Please post your local house search updates, MLS finds, on-topic ideas, and links here.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Northern Virginia Real Estate Statistics
REAL ESTATE SEARCH
County Assessment Websites
Buy/Sell Without an Agent
Local Real Estate Agents
Housing Economics Blogs
Local Interest
Housing Bubble Links
Eastern Regional Blogs
Western Regional Blogs
- Bakersfield Bubble
- Bay Area Real Estate Blog
- BubbleInfo (N. San Diego)
- Burbed (San Francisco)
- Dr. Housing Bubble (SoCal)
- Patrick.net (San Francisco)
- Portland Housing Blog
- Professor Piggington's Econo-Almanac
- Rancid Truth (Orange County)
- Sacramento Land(ing)
- Seattle Bubble
- SoCal Real Estate Bubble Blog
- Socket Site (San Francisco)
Real Estate Blogs
REAL ESTATE AUCTIONS
33 comments:
coincident or indication of the peak? these high-end trustee sales all have debt originated in 2006.
Deed of Trust dated September 22 2006 in the original principal amount of $800,000.00
Deed of Trust in the original principal amount of $1,137,500.00 dated January 9 2006
Deed of Trust in the original principal amount of $800,000.00 dated August 24 2006
MM, the middle one could be a strategic default - they paid $1750000 per Arl. assessor website. I didn't check the other two.
I should have added that AC now assesses it as worth a lot less than $1.75 but still well above the amount owed.
How far prices drop will depend on how quickly the banks clear their shadow inventory which, in turn, depends on agreements they’ve made with the Fed and the other banks. Housing inventory is being released in drips and drabs according to an unknown plan. Some would call it price-fixing.
Contrarian, if the fix is in, how are prices going to be down 50% in three years?
6/13/10 2:29 AM, contrarian said: "Three years from now, house prices will be at least 50% below today's prices."
I'm confused by the "unknown plan". How can a plan be implemented if it's unknown?
The very last sentence in your article:
"The administration needs to get on top of this problem before the downward spiral begins and the next disaster becomes unavoidable."
I think we've already had enough govt manipulation.
Ace,
yeah, guy's a lawyer, bet he got everything all planned out.
Contrarian-
You do realize banks are in much better financial shape now than they were before the crisis started right. They have way more equity capital and have substantially delevered. So this crisis would need to be far worse than the last one to make the banks fail. e.g. last crisis housing fell 30% and unemployment increased 5%, so you would need housing to fall well more than an additional 30% and have unemployment over 15%.
Without a massive war or something like that I just can't imagine us getting to those levels that quickly.
HB,
I guess you think the federal government suspended money market redemptions by a 4-1 Vote because the financial markets are so sound, is that what you are suggesting?
Housing Market Slows as Buyers Get Picky
Have you folks seen this NYT article? It seems kind of trollish to me. Surely the tone of the article suggesting that buyers are to blame for the tanked market must be calculated to garner responses and attention.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/17/AR2010061702897.html?hpid=topnews
1200 arrested in mortgage fraud.
And people complain that newspapers never cover the "good news" stories.
Contrarian-
No I have argued multiple times here that the financial system likely would have collapsed without intervention. I am just saying that the same intervention would happen again and more importantly banks are substantially healthier now than they were back in 2008.
Do you disagree that banks have reduced their leverage by about ~30%. In general they have also reduced their holdings of risky assets.
Contrarian-
Yes I fully admit the housing market is in bad shape and the economy is very weak.
I still don't understand how you can possibly think that banks were in better shape in 07-08 than now. Look at all of their balance sheets back then they had far less equity and far more assets. Back then they also had many assets like mortgages on their books at full value. Many of these assets have since been marked down or sold off.
I would be impressed if you could find a single article that says that banks balance sheets are weaker now then they were in 2008.
This does not mean banks are very strong, but instead just means that they used to be much weaker.
HB,
Nothing was fixed with the intervention....we argued about this before. It just kicked the can down the road.
I don't predict as ominous scenario as contrarian does. But, I don't believe bailouts and QE has fixed a thing. They just thrown good money after bad and socialized casino losses.
In terms of where we stand:
Yes, banks raised more capital and reduced their leverage a bit. Yes, banks were helped by steeper yield curve and public financing of casino losses to some extent.
However, the fundamental problem of home prices out of whack with fundamentals still remains.
And, there isn't much firepower, dumbness or public opinion left for further bailouts.
Spider-
I agree about about housing. But it sounds like you do agree the QE helped the banks. Sure it was at the cost of many of us savers and tax payers, but that doesn't change the fact that socializing losses does help banks capital position. Raising money and paying out virtually no dividends has and will continue to help banks strengthen their position. I agree it will take many years before banks are very strong again, but that doesn't change the fact that they are better off now than a couple years ago
Contrarian -- your thesis seems to be, the more banks fail, the more home prices tank, as if there is some direct and absolute link between the two.
Yet there is a problem with your thesis. Lets see if you can find it.
In 2007, 3 banks failed and home prices fell slightly.
In 2008, 25 banks failed and home prices crashed.
In 2009, 140 banks failed and home prices stabilized.
See the problem here?
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/search/label/Bank%20Failure
Contrarian-
Also do you really care about a bunch of banks that have a couple hundred million in assets? There are many small banks that are in bad shape, because no one knows who they are so it is hard to raise money. When I was talking about banks reducing leverage I was talking about the banks that were stress tested aka banks with $100+ billion in assets. These 16 banks have about 70-80% of the countries assets so all that really matters is whether these banks fail or not.
You clearly know that any one of Lehman, Bear Sterns, Wamu, or Indimac are orders of magnitude larger than all of the banks that have failed this year combined.
Contrarian-
Clearly in your scenario at least one of these 16 banks will fail, while I am confident that none of them will fail in the next 3 years.
Contrarian-
I agree with you that small banks are in trouble. As I said though the 16 stress tested banks will be fine. If you want me to list the 16 banks that I am talking about I can.
Also I agree the FDIC is in bad shape, but the government will print money and give it to them if need be. Also your article was talking about how FDIC banks are profitable again, is that really what you were trying to talk about.
"HB said - But it sounds like you do agree the QE helped the banks."
Not really...you didn't get my point.
Anytime you talk about socialism, there are always winners and losers. Of course, that's not the point.
Sure, lot of bonuses got saved. Sure, debt holders who should have taken substantial haircut, got all their money back. Yes, it helped small segment of people....
It hasn't helped the system as a whole. Neither did it prevent any so-called disaster. The end result for the economy won't change...IMHO.
If some banks had to fail...so be it. Well-managed banks would have taken over...good example being JPM and mid-side banks who have been responsible.
Unfortunately, fear-mongering was successful at the end of the day and capitalism took the back-seat.
MM That house at 6430 27th St has been one of the most controversial places in Arlington. The original builder (who was a professor at GW University) was trying to create a halfway house there and built the house too big for the lot. The neighbors got Arlington Co. to stop the plan. It also took him years to complete the house, and the neighbors had the County involved throughout the process. When it was finally finished, it was too big for the lot. The builder went into bankruptcy and the house was sold to the current owner who is also a builder. Arlington Co. made him cut off part of the house and he also did work to it. He is now trying to sell the house for around $1.3 million. My cousin lives a few doors away from that house and he and the neighbors have been fighting it for years.
Reecon, I remember that story! I think the GW prof. moved to Hawaii. Talk about landing on one's feet...
A couple of huge, ugly houses sold in Arl. this week for prices well below what the sellers/bank wanted for them and $300K or so below what the typical new build Craftsman-type houses are selling for. That's one extreme. Here's another--also know as "what happens to you when you fall in love with your own decorating, overspend, then forget how small and dark your house is when you set your asking price":
Delusionally cute
Scroll down to the "Monster House" story:
Monster
"The fight over the “monster house” raised a variety of issues, among them theories that Kingery’s original design of seven bedrooms ,
multiple bathrooms and an auditorium-sized living room were signs that his so-called “single-family” home was actually intended as some kind of halfway house for the troubled youth whom Kingery knows from his work as a consultant on youth violence."
I just cannot imagine why those NIMBY neighbors had any objections.
(sarcasm)
Ace,
You weren't kidding... the dimensions of the master bedroom according to the MLS listing are 53' x 17'.
Monster House MLS Listing
Plus, marble walls in the finished basement?
Post a Comment