What strikes me about that map is that the green and blue neighborhoods are surrounded by the red neighborhoods. Tomazin said "..many of the borrowers in these areas are not able to meet the new payments of the adjustable-rate mortgages." I'm thinking of the number of foreclosures yet to come, as well as the ones already mentioned in the article, and I'm thinking how all those historic homes are going to be eaten up by all that historic foreclosure. How valuable will they be after enough jingle mail has transformed the surrounding areas into evacuated slums? There are lots of historic, once-beautiful old places on 33rd Street here in Philly, too, but the well-to-do won't touch 'em.
OT -- the schmucks/shysters/shylocks on Wall Street are fighting hard to keep the market 'green'; futures purchases are strong.
The economic data are terrible. JPMorgan et al. are pissing away good money by committing to buying the S&P 500 at today's prices or better three months to one year from now.
I look forward to the forthcoming holocaust on Wall Street.
April 4 (Bloomberg) -- The collapse of the $330 billion auction-rate securities market has brought debt sales by U.S. public student-loan agencies to a halt.
No municipal bonds backed by student loans were sold in the first quarter, the first time that happened in almost 40 years, according to Thomson Financial. The inability to obtain financing differs from states, cities, schools and hospitals, which sold $82 billion of bonds to fund public works and replace failed auction debt that stuck them with penalty rates as high as 20 percent....
On April 2, 115 tranches of student-loan bonds came up for auction and 114 failed, based on data compiled by Bloomberg from four major auction agents, including Deutsche Bank AG. The same day, there were 353 failed auctions, or 63 percent, involving a total of 563 municipal issues. Almost all auction-rate securities issued by closed-end mutual funds also failed
Oh yes! But the look on the faces of the others in the basket was pretty funny as we climbed up and left When you get out of a moving plane, you don't get the stomach thing because you leave with the speed of the aircraft. But in a balloon you go from 0 to 120, so you get a bit of it. And I flailed because there's no air to push against.
And any landing you can walk away from is a good landing!
Denver did not see much house appreciation compared to many other cities, so prices will probably not fall as far either
I don't think this is necessarily true. Some of the worst hit regions (e.g. Michigan, Ohio, Missouri, etc) never saw the same massive appreciations that were experienced elsewhere. Without the loose lending of the last decade I suspect that many places of the country would have seen outright price declines long ago. While these fly-over areas may not have seen massive apprecation, all that easy money may have been working overtime just to keep prices from falling.
My main theory for predicting the depth of a given region's property decline is to look at the number of home-owners with little, or no, equity. Regions with high percenatages of home-owners with healthy amounts of equity will likely see the shallowest bottoms.
So long as home-owners have equity, they won't wind up in foreclosure should they experience financial troubles (i.e. they can always sell). It's the amount of equity that matters, not the resets or the height of the bubble.
Real prices have been flat in Denver for about six years - before turning down recently - so prices are probably much closer to the bottom in Denver than in Los Angeles.
No! How many times no? What about the exact same datums doesn't support the claim that Denver has as far if not more to fall because it didn't even manage to participate in the mid 2000s run up?
CR, I know you are a far better person than to resort to chartism.
Spent last weekend with a bunch of friends in the army stationed in Savannah, Georgia; amongst the Army Savannah is apparently known as "the waiting room for Iraq". Some of my friends were asking me the right time to buy a house. I'm in my early 30s, and I couldn't help thinking of this as an analogy for my generation: waiting to get out of Iraq, waiting to buy a house, waiting for the economy to get better, etc. No one seems to be really that outraged about and quite ready to elect McCain as our next president. When will people become outraged...will it take everyone moving back in with their parents to do so?
Yeah, the "high end is holding up" mantra is way too premature.
The rich (that have gotten richer) haven't yet been that affected by the downturn, but they will. It's the old "plankton" theory; J6P's problems will work their way up the food chain eventually.
I don't think that the price run-ups during the bubble are going to tell the whole story about price declines.
The declines we've seen so far obviously are mostly related to oversupply from new builds(directly and indirectly from people who absorbed the supply and are now foreclosed, distressed sellers, jingle mailers, etc.)
The demand required to absorb the supply and stop the price declines will likely have to come from real income. As we are only beginning to see the effects of the job losses, I think it may be some time before we get a better picture of what areas are going to stabilize first due to solid local economies, and what areas will continue to decline from deteriorating local economies.
Of course I think that L.A. will still be one of the worse, both from crazy supply and bad prospects for their future economy.
For example, an area that had very little price run-up, could see huge real price declines due to an economy heavily weighted towards financial, construction, and service jobs. Where an area with large price runups might see less declines due to a more limited supply and a local economy that actually prospers.
The question is what is the story for LA's local economy? It was real estate and mortgage for 10 years. And there's the port. Entertainment is a pretty small component. And sadly, porn just can't carry the whole local economy. So what is the future for LA?
My sister was a top seller for pulte homes in vegas.
Her and her husband bought a house for 250k, then she bought 2 condos, then they had another house built for near 1 million, then they bought an island off the coast of belize.
I refused to visit her in vegas because I hate the place so much. I really appreciate real production, something that doesn't exist in vegas.
She is now divorced and most of their property is on the market. They are still optimistic that they will get out even on their 1M house. I predicted bankruptcy or walk-away almost a year ago, and am sticking with my prediction.
I too have family in LV. They bought a small place back in the early 90's, then doubled the mortgage on a refi during the boom. They're already underwater and headed down fast, plus both have economically-sensitive jobs.
I warned'em (back in 2004), too, but family never listens.
I'm born and raised in Colorado living in the center of Denver right now, and there is vacancy everywhere. Apartments everywhere. The really nice new developments on the Platte River are empty of people and full of foreclosures. A ton of speculation down there even in my own city.
The economy here really has to improve for anything to get better. We were heavily dependent on technology, but never got the upswing that places like San Francisco did after ~'05. Things feel pretty crummy here right now.
Hopefully our relatively-good-for-America mass transit system and proximity to good cropland, as well as strategic point on the railroads will be enough to keep things going all right.
They bought it a couple months before the divorce, not much logic there as far as i'm concerned.
Most of the island floods during high tide and the plan was to spend another 50k to have sand dumped in to have a worthwhile beach. Then build a hurricane proof(does this really exist) house.
What's really F*cked up about it, is that they couldn't get financing so they had her husbands mom refinance her paid off house to get the money. She probably won't ever get paid back, and she has no real savings for retirement.
In 2007, according to Bloomberg, the Paulson Credit Opportunities Fund returned almost 600%, finishing up the year with a staggering gain of 589.9%. The Paulson Credit Opportunities Fund II, a slightly newer fund, also had an amazing year, finishing up over 350%.
Nice story here:
Trader Made Billions on Subprime
John Paulson Bet Big on Drop in Housing Values;
Greenspan Gets a New Gig, Soros Does Lunch
On Wall Street, the losers in the collapse of the housing market are legion. The biggest winner looks to be John Paulson, a little-known hedge fund manager who smelled trouble two years ago.
Funds he runs were up $15 billion in 2007 on a spectacularly successful bet against the housing market. Mr. Paulson has reaped an estimated $3 billion to $4 billion for himself believed to be the largest one-year payday in Wall Street history.
Now, in another twist in financial history, Mr. Paulson is retaining as an adviser a man some blame for helping feed the housing-market bubble by keeping interest rates so low: former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan (see article)
What's really F*cked up about it, is that they couldn't get financing so they had her husbands mom refinance her paid off house to get the money. She probably won't ever get paid back, and she has no real savings for retirement.
SweetHomeKilla | 04.04.08 - 4:26 pm | #
Wow. Low and behold, these are the people being bailed out...
Most people told us house prices never go down on a national level, and that there had never been a default of an investment-grade-rated mortgage bond, Mr. Paulson says. Mortgage experts were too caught up in the housing boom.
In several interviews, Mr. Paulson made his first comments on how he made his historic coup. Merely holding a different opinion from the blundering herd wasnt enough to produce huge profits. He also had to think up a technical way to bet against the housing and mortgage markets, given that, as he notes, you cant short houses.
Weve got to take as much advantage of this as we can, Mr. Paulson recalls telling a colleague around the middle of 2005, when optimism about the housing market was at its peak.
His bets at first were losers. But lenders were getting less and less rigorous about making sure borrowers could pay their mortgages. Mr. Paulsons research told him home prices were flattening. Suspecting that rating agencies were too generous in assessing complex securities built out of mortgages, he had his team begin tracking tens of thousands of mortgages. They concluded it was getting harder for lenders to collect.
His confidence rose in January 2006. Ameriquest Mortgage Co., then the largest maker of subprime loans to buyers with spotty credit, settled a probe of improper lending practices by agreeing to a $325 million payment. The deal convinced Mr. Paulson that aggressive lending was widespread.
Adding to his suspicions, he heard that Bear Stearns had asked an industry group to codify the right of an underwriter to modify or buy out a faltering pool of loans on which a mortgage security was based. Mr. Paulson claimed this would give cover to market manipulation. He hired former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Harvey Pitt to spread the word about this alleged threat.
In the end, Bear Stearns withdrew the proposal. It was merely about clarifying our right to continue to service loans whether that be modifying loans when people cant pay their mortgage or buying out loans when rep and warranty issues are involved in the underwriting process, says a Bear Stearns spokesman.
Events at Bear Stearns soon added to the worries: Two Bear Stearns hedge funds that invested in subprime mortgages collapsed in mid-2007. Suddenly, investors began to shun such mortgages.
Suspecting that rating agencies were too generous in assessing complex securities built out of mortgages, he had his team begin tracking tens of thousands of mortgages. They concluded it was getting harder for lenders to collect.
I love this guy. Follow him on the way back up folks! Does he have a blog ??
My poor savings,
Here in Boston we're getting over the denial phase in most places. The desirable Back Bay is holding up.
I have a view of a street and a couple of trees. It rained here yesterday and today. Tomorrow, the forecast is for rain.
See that little blue county? It's mostly I25 and the North Platte River, with a little Coors Field, etc. in the middle. Prices there were always high compared to anywhere else in CO - think pricey lofts and historic buildings condofied.
The people who live in Denver really live in Arapahoe and Adams counties where the bubble looks pretty much like any other metro area - big 'burbs full of McMansions in foreclosure.
Rather than waiting around for Congress or the Federal Reserve Board to complete their consideration of appraisal reform, New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo announced on March 3, 2008, the execution of cooperation agreements (the Cooperation Agreements or Agreements) with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) that will require significant changes in appraisals for residential mortgage loans on a nationwide basis.[1]
Consumers Clog Courts with Codified Care Claims Mortgage Banking & Consumer Credit Alert
The title of this Alert is a prediction of what might come to pass if Congress enacts recently proposed legislation that seeks to expand and codify the common-law concepts of negligence and duty of care and apply them to mortgage lenders and mortgage brokers.
Can't help this morbid fascination. In the lower income areas, will prices go back to 2002 levels at the bottom? 1997? I wonder how it will feel to owe more than twice of the market value of a home. Pretty bad, I'm guessing.
My parents were at the dealership in Greenwich a week ago, and the manager said 10 customers had handed in the keys (not sure of the lease/financing mix there) in the last week. And there's a glut of multimillion dollar homes on the market. Besides, marginal competition will eventually drag all the nice areas down with the bad ones. Just takes time.
This trend has been apparent with HousingTracker's Denver data too. The Y/Y median is up and the inventory down. A lot of this comes from the higher end (75% level). Check the graphs:
I live in denver, those neighborhoods are a very unique and small part of the market that i would not use for any broad conclusion about denver as a whole. those neighborhoods in cherry creek north and wash park are outrageously overvalued ($650k for a 2,000 sq ft, 100 year old bungalow, maybe some nice recent updates, on 0.1 acres or land and no garage....gimme a break) and will likely stay that way as there is a very limited supply and there are a lot of young professionals that make damn good money and want to live there no matter what the price. I have a house to sell in wheat ridge and the comps look horrible versus what i paid in 2002. luckily I don't NEED to sell as it is being rented to a trusted family member.
Does anybody know how much a subscription to sitexdata, or another site that provides historical data on individual units, might cost. We are trying to get a sense of our market, which does not seem to have been overly-affected by the bubble, and figure having such data would help us. For those of you who have used it, would you recommend an individual purchasing access?
Thanks in advance for any help!
RBS
I believe the old historic neighborhoods this article is referring to is around the Capital and Governers mansion. Very nice area. I've talked to a number of homeowners in that area who purchased these houses for a steal in the 80s when the savings & loan scandels took out a lot of the former residents.
We'll see what happens this time around.
NEW YORK, March 10 (Reuters) - Paulson & Co, the hedge fund group that quadrupled in size last year on the back of the credit crisis, is surging again this year in all three of its major strategies, the firm said.
The firm's performance, disclosed to investors in a letter on Friday, stands out amid lackluster and loss-making results elsewhere in the hedge fund sector, where slumping stock markets and volatility in the credit markets caused a number of firms to falter or even collapse.
Paulson, which manages about $30 billion and counts former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan as an adviser, posted net returns of over 8 percent in the first two months of 2008 in its credit strategies, the letter said.
Paulson, which is managed by investor John Paulson, posted net gains of between 5.5 percent and 10 percent for the period in its event-driven strategies, a broad trading strategy that bets on the likelihood of corporate changes.
I have a view of a street and a couple of trees. It rained here yesterday and today. Tomorrow, the forecast is for rain.
Cheer up lama, it's supposed to be sunny on Sunday! I used to live on Marlboro St. The Back Bay, Beacon Hill, and most of the South End will hold value, as will the North End and most of JP now. Parts of Dot, Southie and the usual other places will not. Probably the same situation the Denver maps show. These sections are well-off, old, and always sought-after or they are newly renovated. I do think the SE will pull back though, as it got really over-done in the last few years.
Things are kind of treading water here in Dallas-Fort Worth.
Several stories on the housing market in today's business section of the Dallas Morning News. It's a good news/bad news situation.
The Metroplex has only 6-7 months inventory compared to 10-11 months nationally, and the 6-7 months has been stable for the last four years. On the other hand, new home sales are down 30 percent in 1Q08. Starts are down 35 percent, lowest for 1Q in a decade.
Asking prices are slightly higher this past quarter, 2.8 percent. Dallas, Houston, and Charlotte are the only metro areas to see increases. I realize it doesn't mean they're going to get that price, but it implies some confidence or stability.
Also of note is that some of the highest inventory supply readings are in Park Cities and North Dallas, very high-end areas.
(Sources are Altos Research Corp., Real IQ, Metrostudy Inc., and Realtor)
All this matches fairly close to bubble/no bubble areas of the country. Things aren't purring along here, but no sense of doom like the coasts.
Still, in the same paper, a builder is offering around a 10 percent discount on newly built homes (200-400K) in some of our nicer suburbs and exurbs. Nice pictures.
Anecdotally, I live in the center of the metro region in NE Tarrant County. My city P&ZC approved last year a large townhome development marketed to snowbirds and empty nesters (250K and up). Not a clod of dirt has been turned yet. Another developer has a pocket subdivision of 375-400K French Country, 3000+ sq. foot homes being built. They are the most expensive homes in my city (almost 2x the previous high). He's built 6 out of 16 and sold 4 of the 6 so far this past year. The foreclosed house on my block was sold last month by the bank after a year. (Nice lady, don't know the price she paid yet.) That's been the only one so far.
Houses are being sold in my city and median prices are stable, but things are very slow. After what I have read on this site for the last year and seeing the data for other areas, I'll take what we have.
It's going to get worse, but DFW is the fastest growing metro area in the nation, so somebody is going to buy these homes (assuming they are not anchored to their current one).
FWIW, just adding to the "it depends on where you are" meme.
Then build a hurricane proof(does this really exist) house.
Proof no, but highly resistant yes. The standard practice in Belize is to either build a sacrificial stick house on a concrete pad (usually on stilts to catch the breeze) and just rebuild after each hurricane, or spend a bit more on concrete/cinder block bunker-like structure with AC, and figure you can just fix a few windows after the next big one. Spent a very pleasant afternoon once at a "bar" on a tiny island off the coast that this couple runs in the ground floor of their house (only reachable by small boat, we stopped after a snorkeling outing). Their strategy seemed smart: build a small super tough bunker to house the generator and a "safe room" for waiting out storms, but let the wood house get splintered.
Activist hedge fund firm Appaloosa Management has retracted its $2.55 billion investment in bankrupt auto parts maker Delphi Corp., just as the company was about to emerge from bankruptcy.
On Friday, Appaloosa said, in a regulatory filing that it was terminating its deal with Delphi because the company did not have its $6.1 billion exit financing firmly in place. The firm is also unhappy with the amount of financing that Delphis former parent GM is putting into the restructuring effort. Appaloosa also said that Delphi owes them an $82.5 million breakup fee.
Appaloosa heads up an investment consortium comprised of hedge fund firms Harbinger Capital Partners and Pardus Capital Management, as well as investment banks Merrill Lynch, UBS, and Goldman Sachs.
Hedge fund firm Halcyon Asset Management is building up its senior team in anticipation of its going public through its acquisition by a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).
Jerry Bailey joins Halcyon as executive vice president of finance and operations. Bailey joins the firm from Bear Stearns Merchant Bank, the banks private equity arm, where he was senior advisory director focused on the financial technology sector.
Halcyon is also adding Suzanne McDermott to its team who joins as deputy chief compliance office and senior counsel. McDermott was an assistant U.S. attorney, most recently in the securities fraud unit.
DB Zwirn, which had to close two funds because investors wanted their money back, may be setting up another fund on investor demand, according to a Reuters report.
In February, it was reported that the hedge fund firm was liquidating two funds because investors were seeking redemptions of about $2 billion. Investors supposedly were unhappy with the firm after it revealed internal accounting problems.
Connecticut-based Mercury Real Estate Advisors is closing two of its funds because of volatility in the real estate markets, according to a letter sent to investors which was obtained by HedgeFund.net. One of the funds was in special situations, while the other contained small and micro-cap portfolio securities that market conditions had rendered illiquid, the firm said.
Is Dodd in that one??
Ollwerther, who last month left Merrill Lynch, became COO of its hedge fund business in 2005. He joined the investment bank in 1981.
Ollwerther marked the latest management defection from Mother Merrill since John Thain became chief executive officer in December. At least a dozen high-ranking personnel have since left the Wall Street firm, including Ollwerther cohort David Barrett, who left in March.
Radcliffe Group is developing a volatility arbitrage offering set to open May 1.
Current financial market turmoil has created opportunity for the strategy, said founder Steven Katznelson.
Vol arb is an option-based statistical arbitrage strategy incumbent on buying volatility when it is low and selling volatility when it is high.
There is real opportunity now to buy volatility cheaper, Katznelson said.
I was working in Boulder in 2003-4 and the area took a huge real estate hit from the collapse of the internet bubble, so psychologically people had a recent memory of dramatic price drops so I don't think the prices in that area ever rose to the levels seen in CA/FL/AZ
I've had my eye on a particular property in a small city in Florida waiting for the price to drop. Instead the price increased by $30K last month, which really surprised me. It's in a historic neighborhood.
The overall apartment vacancy rate in the Denver area fell to a six-year low of 6.2 percent, according to a report released today by the Apartment Association of Metro Denver.
The overall vacancy rate fell from 7.1 percent in the first quarter, according to the report authored by Gordon Von Stroh, a professor at the Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver.
The last time vacancies were lower was during the second quarter of 2001, when 5.7 percent of the units were vacant. Vacancy rates peaked in the first two quarters of 2003, when the vacancy rate stood at 13.1 percent.
Denver had little appreciation in the new millenium, that's true, but I thought that that was due to its oversized appreciation during the dot-com bubble, with all its telecommunication industry. Denver had already exhausted itself and all the lax credit did was to prevent the normally expected depreciation as in 87-91 after the oil bubble. With stricter credit, depreciation might finally come.
Maybe some folks in the Army are ready to vote for McCain, but I wouldn't touch him with your barge pole.
For all his "world community led by the US" talk, the reality is that he's a "bomb first, ask questions later" shortfused hothead who probably doesn't know how to endorse a check, let alone balance a checkbook, let aloe read a balance sheet.
With the exception of the time when he was in the process of leaving his 1st wife has he ever even had the prospect of lookig for a straight job.
But I digress, Denver encaptulates the duality of RRE nationwide; and when it goes, it's gonna go bad. The really bad stuff has barely started.
The average monthly rental rate for all apartments rose to $863.53 for the second quarter, compared with $843.85 in the second quarter of 2006 and $842.69 for the first quarter of 2007.
Re: The overall apartment vacancy rate in the Denver area fell to a six-year low of 6.2 percent, according to a report released today by the Apartment Association of Metro Denver.
The overall vacancy rate fell from 7.1 percent in the first quarter, according to the report authored by Gordon Von Stroh, a professor at the Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver.
Where are we on that trend??
Hudson Valley magazine did a detailed survey of home prices in their area and had a similar observation: very wealthy neighborhoods saw an increase in home price, while less pricy neighborhoods had declines.
As I recall Tanta/CR do things with this in graph form, anyone know what its under?
CENSUS BUREAU REPORTS ON RESIDENTIAL VACANCIES AND HOMEOWNERSHIP
National vacancy rates in the fourth quarter 2007 were 9.6 (+ 0.4) percent for rental housing and
2.8 (+ 0.1) percent for homeowner housing, the Department of Commerces Census Bureau announced today.
The Census Bureau said the rental vacancy rate was not statistically different from the fourth quarter rate last
year, or the rate last quarter (9.8 percent each). For homeowner vacancies, the current rate was not
statistically different from the fourth quarter 2006 rate or the rate last quarter (2.7 percent each). The
homeownership rate at 67.8 (+ 0.5) percent for the current quarter was lower than the fourth quarter 2006 rate
(68.9 percent) and also lower than the rate last quarter (68.2 percent).
I'm working on a theory that the real explanation for which areas are hardest hit is not about class (wealthy vs. not-so-wealthy) but about older, more stable neighborhoods vs. newer ones, edgy ones and new development.
In our town, a realtor told me that about 300 homes sell every year (with about 16,000 homes in the town). That would mean that in the last 5 years only about 10% of the homes would have changed hands and would have invested at bubble prices with bubble loans.
For example, i heard today about a couple that bought in 2002 and needed to move. they priced it at 2002 levels and sold it in a bidding war for about 5% more than the offering price.
Most of the island floods during high tide and the plan was to spend another 50k to have sand dumped in to have a worthwhile beach. Then build a hurricane proof (does this really exist) house.
LOL. Dump sand in for a beach. The first storm will push it all up into the house - assuming the house doesn't get washed away.
On my drive to and from work each day from my modest rental home in La Jolla, I pass by the Ferrari dealership and the Bugatti/Lamborghini/Bentley dealership.
Same cars, day after day. Activity is slooow.
Oh, and the rolling three month average of median prices for resale homes here in La Jolla is off 25% from peak, from $2.0 million (May '06) to $1.5 million (Feb. '08).
High end areas are far from immune to this downturn.
Can the island be seen on web-mapped overhead satellite images (e.g., Google maps)?
Probably, but I wouldn't know where to look, and would rather not ask her about it. I try to avoid all topics that relate to her debts, job, relationships, etc. when talking to her these days.
ZIRP: Your generation won't be outraged even when they have to move back in with their parents....When taht happens,they then will just be waiting for Moommy & Daddy to die. Sigh.
I've lived in Southwest Denver for many years and am familiar with the area. The map shows that prices in my hood, and those around me, are up. That is not true. This area has foreclosures, empty SFH's and townhomes, and for sale signs out front of some places for longer than a year. The HIghlands neighborhood might be up, but that is about all.
Earthquake proof too, which is funny to imagine since it is IN the earth. I guess the top and the bottom move together, unlike a house on a foundation.
I am hopeful that when The People do raise their voices, government DOES respond. The special interests this bill serves are hoping no one notices. I have, at least. I hope a lot of others have, too.
Denver is a funny market because it doesn't seem to have had massive price appreciation. However if you look at appreciation + new housing stock it makes the story a little murkier. This is not the same place it was 15 years ago. 60 year old neighborhoods have been transformed house by house. Million dollar homes used to be true exceptions, now there are 1500 for sale in the MLS. And as it states in the article we had lax standards as it was.
We had funny loan stats on the way up , no way we those don't fail us on the way down.
Denver was the ultimate self-fulfilling market on the way up with large amounts of the participants both players in and emplyees of the housing industrial complex.
first?
CR - You should post the MBIA rating change from Fitch hat tip tj and the bear
Everytime I look at a graph of LA vs. anywhere else, my stomach gets the same feeling it had the first time I jumped out of a hot air balloon...
Wealthy neigborhoods doing fine, because that's where all the middle class wealth went. Middle class neighborhoods not fine.
Looks like the author of this USN piece forgot to dig through:
Denver Real Estate Bubble
yes, it hasn't been updated since 11/07, but it's still showing a giant collection of overpriced and dropping RE.
I lived in Denver in 05 and 06. It's very overbuilt.
What strikes me about that map is that the green and blue neighborhoods are surrounded by the red neighborhoods. Tomazin said "..many of the borrowers in these areas are not able to meet the new payments of the adjustable-rate mortgages." I'm thinking of the number of foreclosures yet to come, as well as the ones already mentioned in the article, and I'm thinking how all those historic homes are going to be eaten up by all that historic foreclosure. How valuable will they be after enough jingle mail has transformed the surrounding areas into evacuated slums? There are lots of historic, once-beautiful old places on 33rd Street here in Philly, too, but the well-to-do won't touch 'em.
ipodius,
Its not the fall, its the sudden stop at the end!
I'm guessing you had a 'chute for that jump...
OT -- the schmucks/shysters/shylocks on Wall Street are fighting hard to keep the market 'green'; futures purchases are strong.
The economic data are terrible. JPMorgan et al. are pissing away good money by committing to buying the S&P 500 at today's prices or better three months to one year from now.
I look forward to the forthcoming holocaust on Wall Street.
O/T Still contained:
April 4 (Bloomberg) -- The collapse of the $330 billion auction-rate securities market has brought debt sales by U.S. public student-loan agencies to a halt.
No municipal bonds backed by student loans were sold in the first quarter, the first time that happened in almost 40 years, according to Thomson Financial. The inability to obtain financing differs from states, cities, schools and hospitals, which sold $82 billion of bonds to fund public works and replace failed auction debt that stuck them with penalty rates as high as 20 percent....
On April 2, 115 tranches of student-loan bonds came up for auction and 114 failed, based on data compiled by Bloomberg from four major auction agents, including Deutsche Bank AG. The same day, there were 353 failed auctions, or 63 percent, involving a total of 563 municipal issues. Almost all auction-rate securities issued by closed-end mutual funds also failed
student loan auctions are failing?
I understand that the sale of Ferraris has not been affected either.
If anyone missed it, the wealthy got a lot wealthier in the past few years, while the rest of us, not so much.
So it's no surprise that expensive homes aren't feeling the same pain as middle and lower-income neighborhoods.
I'm guessing you had a 'chute for that jump...
Oh yes! But the look on the faces of the others in the basket was pretty funny as we climbed up and left
When you get out of a moving plane, you don't get the stomach thing because you leave with the speed of the aircraft. But in a balloon you go from 0 to 120, so you get a bit of it. And I flailed because there's no air to push against.
And any landing you can walk away from is a good landing!
OT -- nice chart of Chicago land values and new construction and the U.S. economy over 1830-1933:
chicago home
Nice big swings in land values and new construction in Chicago.
Glad that we have a Fed to prevent this from happening, now.
Denver did not see much house appreciation compared to many other cities, so prices will probably not fall as far either
I don't think this is necessarily true. Some of the worst hit regions (e.g. Michigan, Ohio, Missouri, etc) never saw the same massive appreciations that were experienced elsewhere. Without the loose lending of the last decade I suspect that many places of the country would have seen outright price declines long ago. While these fly-over areas may not have seen massive apprecation, all that easy money may have been working overtime just to keep prices from falling.
My main theory for predicting the depth of a given region's property decline is to look at the number of home-owners with little, or no, equity. Regions with high percenatages of home-owners with healthy amounts of equity will likely see the shallowest bottoms.
So long as home-owners have equity, they won't wind up in foreclosure should they experience financial troubles (i.e. they can always sell). It's the amount of equity that matters, not the resets or the height of the bubble.
Real prices have been flat in Denver for about six years - before turning down recently - so prices are probably much closer to the bottom in Denver than in Los Angeles.
No! How many times no? What about the exact same datums doesn't support the claim that Denver has as far if not more to fall because it didn't even manage to participate in the mid 2000s run up?
CR, I know you are a far better person than to resort to chartism.
Barley,
I wouldn't deserve the hat tip, "w" would.
Spent last weekend with a bunch of friends in the army stationed in Savannah, Georgia; amongst the Army Savannah is apparently known as "the waiting room for Iraq". Some of my friends were asking me the right time to buy a house. I'm in my early 30s, and I couldn't help thinking of this as an analogy for my generation: waiting to get out of Iraq, waiting to buy a house, waiting for the economy to get better, etc. No one seems to be really that outraged about and quite ready to elect McCain as our next president. When will people become outraged...will it take everyone moving back in with their parents to do so?
Yeah, the "high end is holding up" mantra is way too premature.
The rich (that have gotten richer) haven't yet been that affected by the downturn, but they will. It's the old "plankton" theory; J6P's problems will work their way up the food chain eventually.
I don't think that the price run-ups during the bubble are going to tell the whole story about price declines.
The declines we've seen so far obviously are mostly related to oversupply from new builds(directly and indirectly from people who absorbed the supply and are now foreclosed, distressed sellers, jingle mailers, etc.)
The demand required to absorb the supply and stop the price declines will likely have to come from real income. As we are only beginning to see the effects of the job losses, I think it may be some time before we get a better picture of what areas are going to stabilize first due to solid local economies, and what areas will continue to decline from deteriorating local economies.
Of course I think that L.A. will still be one of the worse, both from crazy supply and bad prospects for their future economy.
For example, an area that had very little price run-up, could see huge real price declines due to an economy heavily weighted towards financial, construction, and service jobs. Where an area with large price runups might see less declines due to a more limited supply and a local economy that actually prospers.
SHK,
And for those areas like Vegas that has had both a huge runup and is dominated by construction & service jobs??? Armageddon.
The question is what is the story for LA's local economy? It was real estate and mortgage for 10 years. And there's the port. Entertainment is a pretty small component. And sadly, porn just can't carry the whole local economy. So what is the future for LA?
ipodius,
Its not the fall, its the sudden stop at the end!
I'm guessing you had a 'chute for that jump...
energyecon | 04.04.08 - 3:48 pm
Old 'chuting saying:
It's not the altitude that kills you. It's the ground.
tj&b-
My sister was a top seller for pulte homes in vegas.
Her and her husband bought a house for 250k, then she bought 2 condos, then they had another house built for near 1 million, then they bought an island off the coast of belize.
I refused to visit her in vegas because I hate the place so much. I really appreciate real production, something that doesn't exist in vegas.
She is now divorced and most of their property is on the market. They are still optimistic that they will get out even on their 1M house. I predicted bankruptcy or walk-away almost a year ago, and am sticking with my prediction.
SweetHomeKilla - how much for the island ?
It's not the altitude that kills you. It's the ground.
lol...it's not the 14000 foot fall, it's that last 12 inches that's the problem
woot! in Denver. My place is Blue! Go Denver.
And I have a mountain and city views.
SHK,
Ouch! That island may come in handy for them.
I too have family in LV. They bought a small place back in the early 90's, then doubled the mortgage on a refi during the boom. They're already underwater and headed down fast, plus both have economically-sensitive jobs.
I warned'em (back in 2004), too, but family never listens.
I'm born and raised in Colorado living in the center of Denver right now, and there is vacancy everywhere. Apartments everywhere. The really nice new developments on the Platte River are empty of people and full of foreclosures. A ton of speculation down there even in my own city.
The economy here really has to improve for anything to get better. We were heavily dependent on technology, but never got the upswing that places like San Francisco did after ~'05. Things feel pretty crummy here right now.
Hopefully our relatively-good-for-America mass transit system and proximity to good cropland, as well as strategic point on the railroads will be enough to keep things going all right.
how much for the island ?
250k
They bought it a couple months before the divorce, not much logic there as far as i'm concerned.
Most of the island floods during high tide and the plan was to spend another 50k to have sand dumped in to have a worthwhile beach. Then build a hurricane proof(does this really exist) house.
What's really F*cked up about it, is that they couldn't get financing so they had her husbands mom refinance her paid off house to get the money. She probably won't ever get paid back, and she has no real savings for retirement.
In 2007, according to Bloomberg, the Paulson Credit Opportunities Fund returned almost 600%, finishing up the year with a staggering gain of 589.9%. The Paulson Credit Opportunities Fund II, a slightly newer fund, also had an amazing year, finishing up over 350%.
Nice story here:
Trader Made Billions on Subprime
John Paulson Bet Big on Drop in Housing Values;
Greenspan Gets a New Gig, Soros Does Lunch
Article: Largest Payday in Wall Street History « chrisco.us
anuary 15, 2008
On Wall Street, the losers in the collapse of the housing market are legion. The biggest winner looks to be John Paulson, a little-known hedge fund manager who smelled trouble two years ago.
Funds he runs were up $15 billion in 2007 on a spectacularly successful bet against the housing market. Mr. Paulson has reaped an estimated $3 billion to $4 billion for himself believed to be the largest one-year payday in Wall Street history.
Now, in another twist in financial history, Mr. Paulson is retaining as an adviser a man some blame for helping feed the housing-market bubble by keeping interest rates so low: former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan (see article)
What's really F*cked up about it, is that they couldn't get financing so they had her husbands mom refinance her paid off house to get the money. She probably won't ever get paid back, and she has no real savings for retirement.
SweetHomeKilla | 04.04.08 - 4:26 pm | #
Wow. Low and behold, these are the people being bailed out...
I'll give them $25k for the island
Well worth a read:
Most people told us house prices never go down on a national level, and that there had never been a default of an investment-grade-rated mortgage bond, Mr. Paulson says. Mortgage experts were too caught up in the housing boom.
In several interviews, Mr. Paulson made his first comments on how he made his historic coup. Merely holding a different opinion from the blundering herd wasnt enough to produce huge profits. He also had to think up a technical way to bet against the housing and mortgage markets, given that, as he notes, you cant short houses.
Weve got to take as much advantage of this as we can, Mr. Paulson recalls telling a colleague around the middle of 2005, when optimism about the housing market was at its peak.
His bets at first were losers. But lenders were getting less and less rigorous about making sure borrowers could pay their mortgages. Mr. Paulsons research told him home prices were flattening. Suspecting that rating agencies were too generous in assessing complex securities built out of mortgages, he had his team begin tracking tens of thousands of mortgages. They concluded it was getting harder for lenders to collect.
His confidence rose in January 2006. Ameriquest Mortgage Co., then the largest maker of subprime loans to buyers with spotty credit, settled a probe of improper lending practices by agreeing to a $325 million payment. The deal convinced Mr. Paulson that aggressive lending was widespread.
Adding to his suspicions, he heard that Bear Stearns had asked an industry group to codify the right of an underwriter to modify or buy out a faltering pool of loans on which a mortgage security was based. Mr. Paulson claimed this would give cover to market manipulation. He hired former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Harvey Pitt to spread the word about this alleged threat.
In the end, Bear Stearns withdrew the proposal. It was merely about clarifying our right to continue to service loans whether that be modifying loans when people cant pay their mortgage or buying out loans when rep and warranty issues are involved in the underwriting process, says a Bear Stearns spokesman.
Events at Bear Stearns soon added to the worries: Two Bear Stearns hedge funds that invested in subprime mortgages collapsed in mid-2007. Suddenly, investors began to shun such mortgages.
Suspecting that rating agencies were too generous in assessing complex securities built out of mortgages, he had his team begin tracking tens of thousands of mortgages. They concluded it was getting harder for lenders to collect.
I love this guy. Follow him on the way back up folks! Does he have a blog ??
My poor savings,
Here in Boston we're getting over the denial phase in most places. The desirable Back Bay is holding up.
I have a view of a street and a couple of trees. It rained here yesterday and today. Tomorrow, the forecast is for rain.
This should explain a little about "Denver"--
http://county-map.digital-topo-maps.com/colorado-county-map.gif
See that little blue county? It's mostly I25 and the North Platte River, with a little Coors Field, etc. in the middle. Prices there were always high compared to anywhere else in CO - think pricey lofts and historic buildings condofied.
The people who live in Denver really live in Arapahoe and Adams counties where the bubble looks pretty much like any other metro area - big 'burbs full of McMansions in foreclosure.
NYAG Leapfrogs Feds in Targeting Appraisals
K&L Gates : Newsstand : NYAG Leapfrogs Feds in Targeting Appraisals
Rather than waiting around for Congress or the Federal Reserve Board to complete their consideration of appraisal reform, New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo announced on March 3, 2008, the execution of cooperation agreements (the Cooperation Agreements or Agreements) with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) that will require significant changes in appraisals for residential mortgage loans on a nationwide basis.[1]
Consumers Clog Courts with Codified Care Claims Mortgage Banking & Consumer Credit Alert
K&L Gates : Newsstand : Consumers Clog Courts with Codified Care Claims
The title of this Alert is a prediction of what might come to pass if Congress enacts recently proposed legislation that seeks to expand and codify the common-law concepts of negligence and duty of care and apply them to mortgage lenders and mortgage brokers.
Can't help this morbid fascination. In the lower income areas, will prices go back to 2002 levels at the bottom? 1997? I wonder how it will feel to owe more than twice of the market value of a home. Pretty bad, I'm guessing.
Speed writes:
I understand that the sale of Ferraris has not been affected either.
You should tell that to Porsche, whose sales were down 25 percent YOY: European Automakers' U.S. Sales Fall as Luxury Buyers Rein In - Bloomberg.com
My parents were at the dealership in Greenwich a week ago, and the manager said 10 customers had handed in the keys (not sure of the lease/financing mix there) in the last week. And there's a glut of multimillion dollar homes on the market. Besides, marginal competition will eventually drag all the nice areas down with the bad ones. Just takes time.
This trend has been apparent with HousingTracker's Denver data too. The Y/Y median is up and the inventory down. A lot of this comes from the higher end (75% level). Check the graphs:
HousingTracker.net | Median Home Asking Price & Inventory Data for Denver, Colorado
I live in denver, those neighborhoods are a very unique and small part of the market that i would not use for any broad conclusion about denver as a whole. those neighborhoods in cherry creek north and wash park are outrageously overvalued ($650k for a 2,000 sq ft, 100 year old bungalow, maybe some nice recent updates, on 0.1 acres or land and no garage....gimme a break) and will likely stay that way as there is a very limited supply and there are a lot of young professionals that make damn good money and want to live there no matter what the price. I have a house to sell in wheat ridge and the comps look horrible versus what i paid in 2002. luckily I don't NEED to sell as it is being rented to a trusted family member.
Does anybody know how much a subscription to sitexdata, or another site that provides historical data on individual units, might cost. We are trying to get a sense of our market, which does not seem to have been overly-affected by the bubble, and figure having such data would help us. For those of you who have used it, would you recommend an individual purchasing access?
Thanks in advance for any help!
RBS
I believe the old historic neighborhoods this article is referring to is around the Capital and Governers mansion. Very nice area. I've talked to a number of homeowners in that area who purchased these houses for a steal in the 80s when the savings & loan scandels took out a lot of the former residents.
We'll see what happens this time around.
NEW YORK, March 10 (Reuters) - Paulson & Co, the hedge fund group that quadrupled in size last year on the back of the credit crisis, is surging again this year in all three of its major strategies, the firm said.
The firm's performance, disclosed to investors in a letter on Friday, stands out amid lackluster and loss-making results elsewhere in the hedge fund sector, where slumping stock markets and volatility in the credit markets caused a number of firms to falter or even collapse.
Paulson, which manages about $30 billion and counts former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan as an adviser, posted net returns of over 8 percent in the first two months of 2008 in its credit strategies, the letter said.
Paulson, which is managed by investor John Paulson, posted net gains of between 5.5 percent and 10 percent for the period in its event-driven strategies, a broad trading strategy that bets on the likelihood of corporate changes.
I have a view of a street and a couple of trees. It rained here yesterday and today. Tomorrow, the forecast is for rain.
Cheer up lama, it's supposed to be sunny on Sunday! I used to live on Marlboro St. The Back Bay, Beacon Hill, and most of the South End will hold value, as will the North End and most of JP now. Parts of Dot, Southie and the usual other places will not. Probably the same situation the Denver maps show. These sections are well-off, old, and always sought-after or they are newly renovated. I do think the SE will pull back though, as it got really over-done in the last few years.
Things are kind of treading water here in Dallas-Fort Worth.
Several stories on the housing market in today's business section of the Dallas Morning News. It's a good news/bad news situation.
The Metroplex has only 6-7 months inventory compared to 10-11 months nationally, and the 6-7 months has been stable for the last four years. On the other hand, new home sales are down 30 percent in 1Q08. Starts are down 35 percent, lowest for 1Q in a decade.
Asking prices are slightly higher this past quarter, 2.8 percent. Dallas, Houston, and Charlotte are the only metro areas to see increases. I realize it doesn't mean they're going to get that price, but it implies some confidence or stability.
Also of note is that some of the highest inventory supply readings are in Park Cities and North Dallas, very high-end areas.
(Sources are Altos Research Corp., Real IQ, Metrostudy Inc., and Realtor)
All this matches fairly close to bubble/no bubble areas of the country. Things aren't purring along here, but no sense of doom like the coasts.
Still, in the same paper, a builder is offering around a 10 percent discount on newly built homes (200-400K) in some of our nicer suburbs and exurbs. Nice pictures.
Anecdotally, I live in the center of the metro region in NE Tarrant County. My city P&ZC approved last year a large townhome development marketed to snowbirds and empty nesters (250K and up). Not a clod of dirt has been turned yet. Another developer has a pocket subdivision of 375-400K French Country, 3000+ sq. foot homes being built. They are the most expensive homes in my city (almost 2x the previous high). He's built 6 out of 16 and sold 4 of the 6 so far this past year. The foreclosed house on my block was sold last month by the bank after a year. (Nice lady, don't know the price she paid yet.) That's been the only one so far.
Houses are being sold in my city and median prices are stable, but things are very slow. After what I have read on this site for the last year and seeing the data for other areas, I'll take what we have.
It's going to get worse, but DFW is the fastest growing metro area in the nation, so somebody is going to buy these homes (assuming they are not anchored to their current one).
FWIW, just adding to the "it depends on where you are" meme.
Then build a hurricane proof(does this really exist) house.
Proof no, but highly resistant yes. The standard practice in Belize is to either build a sacrificial stick house on a concrete pad (usually on stilts to catch the breeze) and just rebuild after each hurricane, or spend a bit more on concrete/cinder block bunker-like structure with AC, and figure you can just fix a few windows after the next big one. Spent a very pleasant afternoon once at a "bar" on a tiny island off the coast that this couple runs in the ground floor of their house (only reachable by small boat, we stopped after a snorkeling outing). Their strategy seemed smart: build a small super tough bunker to house the generator and a "safe room" for waiting out storms, but let the wood house get splintered.
Activist hedge fund firm Appaloosa Management has retracted its $2.55 billion investment in bankrupt auto parts maker Delphi Corp., just as the company was about to emerge from bankruptcy.
On Friday, Appaloosa said, in a regulatory filing that it was terminating its deal with Delphi because the company did not have its $6.1 billion exit financing firmly in place. The firm is also unhappy with the amount of financing that Delphis former parent GM is putting into the restructuring effort. Appaloosa also said that Delphi owes them an $82.5 million breakup fee.
Appaloosa heads up an investment consortium comprised of hedge fund firms Harbinger Capital Partners and Pardus Capital Management, as well as investment banks Merrill Lynch, UBS, and Goldman Sachs.
Hedge fund firm Halcyon Asset Management is building up its senior team in anticipation of its going public through its acquisition by a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).
Jerry Bailey joins Halcyon as executive vice president of finance and operations. Bailey joins the firm from Bear Stearns Merchant Bank, the banks private equity arm, where he was senior advisory director focused on the financial technology sector.
Halcyon is also adding Suzanne McDermott to its team who joins as deputy chief compliance office and senior counsel. McDermott was an assistant U.S. attorney, most recently in the securities fraud unit.
OT -- I look to history for hints at how things may happen in the future.
Here's the PDF of 'One Hundred Years of Land Values in Chicago,' which covers 1830-1933:
http://ia301326.us.archive.org/2/items/onehundredyearso00hoytrich/onehundredyearso00hoytrich.pdf
The total value of land in Chicago dropped 60% from 1928 to 1933 (page 273).
DB Zwirn, which had to close two funds because investors wanted their money back, may be setting up another fund on investor demand, according to a Reuters report.
In February, it was reported that the hedge fund firm was liquidating two funds because investors were seeking redemptions of about $2 billion. Investors supposedly were unhappy with the firm after it revealed internal accounting problems.
Connecticut-based Mercury Real Estate Advisors is closing two of its funds because of volatility in the real estate markets, according to a letter sent to investors which was obtained by HedgeFund.net. One of the funds was in special situations, while the other contained small and micro-cap portfolio securities that market conditions had rendered illiquid, the firm said.
Is Dodd in that one??
Ollwerther, who last month left Merrill Lynch, became COO of its hedge fund business in 2005. He joined the investment bank in 1981.
Ollwerther marked the latest management defection from Mother Merrill since John Thain became chief executive officer in December. At least a dozen high-ranking personnel have since left the Wall Street firm, including Ollwerther cohort David Barrett, who left in March.
Radcliffe Group is developing a volatility arbitrage offering set to open May 1.
Current financial market turmoil has created opportunity for the strategy, said founder Steven Katznelson.
Vol arb is an option-based statistical arbitrage strategy incumbent on buying volatility when it is low and selling volatility when it is high.
There is real opportunity now to buy volatility cheaper, Katznelson said.
I was working in Boulder in 2003-4 and the area took a huge real estate hit from the collapse of the internet bubble, so psychologically people had a recent memory of dramatic price drops so I don't think the prices in that area ever rose to the levels seen in CA/FL/AZ
Speed writes:
I understand that the sale of Ferraris has not been affected either.
Baruza writes:
You should tell that to Porsche, whose sales were down 25 percent YOY
Don't confuse Porsches with Ferraris. Porsche Boxsters and Cayennes became the toys of the HELOC high-rollers in the 'burbs.
There are no low-end Ferraris for high-earning proles. They are serious machines, and seriously expensive, for serious car buffs.
I've had my eye on a particular property in a small city in Florida waiting for the price to drop. Instead the price increased by $30K last month, which really surprised me. It's in a historic neighborhood.
You can get a decent used ferrari for around 70K, the same price as a new loaded Cayman.
There are no low-end Ferraris for high-earning proles.
There goes my keyboard again.
there's also the flip of this:
Apartment vacancy rate at 6-year low : Real Estate : The Rocky Mountain News
The overall apartment vacancy rate in the Denver area fell to a six-year low of 6.2 percent, according to a report released today by the Apartment Association of Metro Denver.
The overall vacancy rate fell from 7.1 percent in the first quarter, according to the report authored by Gordon Von Stroh, a professor at the Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver.
The last time vacancies were lower was during the second quarter of 2001, when 5.7 percent of the units were vacant. Vacancy rates peaked in the first two quarters of 2003, when the vacancy rate stood at 13.1 percent.
Denver had little appreciation in the new millenium, that's true, but I thought that that was due to its oversized appreciation during the dot-com bubble, with all its telecommunication industry. Denver had already exhausted itself and all the lax credit did was to prevent the normally expected depreciation as in 87-91 after the oil bubble. With stricter credit, depreciation might finally come.
I'll give them $25k for the island ;-)Interesting Times | 04.04.08 - 4:29 pm | #
$27,500 and an all expense paid trip to Wells, NV
ZIRP,
Maybe some folks in the Army are ready to vote for McCain, but I wouldn't touch him with your barge pole.
For all his "world community led by the US" talk, the reality is that he's a "bomb first, ask questions later" shortfused hothead who probably doesn't know how to endorse a check, let alone balance a checkbook, let aloe read a balance sheet.
With the exception of the time when he was in the process of leaving his 1st wife has he ever even had the prospect of lookig for a straight job.
But I digress, Denver encaptulates the duality of RRE nationwide; and when it goes, it's gonna go bad. The really bad stuff has barely started.
I'll give them $25k for the island ;-)Interesting Times | 04.04.08 - 4:29 pm | #
$27,500 and an all expense paid trip to Wells, NV
All Fall Down | 04.04.08 - 5:11 pm | #
LOL. I'll ask her how low she'll go and get back to you:)
how do find apartment rate info??
The average monthly rental rate for all apartments rose to $863.53 for the second quarter, compared with $843.85 in the second quarter of 2006 and $842.69 for the first quarter of 2007.
Re: The overall apartment vacancy rate in the Denver area fell to a six-year low of 6.2 percent, according to a report released today by the Apartment Association of Metro Denver.
The overall vacancy rate fell from 7.1 percent in the first quarter, according to the report authored by Gordon Von Stroh, a professor at the Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver.
Where are we on that trend??
I would think this would be a good time to transition from home owner to landlord and to rent your house and wait for values to go up?
vacancy rates??
Hudson Valley magazine did a detailed survey of home prices in their area and had a similar observation: very wealthy neighborhoods saw an increase in home price, while less pricy neighborhoods had declines.
As I recall Tanta/CR do things with this in graph form, anyone know what its under?
CENSUS BUREAU REPORTS ON RESIDENTIAL VACANCIES AND HOMEOWNERSHIP
National vacancy rates in the fourth quarter 2007 were 9.6 (+ 0.4) percent for rental housing and
2.8 (+ 0.1) percent for homeowner housing, the Department of Commerces Census Bureau announced today.
The Census Bureau said the rental vacancy rate was not statistically different from the fourth quarter rate last
year, or the rate last quarter (9.8 percent each). For homeowner vacancies, the current rate was not
statistically different from the fourth quarter 2006 rate or the rate last quarter (2.7 percent each). The
homeownership rate at 67.8 (+ 0.5) percent for the current quarter was lower than the fourth quarter 2006 rate
(68.9 percent) and also lower than the rate last quarter (68.2 percent).
SHK,
Can the island be seen on web-mapped overhead satellite images (e.g., Google maps)?
$27,500 and an all expense paid trip to Wells, NV
All Fall Down | 04.04.08 - 5:11 pm | #
D'oh ! That's MUCH warmer than Canada... damn. Out played again.
They are serious machines, and seriously expensive, for serious car buffs.
bruiser | 04.04.08 - 4:58 pm | #
If you could pass this along to the hedge fund guys destroying 1st gear, I'd be much obliged. Many of them seem very much like high-earning proles.
I'm working on a theory that the real explanation for which areas are hardest hit is not about class (wealthy vs. not-so-wealthy) but about older, more stable neighborhoods vs. newer ones, edgy ones and new development.
In our town, a realtor told me that about 300 homes sell every year (with about 16,000 homes in the town). That would mean that in the last 5 years only about 10% of the homes would have changed hands and would have invested at bubble prices with bubble loans.
For example, i heard today about a couple that bought in 2002 and needed to move. they priced it at 2002 levels and sold it in a bidding war for about 5% more than the offering price.
i don't know what that means.
Auto sales are tough here in La Jolla, too.
Two Bugatti Veyrons have been sitting on the lot for at least six months now:
Bugattis for Sale - Bugatti Dealer - Bugatti Prices
1000 horsepower, $1.3 million.
Bugatti once again marks the peak of the madness, as it did in the '30s.
D'oh ! That's MUCH warmer than Canada... damn. Out played again.
Have you ever been to Wells, NV? She'd probably take your lower offer just to stay away from there!
LOL
Most of the island floods during high tide and the plan was to spend another 50k to have sand dumped in to have a worthwhile beach. Then build a hurricane proof (does this really exist) house.
LOL. Dump sand in for a beach. The first storm will push it all up into the house - assuming the house doesn't get washed away.
On my drive to and from work each day from my modest rental home in La Jolla, I pass by the Ferrari dealership and the Bugatti/Lamborghini/Bentley dealership.
Same cars, day after day. Activity is slooow.
Oh, and the rolling three month average of median prices for resale homes here in La Jolla is off 25% from peak, from $2.0 million (May '06) to $1.5 million (Feb. '08).
High end areas are far from immune to this downturn.
If you could pass this along to the hedge fund guys destroying 1st gear, I'd be much obliged. Many of them seem very much like high-earning proles.
No way. I'm going long chro-moly.
Can the island be seen on web-mapped overhead satellite images (e.g., Google maps)?
Probably, but I wouldn't know where to look, and would rather not ask her about it. I try to avoid all topics that relate to her debts, job, relationships, etc. when talking to her these days.
melidere,
Turnover in older San Diego neighborhoods has historically been extremely low, too, thereby restricting supply.
That's one aspect of the market that I expect will change, too, but it'll be the last to do so.
I try to avoid all topics that relate to her debts, job, relationships, etc. when talking to her these days.
That's EXACTLY what I do, too!
Houston Chronicle
5th Circuit sets aside $72 million judgment for Hurwitz (20 year old FDIC case that should never have been filed)
404 Error, No such article | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle
Hasn't CR made the point that "assuming they are not anchored to their current one" is dangerous in the current environment?
I'm head out to Colorado in May to attend the REDC auction in Denver. Not bidding at this time, but may in the next year or two.
Check out realtytrac.com to see all the stuff in BK in Denver, and for that matter in your own back yard.
Journeyman
Don't worry, I understand the danger in that assumption. Just saying DFW is not too bad...yet.
No way. I'm going long chro-moly
Chro-moly?? Is this '88?
Titanium on the cheap ones, Ti/carbon fiber on pricy shit
ZIRP: Your generation won't be outraged even when they have to move back in with their parents....When taht happens,they then will just be waiting for Moommy & Daddy to die. Sigh.
I've lived in Southwest Denver for many years and am familiar with the area. The map shows that prices in my hood, and those around me, are up. That is not true. This area has foreclosures, empty SFH's and townhomes, and for sale signs out front of some places for longer than a year. The HIghlands neighborhood might be up, but that is about all.
Exceptional charts on all the articles today. Correct span, reasonable scale, correct adjustments. Thats why I come her all the time.
Then build a hurricane proof(does this really exist) house.
These guys claim so:
Hurricane proof, disaster proof, Earth sheltered homes that are environmentally
friendly.
Earthquake proof too, which is funny to imagine since it is IN the earth. I guess the top and the bottom move together, unlike a house on a foundation.
... they couldn't get financing so they had her husbands mom refinance her paid off house to get the money
My God, talk about sacrificing for your children. What an awful thing to ask of your mother.
That guy must be a first-class shit heel. And his wife no better for letting him do it.
And yep, it's anecdotes like that which make the Foreclosure Act all the more objectionable.
I hope people are busy contacting their senators about the pending vote on the Foreclosure Prevention Act.
It's a sham, designed to helping actors most to blame for the crisis -- builders and banks.
For summary, see this:
Mortgaging our future? Builders win big in housing bill - San Jose Mercury News
I am hopeful that when The People do raise their voices, government DOES respond. The special interests this bill serves are hoping no one notices. I have, at least. I hope a lot of others have, too.
Average, Mean, Medium prices of houses in any given area are all statistical in accuracies.
Average Medium prices are the best gauge of current housing prices
More on the bad tax policy included in the foreclosure act:
Steven Pearlstein - Max and Chuck Show, Cont. - washingtonpost.com
Call or write your senators this weekend to urge them to vote against this disaster.
Denver is a funny market because it doesn't seem to have had massive price appreciation. However if you look at appreciation + new housing stock it makes the story a little murkier. This is not the same place it was 15 years ago. 60 year old neighborhoods have been transformed house by house. Million dollar homes used to be true exceptions, now there are 1500 for sale in the MLS. And as it states in the article we had lax standards as it was.
We had funny loan stats on the way up , no way we those don't fail us on the way down.
Denver was the ultimate self-fulfilling market on the way up with large amounts of the participants both players in and emplyees of the housing industrial complex.