Northern Virginia Bits Bucket 10/31/2011

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Northern Virginia Bits Bucket 10/28/2011

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I appreciated Peter Schiff standing up to the "there is no crisis" punditry who were literally laughing out loud at him in 2004 and 2005 on news shows.

Another "bubble" up for discussion is the college loan bubble, which Peter Schiff talks about with his own opinions, starting at 3:04.



Here's a link to the opening of a TIME Magazine article entitled "I Owe U," which pictures a young man with $67,000 in student debt, but he has a B.A. in "Special Studies" to show for it. It's one thing to give up your house and move on, but student loan debts are like taxes - inescapable. Should we call those who loaned this student the money "irresponsible lenders?"

Northern Virginia Bits Bucket 10/27/2011

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S&P/Case-Shiller® August Home-Price Index

The S&P/Case Shiller® composite index for the month of August was released yesterday.

"'There was some weakness in the monthly statistics, as 10 of the cities post price declines in August over July,' says David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Indices. 'And even though the annual rates are largely improving, 18 MSAs and both Composites are still negative. Nationally, home prices are still below where they were a year ago. The 10-City Composite is down 3.5% and the 20-City is down 3.8% compared to August 2010.'

'In the August data, the good news is continued improvement in the annual rates of change in home prices. In spring and summer’s seasonally strong period for housing demand, we cautioned that monthly increases in prices had to be paired with improvement in annual rates before anyone could declare that the market might be stabilizing. With 16 of 20 cities and both Composites seeing their annual rates of change improve in August, we see a modest glimmer of hope with these data. As of August 2011, the crisis low for the 10-City Composite was back in April 2009; whereas it was a more recent March 2011 for the 20-City Composite. Both are about 3.9% above their relative lows.'

'...As seen in our past few monthly reports, there were large revisions across some of the MSAs. In particular, Washington DC was the most affected in August. Additional sale pairs data for May - July 2011 in the Washington DC MSA were received this month and resulted in the revisions.'"

Northern Virginia Bits Bucket 10/25/2011

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Northern Virginia Bits Bucket 10/21/2011

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Hoocoodanode?

"If you look at Cash for Clunkers or the first home buyer tax credit, they were geared to trying to shift [recovery] from 2010 into 2009. Given it’s taken this long [to recover], I don’t think you would do that short-run stuff,” Goolsbee added.

Yup - It's Different Here

From Bloomberg: "Federal employees whose compensation averages more than $126,000 and the nation’s greatest concentration of lawyers helped Washington edge out San Jose as the wealthiest U.S. metropolitan area, government data show."

Northern Virginia Bits Bucket 10/19/2011

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Northern Virginia Bits Bucket 10/17/2011

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Northern Virginia Bits Bucket 10/13/2011

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Northern Virginia's September Housing Sales

Northern Virginia's September 2011 housing sales were down 7.4% YoY, and median prices were up 3.6% to $362,450. The average days on the market increased by 15% to 60 days.

(The above statistics include Alexandria City, Arlington County, Fairfax City, Fairfax County, Falls Church City, Fauquier County, Loudoun County, Manassas City, Manassas Park City, and Prince William County).

Northern Virginia Bits Bucket 10/4/2011

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