Last year the state of Arizona started the Save My Home AZ program with $125 million from the Obama administration.  And now, nearly a year later, the program has saved exactly ONE home: [Thanks M!] Of the 1,055 Arizona home­owners who have applied, only one has qualified for help from the program. A National Bank borrower is slated to get $40,000 knocked off a distressed home loan. Executive Vice President Greg Wessel declined to give details about the borrower, but he said two or three more are up for approval.

HAMP, the Home Affordable Mortgage Program has been an expensive, miserable failure– and with luck, it’s history. [Hat tip M.R.!] WASHINGTON — Three leading House Republicans have introduced legislation to repeal the Home Affordable Modification Program, the Obama administration’s signature foreclosure-relief effort, calling it a “colossal failure” and seconding an inspector general report that found the program ultimately left many participating homeowners worse off. By most objective measures, the diagnosis of failure is a fair one. HAMP has bounced more people than it’s helped and has no hope of reaching its original goal, as stated by President Obama in February…
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Yesterday’s Austin Statesman quoted a local economist who said that construction will pick up in the next two years due to “pent up demand”.  I thought that was an interesting contrast to the following ad in yesterday’s Austin Craigslist: The bank took away our houses and now we’ve combined households to move into a house 1/3 the size. That means a LOT of stuff that has to be sold or we’ll have to walk away from it. For example, we have:

Yesterday the amero gap closed at -68 basis points, still well within the +/-300bp danger zone. Foreign central bank Treasury Debt holdings have been noticeably flat, sagging a mere half billion dollars over the last eleven weeks, so I thought it was high time to resurrect these guys from Richmond Hill, in the heart of the Fed’s 13th District. If you look closely you’ll see that lead (**ahem**) vocalist Cresswell’s black t-shirt bears a curiously appropriate legend: The Agency The Fed’s own holdings of MBS again fell significantly, this week by $15.080 billion, while both treasuries and agencies holdings of…
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“Foreclosure-gate” might have forced the banks to slow down, but foreclosures march on.  While many have blamed the banks for not trying hard enough with loan mods, it’s clear they aren’t the answer- here’s why: [Thanks L!] All told, foreclosure activity jumped in 149 of the country’s 206 largest metropolitan areas last year, foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday. The firm tracks notices for defaults, scheduled home auctions and home repossessions — warnings that can lead up to a home eventually being lost to foreclosure. Job loss, rather than time-bomb mortgages resetting to higher payments, has become the main…
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From Bloomberg this morning: Residential real-estate prices dropped in November by the most in a year, signaling housing has yet to join the U.S. rebound. The S&P/Case-Shiller index of home values in 20 cities fell 1.6 percent from November the prior year, the biggest 12-month decrease since December 2009, the group said today in New York. The decline matched the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. Mounting foreclosures will probably throw more properties on the market this year, further depressing prices, homeowners’ equity and construction. There has been a lot of debate whether we have been seeing a…
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Home sales in 2010 hit their lowest level in 13 years, but you’d never know it listening to Jim Cramer.  Here he is, as out to lunch as I have ever seen him: By the way, that first WSJ article he mentions about home prices rising was from last July, the second one he mentions is from September. As for December, the last month available, home prices fell 1% year-over-year.

I asked the question a few days back, “What’s do be done with the homes that aren’t worth fixing”?  As many of us have joked about and postulated, the answer, “Level them to the ground” is being heard in Chandler, AZ.  Chandler was part of Arizona’s building frenzy during the boom, and now is paying for it:  [Thanks L!] Some city-funded wrecking crews could soon be tearing down vacant Chandler houses. But the owners would have to ask for the demolition and agree to pay one-fourth the cost according to a proposal by Mayor Jay Tibshraeny that will go to…
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Mr Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.” (Viewers should note…this line is generally cut from British showings of Goldfinger on advice from British security services, as it is one of their own training maxims.) – Auric Goldfinger By yesterday noon the amero gap had collapsed all the way to -1 bp before relaxing a bit to close at -29 bp. ” ‘UK’ treasuries buyers” anyone? As luck would have it, I’ve just gotten to the point (387) in Frances Stonor Saunders’ “The Cultural Cold War” where Christopher…
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Just once, it would be nice to have housing news headlines match the data.  Today’s headline from Reuters said Home Sales Surge, Jobless Claims decline.  Sounds great, until you read the article: [Thanks L!] WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. home resales jumped more than expected in December despite bad weather as sellers cut prices while jobless claims fell sharply last week, offering some hope for the economy’s two key trouble spots. Existing home sales soared 12.3 percent to an annual rate of 5.28 million units, the National Association of Realtors said on Thursday, far surpassing forecasts for a rise to 4.85…
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The Treasury Department yesterday released a report on “risk retention”. It noted that because loan originators had no “skin in the game”, securitization helped fuel the housing bubble.  To fight this they said: [A]s the recent financial crisis demonstrated, without reform, risks in the securitization process can detract from these benefits.  Leading up to the recent crisis, originators and securitizers made loans, bundled them together, and then sold them off to a broad array of outside investors, often without retaining a meaningful share of the risk. Because originators had little interest in whether the borrowers would be able to repay…
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The National Association of Homebuilders hosted their annual NAHB International Builders’ Show this past week.  David Crowe, their chief economist had an “optimistic” forecast for 2011: NAHB Chief Economist David Crowe said job growth will provide a stronger stimulus in the housing market than 010′s home buyer tax credits. “This year’s spring selling season will be better than last year’s,” he said. Crowe’s forecast called for 575,000 single-family home starts in 2011, up 21% over 475,000 in 2010, which in turn was up 7% from 442,000 in 2009. Multifamily housing, poised to profit from a disproportionate number of Gen Y…
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Diana Olick of CNBC did an article last week warning potential homebuyers about some of those foreclosure “bargains” out there.  Certainly many starry-eyed Bob Villa wannabes have purchased foreclosures thinking they’d turn a shack into a palace with a little paint and carpet and have ended up over their heads.  Olick goes over some of the things that a would be foreclosure purchaser should look for. This does beg the question though- what about those homes that aren’t worth purchasing?  I asked L how many worthless [Or close to it.] properties  were out there.  He said, Tons.  That’s one of…
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Last week the amero gap surged as high as -131 basis points before closing yesterday at -108 bp. Time to order up a few more dozen crippled CF-35s This week the Fed’s own holdings of MBS were again unchanged and agencies were also flat. Treasuries, however, took a significant nose-dive reviving an all too familiar recent pattern. 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. Foreign central banks’ holdings of Treasury Debt…
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It’s not just the banks that are facing scrutiny for questionable foreclosure practices.  In Florida, some attorney practices are being questioned as well.  A spokeswoman for the Attorney General’s office had a list: Among the allegations she said the attorney general’s office is examining: Law firms padding bills in order to get higher final judgments for lenders at foreclosure. The allegation is that bills submitted in court documents contained inflated fees for process serving — the procedure for delivering legal notices to those involved in court cases — that were higher than what the firms actually paid for this service….
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