In today’s Washington Post: "Let the punishment fit the crime. That is where the passion comes from," said Debi Averett, who launched the blog Housing Doom ( http://housingdoom.com) after getting priced out of the Phoenix market.   While the interview was more lengthy than this, The Q&A for these points was something like this: [Gotta take notes next time] Q: What do you think of Paulson’s plan? A. [In a nutshell] I don’t see foreclosure as a bad thing for borrowers, the plan only provides a psychological boost to the market, it affects too few borrowers to make a difference,…
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It’s friday, and Doomers all have "The Plan" proposed by the Bush administration on their minds.  If Mark Zandi chief economist of Moody’s Economy.com is right though, it won’t end up amounting to much: "I think the plan is good in theory," said Zandi, "but, in practice, it’s going to come up short. There are too many impediments to its widespread adoption by investors and servicers." Obstacles include contractual obligations between servicers and investors as well as logistical difficulties. When loans have been sliced up and resold through the securitization process, it can be hard to determine who ultimately has…
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The Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors (GLVAR) has released it’s November numbers, and it won’t be a surprise to anyone that the market continues to be in bad shape.  Expect the bulls to focus on inventory moderating ['Tis the season, and nothing to get worked up about] and that sales have been fairly flat the last few months.  While the bulls might say the market is "stabilizing", I believe the more accurate term would be "flatlining"  Here’s why:   [Who says I'm all "Doom and Gloom"?  Note today's festive holiday colors!]

Darn- the article was actually satire, but I liked the idea, anyway: Just in time for the holiday season, the Parker Brothers company is announcing a major revamping of its flagship board game in a new release it is calling, “Subprime Monopoly”. Whereas players in the original Monopoly earned money to buy and develop properties at fixed prices, in “Subprime Monopoly” players borrow obscene amounts of money to purchase overvalued properties with skyrocketing prices and borrowing costs. “With the advent of the ongoing housing bubble and mortgage loan crisis, we thought the time was right to make some major changes…
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This video is billed as an interview with "Top Phoenix Valley Agents."  These agents talk a lot about bringing a "positive energy" to the market:   My favorite solution for "turning the market" [7:58] How many realtors are there out there in Metro Phoenix that are actually practicing and working hard in real estate?  Maybe 25,000, 30,000 Realtors.  You’ve got roughly 30,000 that all you’ve basically got to do is, you’ve got the entire month, all you have to do in an entire month is go out and find one buyer, and put them into one transaction.  If everybody did…
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Many thanks to PR for sending this photo from Las Vegas:

Here’s the outspoken Jim Rogers, Chairman of Rogers Holdings on the Fed, the dollar and bailouts:  

We’re in the homestretch folks- 2007 is coming to an end.  We’ve gone from being told that "subprime is contained" to hearing that bailouts will save us. What do you think?  What  topics and stories remain untold or "under-told"?  We welcome your comments.

Every now and then I get an email from someone who wants to know if now is a good time to invest in short sales.  Not only that, L forwards me a couple of the mountain of real estate guru spam a week he receives.  These gurus are typically agents who can’t seem to make any money selling real estate themselves, so they make money telling you how to buy it.  Most of what the gurus are hyping these days are  foreclosures and short sales. [Short sales, for the uninitiated, are sales where the lender agrees to take less than…
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Hallelujahs were heard up and down Wall Street on Friday- homeowners and lenders were to be saved by a new plan to freeze mortgage resets: The Dow and S&P 500 rose yesterday, capping a dismal November with a four-day rally, as U.S. financial stocks rallied on optimism over a proposed rescue for struggling homeowners and on heightened expectations for more interest-rate cuts by the U.S. Federal Reserve. Banks and mortgage lenders were the standouts following a report that the U.S. Treasury will soon unveil a plan to help some homeowners facing foreclosure in the subprime mortgage crisis. The operative word…
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Thanks as always to M for our early November preview.  These are the numbers as of yesterday morning- so remember they might creep up just a bit: Active    56,694 UC          4,172 Sold        3,226 "   06      5,321 "   05      7,290 "   04      8,022 "   03      5,640   Expired November     3,835 Cancelled  "              5,088 Our early October preview showed sales of 3,457, so month- to-month we are seeing a decline as well as year-over-year.  You’ll note that sales have actually been declining every year since 2004.

I know this one has been kicking around the blogosphere for a couple of weeks, but I dig it out every couple of days and have a good laugh.