If ever there was an ill-fated condo project, it would be the Elevation Chandler project in Chandler, Arizona.  This isn’t just a tale of bankruptcy and foreclosure.  The is also a tale of suicide for the lender’s CEO and riches-to-rags for the developer- who now is without a home of his own. [Hat tip to M and L for this one!] I first started following this project three years ago.  It was just down the road from me- and had ground to a halt: At the intersection of the San Tan and 101 Freeways in Chandler, AZ, is the Chandler…
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Thanks to L for this refreshingly honest story of one borrower’s "subprime nightmare": [The video is great.] [I]n 2004, I joined millions of otherwise-sane Americans in what we now know was a catastrophic binge on overpriced real estate and reckless mortgages. Nobody duped or hypnotized me. Like so many others — borrowers, lenders and the Wall Street dealmakers behind them — I just thought I could beat the odds. What a great answer.  Of all the reasons I’ve heard for what caused the Great American Financial Debacle, this one rings truest- the perpetrators all thought they could beat the odds.

So you are going into foreclosure and are thinking of selling everything to the bare walls- and the bare walls, and the pipes? We’ve seen a number of Craigslist ads where people have done just that, but now the Feds are cracking down: [Hat tip to both M and L for this one!] The Northeast Valley’s battered real-estate market is getting a federal bailout of sorts from an unusual source. FBI agents and local law-enforcement personnel have arrested five people in the past month for stripping their foreclosed homes of appliances, cabinets, countertops and plumbing fixtures. That includes cases in…
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It’s Friday, and a big hat tip to John for this very funny article from Reuters: PARIS, May 14 – The U.S. government’s recent bank stress tests were all about clarity. With hard data and clear facts, they shone a bright light on the shadowy uncertainties of complex financial transactions. The question now is: Will this sort of clarity be a part of doing business in the financial industry? Bank regulators in the European Union should look at the U.S. example and make results of their upcoming stress tests of European banks transparent to the public. Currently, they intend to…
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Say something often enough, and apparently three out of four people will believe it:  [Thanks L!] Three out of four U.S. homeowners think the worst is over in the housing market. And half of the homeowners in Southern states – including Texas – say home prices will stabilize in their areas in the next six months, according to a new survey by Zillow.com. Researchers for the Internet real estate marketing company quizzed almost 1,400 homeowners around the country in early April about where they thought the housing market was headed. What does Zillow make of this optimism? "While homeowners are…
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A big hat tip to poster AZSaluki for sharing this story with us. According to a recent report by CBS news, real estate is booming in San Francisco.  [Video is not embedable, but I suggest checking it out here.] In the video, to show what a frenzy the market is in now, they showed one agent who said he had received 42 offers on one property. The website Socketsite however, gives us just a little more insight into that 42 offer property: The sale of CBS5’s infamous "42 offer" home at 555 Edinburgh closed escrow on 4/22/09 with a reported…
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While various moratoriums have delayed a number of foreclosures, it looks like the chickens are finally coming home to roost: [Or maybe we should say the chickens are about to lose the roost, whatever.] TEL AVIV (MarketWatch) — U.S. foreclosure filings in April rose to a record, affecting one in every 374 housing units, and bank repossessions in particular may spike in the next few months, RealtyTrac reported. Foreclosure filings — defined as default notices, auction-sale notices, and bank repossessions — were reported on 342,038 U.S. properties in April, up less than 1% from March and up 32% from April…
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Some things are universal, and apparently a tendency to call a market bottom at the drop of a hat is one of them.  Many thanks to my friend Ken in New Zealand for this great link: There are indications today that house prices – falling since late 2007 – may finally have bottomed out. The property market stabilised in April and even managed to register a tiny increase in an index measure of the national market, according to QV Valuations. There was a 9.2 per cent decline in property values over the last year in the April figures, which was…
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There are a number of voices out there calling for more government backing the lending industry,but Richmond Federal Reserve President Jeffrey Lacker is calling for this backing to be scaled back: WASHINGTON/BEIJING, May 11 (Reuters) – A Federal Reserve policy maker called on Monday for U.S. government protection of the financial industry to be rolled back because it had encouraged excessive risk taking at the heart of the current crisis. "The financial safety net, especially those parts that were more implicit and perceived than explicit and written into the laws, played a significant role in the accumulation of risks that ultimately led to the…
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It’s Mother’s Day, and with luck, I’m getting breakfast in bed, some handmade cards, and perhaps something made out of popsicle sticks.

While I support protecting the environment, I don’t think the federal government needs to seize private property to do it: [Hat tip Freedom's Phoenix!] The excuse for this seizure is:

We’ve talked about residential and commercial markets being hammered by the current economic problems, but did you realize that island sales are being affected as well? [Hat tip Freedom's Phoenix] SYDNEY (Reuters Life!) – Dreaming of a tropical paradise to call your own? Several Australian islands off the Great Barrier Reef are on sale, and thanks to the global recession, they’re cheaper than they used to be. Global real estate agency Coldwell Banker’s Capricorn Coast branch is offering 9 islands, some with luxury mansions and other amenities, around the Great Barrier Reef with prices starting at A$1.3 million ($962,000) and…
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A lot of subprime borrowers found their "We’ll just finance in a couple of years when the house appreciates" strategy backfired on them.  Increasing numbers of jumbo purchasers are finding themselves in the same boat: [Borrowers] are becoming trapped by the same issue facing the poorest subprime homeowners: falling home prices erase equity and make it impossible to sell or refinance without losing money. The number of U.S. homes valued at more than $729,750, the jumbo-loan limit in the most affluent areas, entering the foreclosure process jumped 127 percent during the first 10 weeks of this year from the same…
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Owe more than your home is worth?  You’ve got a lot of company: [Thanks L!] NEW YORK (Reuters) – Home values in the United States extended their fall in the first quarter, with more than one in five homeowners now owing more on their mortgages than their homes are worth, real estate website Zillow.com said on Wednesday. U.S. home values posted a year-over-year decline of 14.2 percent to a Zillow Home Value Index of $182,378, resulting in a total 21.8 percent drop since the market peaked in 2006, according to Zillow’s first-quarter Real Estate Market Reports, which encompass 161 metropolitan…
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Despite assurances from the Obama administration that foreclosure reduction programs that have been put in place will help increase loan modifications, the results have been less than spectacular.  Will the government now step in and make modifications mandatory? The last chance for bankers to voluntarily modify mortgages may be at hand. For the past year and a half, the government has pressed for modifications and set incentives for them — but has stopped short of forcing them. Though servicers have pledged to improve their efforts, progress has been slow, and many still refuse to modify loans in ways that lead…
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