Housing Doom Housing Bubble Blog

I can feel for this guy– but I think he needs to find another industry:

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It’s been a while since Housing Doom has resorted to poetry. Long time Doomers will recall, perhaps like a traffic accident, our infamous Haiku Contest, and a memorable digression in the comments that dealt with Robert Hass’ command of Japanese.

Occasionally, Doom will draft the great masters into commenting on housing issues (sort of). There was Elizabeth Bishop on MBS (followed by an incautious invitation to Limericks), Lorna Crozier on REOs, and even Tom Donnelly and his merry band from PNAC waxing poetic on the possibilities for germ warfare.

Well, it’s that time of year again, and we’ve advanced from Writing Poetry all the way up to Writing Poetry (Advanced). As usual, serendipity comes to the rescue, and this week’s homework contributed the following biting commentary on the ABCP crisis.

… I think in the marked up annals of recorded
evolutionary history mind will turn out to have been

nova-like, say; a pressure of chance built up
nature had to take, the slide toward the slow explosion
of searching risk … [1]

Well, not if Mervyn, Ben and the gang can help it It’s Rollover Monday and N Rock’s still rock’n.  Who cares if the financial news is completely incomprehensible … Let’s Rock N Roll!

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On Friday Jay Butler of ASU Realty Studies released his home sale report for August:

With 4,240 recorded sales in August 2007, the local resale housing market continues its uninspiring march. The activity of August followed July 2007 at 4,330 sales and was below last year’s 5,685 transactions. The month of August brought the year-to-date total to 37,750 sales, which is well below the 47,515 for 2006 year to date and 78,935 sales for 2005 year to date.

If you don’t have your calculator handy, that works out to a 2% decrease month-to-month and a 25% decrease year-over-year:

As for the median price:

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