NAR Issues More 'Now Is a Great Time to Buy' Propaganda
The National Association of Realtors (NAR) is working overtime to convince potential buyers to step up and buy into the tanking housing market. In addition to penning a number of misleading press releases, the association has spent a ton of money on a public awareness campaign that relies on skewed data and bogus claims.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... atrick.net
Builders offer cuts of as much as $150,000 on some housing units
Sales at condominium projects in the region's urban cores such as San Francisco and San Jose are still moving, albeit more slowly, but developers in the Bay Area's far suburbs say they're struggling to close deals.
And that has led builders - from national publicly traded companies to smaller regional players - to dangle price cuts of as much as $150,000 on some projects in the far reaches of the Bay Area.
"There is a massive amount of inventory sitting out there that is not being sold, particularly out in the East Bay," said Christopher Thornberg, a principal at the consulting firm Beacon Economics. "You're talking total meltdown."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... atrick.net
Fairfield balances on the edge as housing prices plunge
If you want to see how the housing bust is affecting business in the Bay Area, there's no better place to look than Fairfield.
Housing in this bustling Solano County city is in an outright depression. Home prices are plummeting, buyers are running for cover and, in September and October, not a single home building permit was issued, the first time that's happened in the memory of city officials.
Yet, despite the wrenching collapse of its housing sector, Fairfield is holding up pretty well - at least so far.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... atrick.net
Dwindling mortgage options leaves Bay Area home sales mired in misery
Bay Area home sales limped along at a decades-low pace in October, as buyers continued to find few mortgage options.
A total of 5,486 new and existing houses and condos changed hands last month, down 35.7 percent from October 2006 and the lowest sales count since at least 1988, the year real estate research firm DataQuick first began tracking the market.
Sales of existing, single-family homes in the nine counties that touch the bay slid 41.3 percent, from 5,761 last year to 3,384 in October, the firm reported Thursday.
http://www.ocregister.com/money/sales-p ... atrick.net
Home sales mired in jumbo loan slowdown
Orange County's median price down 8.2 percent from a year ago due to fewer high-dollar transactions.
"It's hard to buy a home when you think it might lose value," DataQuick President Marshall Prentice said.
Anthony Glenn suspects that buyer reluctance is hurting his chances to sell his ocean-view home in Laguna Beach, even though he's dropped the price by more than $200,000.
His current price of $1,699,000 is only slightly more than the home's appraised price when he bought it two years ago. But after 51 days on the market, he's had just three buyers come by to look at it.
"The buyers are there, and people have money. People have trust funds," said Glenn, 42, an unemployed high-tech salesman who is selling to take a new job in Santa Barbara. "I think the reason people aren't acting … is they read the paper. They read the news, and it's all bad news."
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Lennar decides to “mothball” new O.C. development; local squatters and meth dealers jubilant
“As the glut of unsold home remains stubbornly high and housing demand slides, home builders face a dilemma: to sell, or not to sell?”
“Lennar Corp., for one, has joined the ‘not to sell’ camp at its development in Orange County, Calif. The Miami company plans to finish building 259 homes, the first phase of a 1,100-unit development in Irvine, but it has decided not to sell any of them until the constrained mortgage market and swollen housing inventory improves.”
“‘We are better off holding off on sales at this asset and not discounting as steeply as the market is discounting right now,’ says Emile Haddad, Lennar’s chief investment officer, who oversees the company’s large West Coast projects.”
“Analysts expect more builders to mothball projects in the coming months, as they decide that the losses from selling homes at huge discounts are greater than the costs of carrying properties on their books.”
http://realestate.msn.com/Buying/Articl ... atrick.net
Elizabeth and Armando Motto are living a real-estate nightmare with a new breed of monster: the big home builder as lender. In November 2005, the couple, who have four children, agreed to pay $540,000 for a newly built three-bedroom house in suburban Clarksburg, Md., near Washington, D.C. Rather than send them to a bank, the builder, Beazer Homes USA Inc., offered to provide a mortgage itself in an arrangement of the sort that helped fuel the long housing boom across the country.
But when it appeared that the Mottos might not qualify financially for the loan, things took a troubling turn. Beazer, according to the couple, inflated the pair's earnings in loan-application documents by incorrectly stating they were collecting rental income from the house they were leaving. "I don't want to misrepresent myself," Elizabeth said in e-mail correspondence with Beazer's outside mortgage service, dated July 14, 2006. But in the end, the couple signed the documents, and soon after they closed on the Clarksburg house.
They now regret it. The Mottos moved to Clarksburg, but they haven't succeeded in unloading their previous home in Rockville, Md. They have nearly $1 million in mortgage debt on the two dwellings. With $145,000 in family income, Elizabeth says, they are "on the brink of foreclosure" on both houses. "We are so broke."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/15/busin ... atrick.net
Foreclosures Hit a Snag for Lenders
A federal judge in Ohio has ruled against a longstanding foreclosure practice, potentially creating an obstacle for lenders trying to reclaim properties from troubled borrowers and raising questions about the legal standing of investors in mortgage securities pools.
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/In ... atrick.net
No shelter from the housing storm
Money-market funds aren't looking like an investor safe haven from Wall Street's credit crisis after all. Meanwhile, a judge's ruling gives home lending another reason to seize up.
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.c ... atrick.net
Whether or not it's an official recession, America's economy will feel grim
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