The following is an excerpt from the Professional Edition Fed Report of December 23. It was also made available to Wall Street Examiner Economic Bulletins, a free email service, on December 24. You can subscribe via the form in the left sidebar.
The Mortgage Bankers Association’s Mortgage Applications index announced Wednesday did a
belly flop....
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A few of us were reminiscing this weekend over on the Stool Pigeons Wire about certain calls on the housing market made by yours truly back in mid decade, the biggest one being that I sold my house in Florida in June of 2005–actually April, with a June closing. Sold it myself in fact,...
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The FIM (Financial Infomercial Media) has gifted us with more nonsense today in the form of Pending Homes Sales data from the NAR (Realtors) and the Purchasing Managers Manufacturing Index from the ISM (Purchasing Managers).
Bloomberg was positively ecstatic about the housing data, proclaiming “The number of contracts to buy previously owned homes rose more...
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Hints of improvement in the housing market have been bandied about in the financial infomercial media, but just what does the evidence say? Click here to download complete report in pdf format (Professional Edition Subscribers). Try the Professional Edition risk free for thirty days. If, within that time, you don’t find the...
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The housing collapse is now accelerating into a crash. Data from the MBAA shows mortgage applications breaking down last week, hitting a new 5 year low. Listing prices are collapsing all around the country. I did a quick perusal of all the former bubble markets and they are down between 2% and 5% over...
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Housing market indicators show no sign of improvement in the supply demand equation. Even the hopeful signs that things may have stopped getting worse may prove illusory. Click here to download complete report in pdf format (Professional Edition Subscribers). Try the Professional Edition risk free for thirty days. If, within that time,...
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Housing market data has hinted that a bottom of sorts may have been reached in April and May. A closer look at the data reveals that the improvement was probably related to the very low mortgage rates of March and April. The bond market has taken an apparent turn for the worse in recent...
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While 2/3 of metro markets in the US have reached “affordable” levels by traditional metrics the problem areas of California, Florida, Nevada, and Arizona have not improved, and weakness is continuing or worsening in some key northeastern markets. These markets represent the majority of the total housing value and the total mortgage portfolio of...
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The National Association of Rattlers (NAR) reported today that sales of existing homes rose in November. Upon hearing the news, Steve Liesman (is that the best name ever for a financial talking head, or what?) proclaimed on CNBS that the bottom was in.
Oh really?
Let’s have a looky loo at the NAR press release and...
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Yesterday wasn’t the best of news days for Citigroup. The key stories I saw were:
Citigroup has appeared to clumsily reverse course on their previous “pledge” not to support their ailing SIV vehicles (now apparently reaching about $66 billion; formerly as high as $83 billion) in the form of statements by one William Mills:
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Some recent data suggests a pickup in housing demand and a decrease in supply. But the story behind the numbers presents a more complete picture of a market that is likely to get a lot worse before it gets better. Click here to download complete report in pdf format (Professional Edition Subscribers).Try...
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The following is taken verbatim from the National Association of Realtors press release today. I have read between the lines and translated the press release for the benefit of anyone who might be tempted to take the Realtors words at face value.
May Existing- Home Sales Show Market is Under Performing WASHINGTON, June 25, 2007...
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The story is the same one that I have been chronicling since the tea leaves first clearly signaled the endgame unfolding in US housing back in 2004 and 2005. Since then it has been slowly but surely downhill. While all real estate is local, since all local markets have been largely homogenized by securitization,...
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Another day, another episode of being bathed in forest fire smoke for the city of Atlanta. We had a really bad day last week as well—and this unfortunately looks set to become a more frequent occurrence, much to the dismay of anyone even remotely sensitive or vulnerable to atmospheric pollutants.
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MorningStar has a pretty nice article out from yesterday featuring duelling analysts regarding the fate of NovaStar. After their almost naively-sanguine and narrowly-scoped Alt-A/banks article last week, I find this a breath of fresh(er) air. While I believe it is a little bit inane to be discussing subprime at this point...
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You really can’t. I am referring to this BrokerUniverse thread, entitled “Soon to be ex-New Century manager needs advice”. You know a thread with a title like that is going to be good. I’ll let the content do most of the talking for itself:
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In the past day I’ve been gathering together what was intended to be a random collection of housing/housing finance updates that I thought worthy of additional comment. Upon taking a look at the assortment, much to my surprise, the first thing that struck me about them was how a nearly continuous thread of interconnection...
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A few quick items this morning before I’m off to the factory. The main one is Monster Warns On Q1, on how the purveyor of job ads online is seeing its business take a hit. The reason given is openly described as “economic slowdown”. Labor conditions are noted as problematic. ...
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In today’s top mortgage finance news, one of my absolute “favorite” subprime lenders, SouthStar, has shut down, and New Century has finally filed for bankruptcy.
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A new podcast is up — me and Lee chat about the fate of the mortgage and housing markets. The theme: spreading beyond subprime; marginal loans and marginal borrowers are everywhere and will likely cause mass financial destruction.
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Today some of New Century (NEW’s) warehouse lenders finally did the deed and cut them off. Call me crazy, but after the announcement of major restatements, more than ten class-action shareholder lawsuits, criminal probes initiated by states and the NYSE, and revelations of Enron-like manipulation, this one seemed like an easy call to me.
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I normally try not to mindlessly propagate what other bloggers and analysts are saying, but Mish’s rant today is just too good to pass up. The tirade was sparked by some commentary by Bloomberg’s Caroline Baum, which was already pretty damning of the economic establishment to begin with:
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The fault lines continued to spread outwards from the worst-of-the-worst in subprime today. New Century plunged around 60% on the latest news (finally — it was released Friday after the bell) and on analyst coverage suggesting the company could be in a “death spiral” (also finally — no explanation required). The...
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(Or as close to dead as any parties involved will likely ever admit.)
Fremont General, the fifth largest subprime lender (as of Q2 2006 according to the MBA), has collapsed. They had just announced a postponent to their Q4 2006 earnings reporting a few days ago. This is the highest-level done-deal collapse...
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