Housing Doom

From Cramer’s "Stop Trading" yesterday. 

Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae are “technically insolvent – and everybody knows it”.

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Floyd Norris of the New York Times accuses Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson of "whistling past the graveyard"- and he has a point:

It is natural for a government official to look for signs things are getting better. So we should not be surprised that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson yesterday pointed to the few signs there are of improvement in the housing market.

I’ve done my share of looking for signs of such improvement. At some point there has to be a bottom, but it is not easy to find evidence that the housing market is improving. One statistic he cited particularly struck me as whistling past the graveyard:

“We are working through the excess new home inventory – the inventory of new single family homes is down 21 percent from its 2006 peak.”

Apparently "down" is in the eye of the beholder:

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While "all real estate is local", some problems are popping up all over.  In spite of its reputation as one of the nation’s "better" housing markets, foreclosures are reaching new heights in Austin, TX:

In more evidence that the national housing troubles are hitting Central Texas, one of every 133 homes in Travis County was posted for foreclosure in the first six months of the year — compared with one in 265 homes in 2001.

The same trend prevailed in Williamson County, where one of every 95 homes was posted for foreclosure this year, compared with one in every 225 homes in 2001.

The calculations by Foreclosure Listing Service Inc. are a new way to look at the region’s rising foreclosures, which are higher than they were in 2004, when Central Texas was still in the doldrums of the tech bust.

They also answer those who say rising foreclosures simply reflect the increased number of homes in the region.

"That is certainly one of the components, along with several others, including lenient lending practices," said George Roddy Sr., president of the Addison company, which tracks foreclosures in many Texas cities.

But, he said, the contention "that today’s foreclosure posting rate on a per capita basis is not as bad as it was a decade ago does not fly."

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Thanks to Jared for telling us about a glitch at the Realtor.com website-

On my recent trip to the Realtor.com website I thought I’d check out their "Why use a realtor?" link.   The 4th paragraph from the bottom advertises their "Code of Ethics".  I love the fact that when you click the link it says "404 Not Found".

I had to check it out.  Here’s the "Why use a realtor?" page, paragraph four:

And here’s what you get when you click on the Code of Ethics: [Above link not live]

This confirms what we suspected.  While we know many real estate agents with their own personal code of ethics, [Including our own contributors and posters!] they do seem to be missing at the NAR!