Housing Doom

Many thanks as always to M for our sales numbers.  The inventory did not drop as much this year as in past years and has been climbing in recent weeks, sales however are lower than we’ve seen them in a long time.  Remember these are our "preview" numbers, and the sales numbers will climb a bit as agents have a couple of days to enter sales:

Active      55,179
UC             4,734
Sold           2,815
 
Jan 07       4,344
Jan 06       5,244
Jan 05       6,586   
Jan 04       5,103
Jan 03       4,763
Jan 02       4,039  
Jan 01       3,703
Jan 00       3,282

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It’s Friday, and it’s becoming clearer that the "Goldilocks economy" is falling and may not get up.  Economist Nouriel Roubini describes the possible chain reaction that could bring down the house of cards:

The current financial system is a subprime financial system, lacking transparency and one in which a contagion could readily spread from the subprime mortgage market to other areas of the credit market.



The flow looks something like this:



From



• Subprime to

• Near Prime to

• Prime to

• Consumer Credit to

• Auto Loans to

• Credit Cards to

• Student Loans to

• Commercial Real Estate to

• Leveraged Loans to

• LBOs to

• Corporate Bonds

 [Thanks to Oc-Ed for the great cartoon.]

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Ah, the empty calories that pass for breakfast anymore:

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