The US, unlike other nations, at least asks its lending institutions to abuse their customers as little as possible The Fed’s latest directive is that banks should not let mortgage originators get better fees…
Two studies–one by Deutsche Bank and the other by TransUnion-show that mortgages with payments that are past due for 60 and 90 days have risen sharply. The Deutsche Bank data shows that in some…
Home builder confidence was crushed this month and cam in well below analyst estimates. The numbers from the National Association of Home Builders reported that the Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index declined one…
Lowe’s Companies Inc. (NYSE: LOW) managed to post a 10% gain in profits after its same-store sales in the last quarter rose 1.6%. Net income rose to $832 million, which generated $0.58 EPS and…
Looking back to early 2010, this is about the time of year many economists and real estate experts believed that the housing market would recover. GDP growth in the third quarter, they reasoned, would…
Twenty-five percent of people with homes on the market as of August 1 have cut the prices of their homes at least once according to real estate research firm Trulia. The trend has lasted…
Housing is making a recovery–a tiny one. Some home prices in the weakest markets have begun to improve. In California, 20 of the 26 markets tracked by real estate research firm Zillow had price…
The Chinese government has taken the extraordinary action of testing some of its banks for the effects of property value drops of 50% to 60% in some regions. Previous tests assumed a 30% drop…
Defying all the mediocre views of the US housing market, PulteGroup Inc. (NYSE:PHM) reported EPS of $0.20 on revenue of $1.3 billion. Analysts had been expecting an EPS loss of -$0.01 on revenue of…
There has not been a single positive piece of housing news in more than a month. That string continued today as the National Association of Realtors put out is June figures for pending home…
Alan Greenspan’s mastery of discovering the obvious is never more on display than when he examines a problem and says he has brought light to a dark corner which is already well-illuminated. Housing prices,…
RealtyTrac, a leading real estate research firm, reports that foreclosures in 75% of metro areas rose in the first half, another sign that the housing market never recovered from the tough it hit 18…
Foreclosures and a buyer’s strike may be the most visible enemies of a recovery in the housing market. Vacancy rates in homes and apartments could be just as severe a drag. New Census Department…
The latest S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices showed some very modest improvement in home prices for May, but the data is old now and it likely to represent only a brief pause in the decline…
The media’s first reaction to the Commerce Department’s new home sales number was, in almost every case, positive. That was a mistake. New home sales rose to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 330,000…