It’s Friday, and while vacancies are supposed to be down from the first quarter, it looks like they are headed up again:
Oct. 29 (Bloomberg) — About 18.8 million homes stood empty in the U.S. during the third quarter as banks seized properties from delinquent borrowers and new home sales fell in September.
The number of vacant properties, including foreclosures, residences for sale and vacation homes, rose from 18.4 million a year earlier and 18.7 million in the second quarter, the U.S. Census Bureau said in a report today. The record high was in the first quarter, when 18.95 million homes were vacant. The homeownership rate, meaning households that own their own residence, stood at 67.6 percent.
The reporter must have needed a positive comment- this seems to be the happy thought de jour:
“We are bumping along the bottom of the housing market,” said James Lockhart, vice chairman of WL Ross & Co. and the former director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. “There is the potential for another swing down.”
Somehow that reminds me of Robert Toll’s famous "dancing on the bottom" comment back in 2006- we all know how well that one worked out.
Anything else out there working out- or not? This is an open thread, so let us know what’s on your mind.
“bumping along the bottom”. For some reason, that brought the image to mind of the old western movies, where the bad guy got lassoed and dragged along behind the horse, bumping around among the rocks and cactus.
Linenoise-
Maybe it’s a more apt metaphor than I thought. The guys who got dragged along behind the horse were always in bad shape when it was over.
I believe Ryskamp’s comment yesterday about the loan mods though. When foreclosures are driven by unemployment, loan mods won’t help, and I suspect that for the most part, the folks who are trying to get out of the wonky loans have pretty much already got their applications in.
Maybe this particular horse is running downhill.
I think you should do a series of remembering X posts – what the talking heads were saying as the markets were crashing, just to remind everyone of their credibility. Perhaps once a year for the next 2 or 3.
Yes Igor, they should be “sorry.”