Flat. Sort of like Mark Squidly’s loonie which finished yesterday at an amero-friendly $1.0000, with the buck basically hovering between C$1.00 and C$1.03 for over three months now. Talk about bedroom eyes; but I digress … So the Fed’s own holdings of MBS dropped once again by a material $16.259 billion that took the total figure south of $1 trillion for the first time since mid-February, while today’s modest moves brought the cenbanks’ treasuries number close to the figure from six weeks ago, the agencies one to that from eleven. Like at the end of ’09, somebody will have to…
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HousingDoom’s “Understatement of the Year Award” has to go to the Arizona Association of Realtors for this statement in their January Arizona Outlook : [Thanks L!] The underlying fundamentals for Arizona are somewhat weaker than is the case nationally, measured in terms of unemployment, distressed property, homeowner equity and commercial space availability. They offered as evidence the following chart:

Marcy’s fresh satire cut really close to the bone this time (if you’ve got flash try the VERSUS home page for best sound quality):

Are you tired of taxpayers being asked to pay for all of the housing/banking bailout programs?  How’s this for a new idea in bailout financing? Wall Street banks are on pace to pay out some $143 billion in compensation for 2010, just shy of their record year of 2007. But given the widespread layoffs of mid-level employees as a result of the financial crisis, average compensation set a record. At the top six banks, compensation rose 10 percent over 2007. By spending just half of that money elsewhere, the banks could modify the loans of every homeowner with an underwater…
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Two years ago I wrote a poem in honor of Christmas. I thought I would update it just a bit, and share it with you today. From myself, John, Igor, our admin, our contributors and the Twist clan, have a very Merry Christmas. Forget Housing Today- Merry Christmas Today it is Christmas, it’s time to forget, The rising foreclosures and national debt, Don’t think about swaps or about CDOs Forget “mark-to-model” and new home sale lows. Forget Tim, Ben and “Obama”, and CNBC, Forget bailouts and “robo-gate”, QE2,QE3. Derivatives? Who needs them- forget what they are. Forget credit crises both…
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The Fed’s own holdings of MBS dropped once again, but this week by a mere $0.445 and foreign central banks holdings rose, especially the Treasury Debt number. This week’s Reuters report1 was, as usual, based on the weekly update from the NY Fed’s H.4.1 table site.2 Here is Doom’s updated CSV version3 of the agencies and treasuries foreign central bank holdings data set. The treasuries number had been pretty flat over the last month or so, but perked right up this week. The Treasury Debt number grew by a robust $13.083 billion At $4.174 billion agencies’ growth came within about…
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Remember all those bad lenders that hired those “robo-signing” law firms?  Fannie and Freddie were not above hiring these firms and according to the Washington Post, they were at the forefront of the “fast and easy” foreclosure: Fannie and Freddie, the largest mortgage companies, shaped the practices being challenged in courtrooms around the country. They picked law firms that could foreclose fast and paid them based on how many foreclosures they could process. Speed was essential because delays cost the companies money – and, after they were taken over by the government two years ago, meant losses for taxpayers, too….
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Today’s headline from CNBC was New Home Sales Rise But Less Than Expected.  Here’s the “news” according to them: New U.S. single-family home sales rose in November but to a lower- than- expected rate , a government report showed on Thursday, highlighting the weakness in the housing market even as the broader economic recovery gains momentum. The Commerce Department said sales increased 5.5 percent to a seasonally adjusted 290,000 unit annual rate after a downwardly revised 275,000 unit pace in October. Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast new home sales rising to a 300,000 unit pace in November from a…
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Here’s a question for you.  If a lender gives a borrower a mortgage and the monthly payment on the loan is more than triple the borrower’s income, if the house goes into foreclosure, is it the borrower’s fault, or the lenders? Consider the story of Katherine Christensen of Gilbert, AZ. [Thanks L!] She had bought the house with her husband in 1999 and completely renovated it, adding hardwood floors, faux-painted walls, a swimming pool in the back surrounded by palms and ficus trees. When the couple divorced in 2001, she kept the house and paid it off. Then, in 2006,…
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Just for fun let’s start with a bit of silly dialog from a two-decades old sci-fi novel … xxx… “And the government files that Demosthenes published–they were genuine.” xxx“Yes.” xxx“But Father–you joined many others in claiming that they were forgeries.” xxx“Just as the gods speak only to a chosen few, so the secrets of the rulers must be known only to those who will use the knowledge properly. Demosthenes was giving powerful secrets to people who were not fit to use them wisely, and so for the good of the people those secrets had to be withdrawn. The only way…
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Foreclosures have dropped, but look for a correcting spike in the new future.  Fewer foreclosures aren’t signalling the illusive “housing recovery”, but are a result of the slowdown caused by the “Robo-signing Scandal”. The robo-signing moratoriums were responsible for the lion’s share of the decrease in November filings, said Rick Sharga, spokesman for RealtyTrac. “I wish the report was actually good news,” he said. “But it’s just an artificial drop. For most borrowers in foreclosure, it will be a temporary reprieve.” As evidence, Sharga pointed out that in judicial foreclosure states, ones where courts are involved and where banks are…
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This quote was just too funny.  Anyone who gets out at all is liable to get a laugh from this statement by Sam Zell, the billionaire CRE pumping man: [Thanks L!] Real estate is all about supply and demand.  We haven’t built anything in this country since July ‘07. We’re not building anything right now. “If there is no new supply, then the catastrophe that everybody was expecting isn’t going to happen,” Zell, 69, said in a telephone interview. “Commercial real estate is not suffering and is in fact getting better,” said Zell, the founder of Equity Office Properties Trust,…
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Just when it seems that that the housing market couldn’t look much worse, rising interest rates are threatening a comatose housing market: A slump in government-backed mortgage bonds that’s sent yields to the highest level since May is threatening a recovery in the U.S. housing market, which had been bolstered by record-low borrowing costs. Yields on Fannie Mae-guaranteed securities that most affect loan rates jumped as high as 4.21 percent yesterday, an increase of 1 percentage point from an all-time low in October, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. They ended New York trading at 4.1 percent. Higher loan rates…
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Fewer homeowners are underwater.  That’s because more foreclosures means that more properties belong to the bank. [Thanks L!] NEW YORK – The number of homeowners who owe more than their houses are worth fell for the third straight quarter this summer. About 10.8 million households, or 22.5 percent of all mortgaged homes, were underwater in the July-September quarter, housing data firm CoreLogic said Monday. That’s down from 23 percent, or 11 million households, in the second quarter. But the decline came mainly because more homes had fallen into foreclosure and not because home prices had increased. The ranks of underwater…
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The Fed’s own holdings of MBS were unchanged this week and foreign central banks holdings of both treasuries and agencies shrank modestly, continuing a trend of stagnation. This week’s Reuters report1 was, as usual, based on the weekly update from the NY Fed’s H.4.1 table site.2 Here is Doom’s updated CSV version3 of the agencies and treasuries foreign central bank holdings data set. The treasuries trend continues to sputter, much like it did around the end of last year. The Treasury Debt number turned around to a contraction of $2.872 billion. Agencies’ shrinkage nearly matched that of treasuries, reducing by…
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