with a broker because he sold us this house several years ago….
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Thank you to Doomers who have emailed us this morning, warning us of a possible virus on the site.  Admin has requested that I post the following: One of the scripts in use on the site was incorrectly detected by users with "CA antivirus." The script has been rewritten, so that it will not be misdetected in the future.  There is no virus, and no threat to your computer.Any further questions, please feel free to contact me.  My apologies for any concern this may have caused.

The perennially optimistic David Lereah, chief economist of the National Association of Realtors, managed to put a happy face on an unhappy National Existing Home Sales Report: Some of the rise in home sales may be from mild weather that brought out shoppers in December, but fundamentals have improved in the housing market and buyers see a window now with historically-low mortgage interest rates and competitive pricing by sellers. Let’s take a look at some of these "improvements": Total existing-home sales- including single-family, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops- rose 3.9% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.69 million units in…
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John and I sure appreciate Doomers who help us "mine" for the sidebar.  The news comes fast these days, and judging from this Yahoo Finance article this morning, today won’t be any different: The housing report could justify some of the more upbeat sentiment about the housing sector in recent days. The Federal Reserve this week said an "adjustment" in the housing sector was continuing, offering some relief for investors left unnerved by the woes among so-called subprime mortgage lenders. Wall Street had grown concerned that an implosion among subprime lenders, which make loans to people with poor credit, could…
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