Housing Stumbles Badly, Again
Home sales and home prices are supposed to improve in the spring despite the fact that government programs to encourage purchases will go away. Defaults must fall to fuel the recovery. If they do…
Housing
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Newest first · Page 196A Fool And His Money, Part II: Americans Still Want A To Own A Home
The value of homes in many parts of the US are down 30% since their peak in 2006. In parts of Nevada, Michigan, and California the drop is 50%. Eleven million mortgages are underwater…
Data On US Apartment Vacancies “Less Bad”
In keeping with the tradition of reporting data that is “less bad” than it was a year ago instead of “much worse”, real estate research firm Reis said that US apartment vacancies stopped rising. They…
The Perfect Plan To Save The Housing Market: Eliminate All Mortgage Payments
It would be hard to come up with a better way to stop the rising rate of foreclosures than to eliminate mortgage payments altogether. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the…
In Bank Of America Program, Finally A Mortgage Crisis Solution
Government mortgage modification programs have so far targeted people’s monthly home loan payments. These plans have proven to be failures. There are a number of theories about their lack of effectiveness. One is that…
White House Attempts To Help Homeowers “Meaningless”
The Administration’s Home Affordable Modification Program was meant to spend as much as $75 billion to keep people in their homes. Mortgage holders who could not make their monthly payments might have them lowered after going through…
How’s KB Home’s Housing Recovery-Where Do You Live?
KB Home (NYSE:KBH) just reported first quarter 2010 numbers. Data the company disclosed reveals a possible housing recovery. Yet there are wide geographic disparities in the state of the housing market with some areas…
Another Clever Plan To Further Ruin The Housing Market
Mortgage research firm RealtyTrac reported that the rate of mortgage defaults slowed to a four-year low in February, but the trend of foreclosures was still up by 6% compared with the same month last…
US Foreclosure Activity Slows Considerably
After a month of bad news about housing starts, existing home sales, and mortgage delinquencies, the number of homes going into foreclosure is slowing rapidly. RealtyTrac reported 308,524 U.S. properties foreclosures last month, a decrease…
Twenty-Seven Percent Of Workers Have Under $1,000 In Savings
America’s role in the world as a nation of financial risk takers does not appear to be eroding. The Employee Benefit Research Association has released the results of it 20th annual Retirement Confidence Survey. The most stunning…
KB Home Loses Ron Burkle (KBH)
KB Home (NYSE: KBH) is losing a very prestigious name on its Board of Directors. The company just announced that Ron Burkle will not stand for re-election to KB’s Board of Directors at the…
Pending Home Sales Hit By Thor’s Hammer
During the last month, there has been a great deal of bad news about housing, foreclosures, and default rates. And, there has been almost no good news to offset it. Pending home sales added to…
One Last Chance To Save Housing
All of the news about housing that was so good in the fourth quarter became bad in the first two months of the new year. Foreclosure rates are still up and some analysts expect…
The Fiction That Home Sales Will Improve
Anyone who reads the papers or visits news sites on the internet knows that sales of new homes dropped 11.2% in January to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 309,000. This figure is said to be…
Underwater Mortgages Hit 11.3 Million
There is a reason that 702 American banks, nearly one in ten, were on the FDIC “problem list” as of the end of 2009. A large number of small and mid-sized banks are burdened with home and…