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Thursday, May 6, 2010
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39 comments:
This morning on the radio they started reporting that there will be a double dip in housing due to all the foreclosures that are entering the market. I remember the past few days some of you talking about whether that would actually happen, but needed the news to start pushing it. I guess they are getting on-board?
Wunderbar-
I think a lot of the news stations are pushing the report that Meridith Whitney recently came out with. I assume she is correct and there will be a small double dip as some of the emergency measures go away, but it probably I just don't see huge losses.
wunderbar,
I'm really hoping the WaPo reposts the local foreclosure numbers again sometime soon. Preferably sort of June-ish like last year so that if there has been a rise we'll see it clearly and if there hasn't been a rise a long enough time will have passed for that to be meaningful too.
I hope this time around they break out actual concluded auctions and plot both that and notices of trustee sales, so that we can get a better gauge of the factor we should be dividing the NOT's by in order to know the actual number of distressed houses. Given repeated cancelations and delays that number could be anything from 2 to 6? 10? on a particular house, so it's hard to guess the aggragate number accurately. (that's so we can interpret the RealtyTrac and LP numbers which are just NOTs).
bidding war for N Arl land...
MM-
I wonder if they are going to be able to break the land up into two .18 acre lots instead of a .36 acre lot. If they can do this pretty cheaply they should be able to make a pretty penny, if they are not able to do this I am having trouble imagining what they can build and at what price they can sell it and still make a profit.
MM I know a little bit about that land sale because we have friends living nearby. That house adjoined another lot owned by a builder. With the additional land from that house, the builder can now build three houses instead of one on each lot. It was like buying one lot at $600,000 and a third of a lot at $200,000. So the number isn't as extreme as it looks. The better part of the sale was the old Mercedes that sat in the driveway. Someone got a real deal because I heard they threw in the car.
http://franklymls.com/DC7146047
136 days on market,9 months to close. 25% reduction in price, and 8K buyers bribe and
amazingly low interest rates.
I'm really surprised it sat that long in a UC state.
I wish listing agents would price more aggressively but, insist that cash offers must close within 15 days.
Contrarian-
You must be having a great day. Shit is seriously going seriously crazy in the bond market and going just normal crazy in the equities market.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/07/business/07markets.html?hp
a little trouble in greece and the dow flls 1000 points.
Yep.
Thats the crisis i was worrying about.
Either the PIGIS pull out of the EMC, the ECB floods europe with cash or they have a massive deflation.
What is picked, I don't know.
I'm betting on deflation. The germans won't let them print cash.
I'd kinda of enjoy seeing that, though I don't think it will happen.
I believe I'm pretty well prepared. But only for financial crises. We start rioting here, and I'll need to re-think my plans.
I think things will calm down soon. I don't see new highs for a couple of months, but I think everything will be more range bound than you are predicting.
I'm actually pretty happy with the market falling a bit, maybe even more. When it peaked again at $10k we moved to guaranteed annuities, dh might be switching jobs so hoping they have matching 401k then we'll get in at (hopefully) another low. Great time for people just on the job scene or just plain far from retirement.
Think it will be sustained lows, and maybe affect housing?? I'm kinda hoping for our (wanting to buy a home) sake.
pat-
I am not sure this is related to Greece. My guess is either someone made a huge trading error aka tried to sell $xx billion instead of millions or a major hedge fund failed.
"I am not sure this is related to Greece. My guess is either someone made a huge trading error aka tried to sell $xx billion instead of millions or a major hedge fund failed."
Wow, HB, you really think someone would make that huge of an error? That's crazy!!
Wunderbar-
A lot of huge errors happened today. Someone 27,000 shares of Accenture at $0.01. This stock was at ~$40 before and after the trade. accenture
That person lost a $1MM in a couple of seconds. There is some chance that Nasdaq and the New York stock exchange will undue some of these trades, but if not someone got screwed and someone else had a sweet day.
Wunderbar-
After looking around a little I found this article that says Citigroup tried to sell $15million of P&G, but put in an order to sell $15Billion
citi
If the statements are true, Sehr
then it's much more frightening.
1 15 billion dollar error knocks 10% off the value of the dow?
http://www.atozinvestments.com/dow-jones-industrial-average.html
at 10,000 the Dow was worth about 4 trillion, so a 15 billion dollar error, or 0.3% knocks off 30 times it's weight?
You might be on to something HB. We'll see if this has legs.
From CNBC:::
A human trading error at a major firm was the root cause of Thursday's sudden, 9 percent selloff in U.S. stocks, sources told CNBC.
Multiple sources said a trader entered the letter "b"-as in "billion"-when he or she meant to type "m," for "million," shortly before 2:47 p.m. New York time
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Trading-Error-at-Major-Firm-cnbc-434682061.html?x=0
In anticipation of future deletion, this is recorded without comment...
"Contrarian said...
hb,
I expected this. The Indexes will most likely make one new high over the next several weeks -- and then they should collapse to new lows over the next several months, lower than they went in March 2009.
5/6/10 3:02 PM"
Pat-
Part of the problem is that the dow is weighted in a really stupid way where the price of the stock is what matters not the value of the company. So hitting P&G which has a fairly high stock price makes a big difference. The real problem is as soon as one of the dow components starts falling there are a million algorithmic traders that start selling everything saying that they should fall similarly...The volume also appeared to be overwhelming all of the exchanges so their prices were not updating in real time. This caused a bunch of market makers to take away all of the bid/asks because they didn't know what the securities were worth. Aka it was a huge cluster F*ck and with human and machine errors going on all over the place.
I'm starting to think that this time next year we'll be in a double dip recession. The governments in europe are not going to repay their debt and will the Euro will go down. The European market is going to tank and bring us down with them. We'll be thinking on these times of "only" 10% unemployment as the good times. Hello 12 - 15% unemployment 18 months out from now.
To expand a little on what I was talking about. Who owns the Greek, Spanish, debt? If Greece decides to not pay back the debt, these people are going to have to write it off. Who are these people? Are they the same banks that are currently in trouble? If so, what's that going to do to lending again?
Sooo....
Let's talk houses.
I think this one looks like a decent house for the price in Stafford. Granted it's not that close in but Stafford is doable for an area commute. Many of my friends and colleagues commute in daily from further out.
I think they're asking too much for that house. It's not far enough down from peak. My thinking is that the buyer is going to have to ask for 25% off.
To make lemonade out of lemons, a trip to continental Europe should be cheaper and cheaper as this crisis continues. The euro is losing more and more of its value versus the dollar. The exchange rate between USD and Canadian Dollars or Australian Dollars also has improved. This might be a good chance to travel abroad after many recent years where the exchange rate was very much stacked against American tourists.
Virginia Receiving Tons of Federal Dollars
I'm surprised some of the bulls here did not highlight this article.
If you look at the chart it's true there is a clear surge in gov't contractor dollars in Northern Virginia between 2000 and 2008 (most recent date on chart). But it's also clear that there was a huge surge between 1990 and 2000.
So I once again must wonder why the 90s surge in federal contractor spending did not result in a housing boom. I do not deny this federal largesse plays a role in our real estate market but it clearly cannot be enough on its own as the largesse did not stop almost all of the 90s from being a declining or dead real estate market.
The question really is not if - but how low we go in housing. Fundamentally, we are way too overinflated...price stickiness is the real issue in our part of the world.
HB - Meredith has been saying this forever - I follow her...this isn't anything new.
In any case, it doesn't take a PhD to figure out we are out of whack in housing. Time will tell...
tbw,
You fail to account for the huge run-up in the '80's, followed by the S&L crises and tight lending.
You also fail to account for the cyclical nature of RE.
contrarian,
Is it wrong that I think these are a great idea?
Less expensive, less permanent and a heck of a lot faster to install than an addition on your house, (if you can get the plumbing and electrical out to it). If ordinances could be put into place that require it to be in a back or side yard, I don't see a huge difference between it and rambling home extensions.
Does this mean I'm a redneck? Or something?
They're kind of depressingly small, but at the same time the smaller the footprint the more people will have a place to put it and still stay 8 feet from the lot line. And having your own space, no matter how small, that's separate from the noise of the household might be nice.
Contrarian-
That would be pretty funny seeing a whole bunch of effectively trailers in the back of the million dollar houses around here :)
Spider-
I absolutely agree that housing needs to fall in real terms, I am less convinced it "has to fall" in nominal terms. I expect the fed to keep rates absurdly low for a very long time making it possible to have inflation chip away at prices. Although that said I do agree with you that I also expect to see nominal price drops. My best guess is ~10% over 2 years.
You are also correct that Meridith has been bearish for years. Personally I would prefer to listen Dick Bove or look at what John Paulson's hedge fund is buying/selling. Both of them are more willing to change their underlying opinions as the facts change.
contrarian,
If you won't live where these are allowed, then it's my impression from the article that you'll have to leave the state of Virginia.
(I'll have to go back and re-read it)
I've never seen a school bus parked on a neighborhood street. RV's yes. Boats in driveways. I don't mind either of them.
Yup, unless it's struck down you're going to have to give up on the whole state:
Without even building a prototype or hiring lobbyists, Dupin and his team managed to persuade the Virginia General Assembly to pass legislation almost unanimously this year that supersedes local zoning laws in the state and allows families to install such a dwelling on their property with a doctor's order.
House Majority Leader H. Morgan Griffith (R-Salem), who sponsored HB 1307, clearing the way for the dwellings, said he thinks the legislation will prove to be one of the most significant measures enacted this year. "The only thing I regret is that I don't have money to invest in the company," Griffith said.
The law defines the MEDcottages as "temporary family healthcare structures" that can be placed only on the properties of single-family homes and occupied only by a relative who is physically or mentally impaired, as certified by a physician. The structures must be less than 300 square feet and conform to local regulations governing sheds or garages. They must be removed within 30 days after the occupant dies, moves or no longer needs to receive care in the dwelling.
Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R), who signed the bill April 14, will travel to Salem for a ceremonial signing. The law takes effect July 1.
contrarian,
FFX cnty recently has been cracking down on oversized or commercial vehicles parked on all streets. So, there is some overarching ordinance against all of them, even without an HOA.
(I have a civic association, no HOA)
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