When we sold our house in 2005 and moved into a rental, we were asked by concerned friends, “Are you doing OK?” Obviously you wouldn’t be in a rental unless you were in financial straits. In 2006 when we launched Doom, I couldn’t convince reporters that I wasn’t either “bitter” or “priced out of the market”. [I never could figure the latter out.  Lenders were passing out loans to anyone who could fog a mirror.  How could anyone be priced out?] I suspect most fellow “voluntary renters” kept that fact secret if they could. Five years later, the world has…
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The Fed’s own holdings of MBS dropped an accelerating $5.723 billion and foreign central bank holdings of treasuries dramatically plunged ending a long winning streak, following up on last week’s dramatic sell-off in agencies. However, ZH has been reporting very strong demand for treasuries over the last couple of days, which doesn’t seem to make a great deal of sense except, perhaps we’re starting to see some odd effects coming out of the debt ceiling “crisis” … WSJ (5/26 ’11): “Treasury Prices Rise As T-Bills Shortage Drives Demand Into Notes” Indirect bidders, which include foreign buyers and central banks, expressed…
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This would be funny if it weren’t so serious. More than a week later and our intrepid journalists still haven’t figured out the problem at No. 4 is not the reactor but the pool, although the more serious condition now at No. 3 seems to have inspired them to heat up the rhetoric just a bit. The blogosphere’s been all over this one for a couple of weeks, but it’s still nice to get (re-)confirmation, if only in a short inside paragraph.  Doomers will recall that the spent fuel pool in this building has over a thousand assemblies, many really…
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I nearly swallowed my wad a couple of years back when past-master NL thief Tim Raines’ old gang was almost bought out by a consortium backed in part by Frank’s (no relation) Fannie swag.  Now over at Little Brother tenure at the analysis department is starting to look a bit like entitlement … BL/BW (6/22 ’05): “Housing Bubble — or Bunk? Are home prices soaring unsustainably and due for plunge? A group of experts takes a look — and come to very different conclusions” Frank Nothaft, chief economist, Freddie Mac:… Housing is local, local, local by nature, and it’s the…
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Truly an interesting week.  Took a break from the Texas drought and spent a very wet week in Connecticut.  Since I was here six months ago, at least where I was visiting, there seems to be a lot more “for sale” signs and a much tighter single family rental market.  Potential buyers are nervous and uncertain about purchasing, and renting has become a more “respectable” option. Nerves are also playing havoc with new home sales.  The Commerce Department is reporting that [Despite the headline MOM numbers being up.] sales are down 23% YOY.  If things aren’t bad enough, there are…
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It is only rarely in the home that the exercise of reading, in the old sense, now takes place. — George Steiner Funny, but the 1972 essay “After the Book?” appears to be quite unavailable within the withering confines of free Web 1.0. The above is transcribed from a dead tree I borrowed from my local library the other day. Meanwhile, back in a dystopian future that seems to have evolved into the present while I wasn’t paying attention … Wall Street Journal (5/20 ’11): “Liberty Media Sees More Than Just Bookstores In Barnes & Noble” The deal, which values…
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Drat, if we’d read Lansner earlier today Mrs. M and I could have saved some bucks on the undercoating for the new car O.C. Register (5/21 ’11): “Rapture: Good or bad for O.C. housing?” We asked our panel how the end of the world as we know it might impact Orange County real estate. Even with this extreme theoretical query, there was great debate about the housing’s future post-Doomsday … Economist Mark Schneipp, California Forecast: “No change (for Orange County real estate.) The world ended in 2008 with the housing bubble exploding and 25,000 jobs lost in mortgage lending. That…
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The Fed’s own holdings of MBS dropped a modest $3.442 billion after being unchanged for the previous three weeks, but foreign central bank holdings of agencies suddenly plunged after being almost comically flat for a dozen weeks. The treasuries number maintained its decreased upward momentum, though. 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. Treasury Debt holdings have now advanced $89.840 billion above their 11/17 ’10 level. Treasury Debt was up $5.267…
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Just occurred to Igor to look, and it yielded an interesting tombstone on Google News Search … Heaven knows this would solve no end of present embarrassment.  Hope that didn’t set off any algos over at Mahwah

It’s being called a “double dip”, a “triple dip”, a “moderation” or a “recovery”.  Whatever you call it though, it’s headed south.  According to the National Association of Realtors this morning: Existing-home sales1 which are completed transactions that include single-family, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops, eased 0.8 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.05 million in April from a downwardly revised 5.09 million in March, and are 12.9 percent below a 5.80 million pace in April 2010; sales surged in April and May of 2010 in response to the home buyer tax credit. I’m headed off to Connecticut for the…
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The secret to getting rid of the excess housing inventory in Arizona is to have people move in and buy them.  Back in 2006, Doom received a lot of ridicule for postulating that prices could drop in Arizona.  After all, growth has been explosive for years, and growth would save housing.  Things have changed.  According to Marshall Vest, economist at the University of Arizona: [Thanks L!] [T]he vacancy rate at the time of the 2000 census was 15.1 percent, not all that far off from the current 16.3 percent. Then, as now, there was a recession. But that recession, he…
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Back in 2005, it was a great time for real estate agents.  M told me once that all you had to do was enter a listing on the MLS, and the phone would start ringing.  The number of agents swelled, and lots of people left other good paying jobs to be in real estate. That world is long gone.   Sales are down, prices are down, and the work it takes to sell a property is up.  Then to add insult to injury, these days it’s a lot less pay for a lot more work: The median income of Realtors…
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Reuters (5/17 ’11): “Q+A: What’s going on at Japan’s damaged nuclear power plant?” Officials are also concerned about the slow pace of cooling at the No. 3 reactor and the No. 4 reactor was so badly damaged by a hydrogen explosion that workers will have to try to shore it up with steel beams and concrete to prevent a collapse. Not the reactor, guys, it’s the spent fuel pool (Four Romeo’s not even in service). And still no definitive confirm or deny on whether that “badly damaged” resulted in a lean. UPDATE: hat tip to HuffyPo for digging up this…
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  The Obama administration has had several anti-foreclosure programs which have all had varying rates of failure.  Not to be discouraged by large price tags and dismal results, the administration has got another idea. WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is pushing for the creation of a federal account funded by the nation’s 14 largest mortgage firms to help distressed borrowers avoid foreclosure and settle ongoing probes into faulty mortgage practices, according to a confidential term sheet reviewed by The Huffington Post. The fund is one of three proposed by a coalition of state attorneys general and administration officials, which were…
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While I think that uncertainty in the economy makes forecasting trends in housing a dubious “science”, I do now and again see a projection that seems probable.  One of the more plausible ones that I’ve read lately is by Andrew Butter.  Butter is Managing Partner of ABMC, an investment advisory firm.  Butter looked at data from RealtyTrac and concluded: [Hat tip Freedom's Phoenix.] Since the start of 2005 to the end of 2010, three million seven-hundred thousand American families have been kicked out onto the street. At an average of 2.3 people per household that’s 8.5 million Americans who have…
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