Milken Conference Blogging

First OT

Topher writes:
On CNBC Warren Buffet said, “Recession will not be short and shallow from what he sees”.
Topher | 04.28.08 - 9:00 am | #


Need more memory, circuit overload potential

Immelt Struggling ...

when there offering better yields and have to go to consumer's to tap it, watch out.

Tanta, are you manning the fort for other topics?

Sam Zell said there was no housing bubble in 2005 just as he was about to dump all of his RE holdings.

What do you think he will say today....I was wrong??????

Sounds exciting, CR! Thanks for blogging live!

If you get a chance, please ask Sam Zell - is he selling the Chicago Cubs because the market for inferior goods is so strong right now?

Man, I will not be able to focus on the conference at all, I will be trying to guess which one of these guys is CR at all times.

Here's the 2005:

And you've been nicknamed "the Gravedancer" for your ability to correctly read the boom-and-bust cycles in real estate. So if anyone knows the answer to this question, it's you: Is the bubble about to burst?

A. I'm 63. I've been in the business 40 years. I've heard about all kinds of "housing bubbles," and I ain't seen one yet.

There've been short periods when single-family-housing prices fell, but the number of examples of that are really small. A bubble by definition goes poof -- the way so many tech stocks did in 2000 -- and there's no value left.

Econ 101: Prices have gone up because the demand has been much greater than the supply. The country is producing all it can in terms of supply, but what you see is more demand. Over the next 10 years we're going to add a million new households; much of that's due to immigration. There are lifestyle influences on demand too.

Worst-case scenario? A flat housing market. Look, all I can tell you is we're the largest owner of apartments in the U.S. and among the largest converters of apartments to condos. If there was a danger of a bubble, would we be in this business?

Well... he certainly lost any status as predictor of booms and busts, it will be very interesting to see what he says!

Is Jas speaking at the event?

probert, I hope someone at that conference has both the cajones and the opportunity to call Zell to account for that statement in '05.

From Marketwatch..."Record number of homes sitting vacant" WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The glut of homes on the U.S. housing market worsened in the first quarter, according to government data released Monday. The number of vacant homes in the United States rose by 1 million in the past year to a record 18.6 million, the Commerce Department said. Of those 18.6 million vacant homes, a record 2.3 million were for sale at the end of the first quarter, pushing the vacancy rate for owner-occupied units to a record 2.9%. Meanwhile, a record 4.1 million vacant homes are for rent, with the rental vacancy rate rising to 10.1%. The percentage of homes occupied by owners was steady at 67.8% in the first quarter, matching the lowest percentage in five years."

And tyrasun, I think you are looking for a guy named Bill in a Drexel tee shirt (how many can there be?) who likes to dive and hike. Kinda like Where's Waldo, huh?

That nice man Mr Bernankie will be giving out an insurance policy Wednesday, He'll get those prices up. Don't you worry.

The prerequisite for Bernanke to cut rates is a wall st sell-off. c'mon. start that sellin' !

"no ticky no laundly"
"no tantlum no late cut"

is he selling the Chicago Cubs because the market for inferior goods is so strong right now?

he's selling cause GDII is going to be an order of magnitude worse than GDI

Mike Larson has an article with a graph of the vacant home data on his site.

The prerequisite for Bernanke to cut rates is a wall st sell-off. c'mon. start that sellin' !

If Wall Street is smart they'll have a sell off in stocks and oil the next couple of days so the Fed will feel obligated to cut rates.

Then they can put all their bets right back on later this week.

If you don't know who the fish is at the table it's probably you... unless Bernanke is also at the table.

sterlingerl posted: "...Of those 18.6 million vacant homes, a record 2.3 million were for sale at the end of the first quarter, pushing the vacancy rate for owner-occupied units to a record 2.9%...."

Here's my question: If things are so bad, why aren't the other 16.3 million units (18.6 million vacant minus 2.3 million units) for sale, too?

The implication is clearly that if the units are vacant, that's "bad" because nobody's living there and the asset is just eating up the owner's money. He's getting no personal use from the property and no rental income, either.

So why aren't they all for sale?

Seems to me that the only owners that are having a hard time are the small minority who are trying to sell, and the vast majority aren't much bothered by conditions.

Sebastia

What the heck...!??

Zell is there? Doesn't he have a floundering media/newspaper empire to run?

The irony is not lost on me...a blogger writing about a newspaper CEO talking about real estate.

LOL!

Zell sold his $39 billion worth of real estate in November 2006. That seems like pretty good timing to me.

"So why aren't they all for sale?"

Lenders are waiting for the BAILOUT congress promised, to dump their not yet FC assets to the gov't balance sheet at near par.

Feel better now?

Here's my question: If things are so bad, why aren't the other 16.3 million units (18.6 million vacant minus 2.3 million units) for sale, too?

You could, oh, I don't know, read the source article:

"About a fourth of the 18.6 million vacant homes are seasonal homes. Of the 13.9 million vacant homes suitable for year-round occupancy, more than half (7.5 million) are neither for sale nor for rent. Some may be second homes; others may be uninhabitable or in undesirable locations."

In other words, of those vacant homes that are available to sell or rent, nearly half (46%) are for sale or rent.

But if you want to go on believing that these are the actions of a desperate few - well, then, be my guest.

Great article by Kevin Phillips on the PPT in the Washington Independent.

The Plunge Protection Team « The Washington Independent

from the article: "About a fourth of the 18.6 million vacant homes are seasonal homes. Of the 13.9 million vacant homes suitable for year-round occupancy, more than half (7.5 million) are neither for sale nor for rent. Some may be second homes; others may be uninhabitable or in undesirable locations."

Mook said: "In other words, of those vacant homes that are available to sell or rent, nearly half (46%) are for sale or rent."

Sorry, I must be slower today than other days.Smile There are still only 2.3 million for sale of 18.6 million, regardless of whatever the rental vacancy rate is. There may be (from the article) a "record 4.1 million vacant homes for rent", but if their owners aren't so squeezed that those homes haven't been put up for sale, how is this a serious problem?

Sebastia

Dear Mr. Zell

Circ. is down at your newspapers between 4-5%

Circulation falls at most top newspapers

Sebastian,

Putting the homes up for rent is a forestalling of the problems. "I can't make my payment, maybe someone renting will."

Problem is that what one can rent for is not gonna cover the nut, you just lose less money. With the inventory overhang rental prices ain't going up, so if specuvestors are willing to lose money for the 10 years until the market nominally catches up to the point they have enough equity built up to re-fi....

That's a long time to skip TGIF for some folks; IOTW a pretty serious drag on consumer spending for an extended period.

Bloomber is blaming the rate of vacancies on foreclosures in this article:

U.S. Home Vacancies Rise to Record on Foreclosures (Update4) - Bloomberg.com

"Most foreclosures are contained in the report's ``other'' category, which includes homes tied up in legal proceedings as well as homes that are empty because the owner is renovating and living somewhere else, according to the Census Web site. There were 7.5 million such homes that were vacant, up from 7.3 million a year earlier, the report said."

Sebastien:

There are still only 2.3 million for sale of 18.6 million, regardless of whatever the rental vacancy rate is. There may be (from the article) a "record 4.1 million vacant homes for rent", but if their owners aren't so squeezed that those homes haven't been put up for sale, how is this a serious problem?

Agreed, this fact is not in and of itself not a serious problem. It is what this fact tells us about the real estate market that is the cause for concern. Sure these people aren't being squeezed into selling, but they are being squeezed into renting rather than selling.

I'll see you back out in the cherry orchard.

I would be curious to see if anyone mentions anything about ability to pay current house prices as a function of income. Seems to me we will "hit a bottom" of price declines when house prices get back into the historical range of multiple of annual income.

Or perhaps more realistically when total family debt service including mortgage, credit cards and fuel bill drops below %40 of monthly income.

Anonymous wrote:
Great article by Kevin Phillips on the PPT in the Washington Independent.
http://washingtonindependent.com...view/the- plunge
Anonymous | 04.28.08 - 12:08 pm | #

Mock turtle adds:

the PPT lives and goes back to the 87 crash where fed gov Corrigan and NYSE dir Phelan saved the day...

quote from anons link:

"For the bigger picture, look back to the stock market crash of 1987 -- the sickening Oct. 19 fall when the Dow-Jones Industrial Average lost 508 points or 23.6 percent of its value in a single trading day. Alan Greenspan had just taken over as the Federal Reserve Bank chairman, and some believe that the Fed intervened to support the market the next day -- by either buying Standard & Poors futures or telling several collaborative broker-dealers to do so."

for more here's mock turtle's recommended link:

see the wapo article from 11 years ago

washingtonpost.com: Plunge Protection Team 

it's SOMETIMES (often?) a rigged game

funny and smart comedy routine by george carlan about THE CLUB and you aint in it

WARNING george likes the F word...A LOT

YouTube -

There may be (from the article) a "record 4.1 million vacant homes for rent", but if their owners aren't so squeezed that those homes haven't been put up for sale ...

What if they can't sell, because they'd be required to bring cash to the table, and can't make the nut?

If they want to sell, but think that by simply "waiting" for this storm to "blow over" they'll be able to get their peak price again in a few months' time?

If they don't want to sell and are tapping into savings, juggling other bills, testing the rental market, etc. as a precursor to giving in and offloading?

For tax, estate, family, or any of a hundred other reasons?

... why is this a serious problem?

sigh Because big changes are driven by behavior at the margins! A lot more folks held onto their shares of tech stocks than sold them as the Nasdaq went from 5,100 to, say, 3,500 ... should we have taken that to mean that everything in the sector was hunky-dory and the correction was being overdone?

well, if you were about to sell your portfolio, would you want to scare your potencial clients from making the highest bid possible?
I say - NO.
Gravedancer knows what he is doing.

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