Category Archives: housing

Noel Sheppard is mad at Kathleen Pender for educating consumers about their financial options. Pender’s article is headlined "Are you an idiot to keep paying your mortgage?", and, yes, Joe, it does lay out a pretty strong argument in favor … Continue reading →

The Frannie loan-mod plan has arrived, and it’s not particularly exciting. Among the more obvious problems: It applies only to mortgages owned by Frannie, which means, by definition, that it doesn’t include subprime mortgages. FHFA is trying to apply moral … Continue reading →

As we await Frannie’s latest mortgage-mod plan, David Streitfeld has news of the dire mortgage situation in Mountain House, California — a new town where all the houses were bought since 2003 and as a result 90% are now underwater. … Continue reading →

Dean Baker reckons that wealth effects alone would be sufficient to cause a massive recession, even absent any kind of financial crisis: Homeowners have lost more than $5 trillion in housing wealth. There is a very well established wealth effect … Continue reading →

The US goverment still, it seems, thinks that encouraging homeownership is a very good idea: Four former secretaries of the Department of Housing and Urban Development told a packed meeting room… that just because the financial system is flawed doesn’t … Continue reading →

When I said yesterday that the median house price in Detroit was less than $10,000, Matt, in the comments, quite reasonably doubted the stat: That just does not pass any kind of smell test. $8,500 for a house or a … Continue reading →

Posting’s going to be light today: the volatility in the markets seems to have had, shall we say, some physical contagion. Either that or Charlie Gasparino put a hex on me. But of course I have to give you your … Continue reading →

Greta Guest reports: The median price on a house or condo sold in Detroit last month plummeted 57%, to $9,250, from $21,250 a year ago, according to figures released Monday by Realcomp, a multiple listing service based in Farmington Hills. … Continue reading →

One of the main drivers of New York City’s commercial property boom was Lehman Brothers. Now that Lehman’s gone bust, the NYC commercial property market seems to have ground to a halt. It was probably going to happen sooner or … Continue reading →

Matthew Yglesias: There really is an urgent need to “do something” and also an urgent need to try to make sure we do the right thing. Middle class people are pretty desperately in need of some form of bulk modification … Continue reading →

Last month, Wayne Barrett published a monster 5,000-word article in the Village Voice explaining how Andrew Cuomo bears much responsibility for the subprime mortgage crisis. Now, John McCain is suggesting that he might appoint Cuomo to run the SEC. Caveat … Continue reading →

Quote of the day comes from a distressed heiress: "Five years ago, if you were an investment banker that meant big bucks and automatic entry. And today it is a dirty word," said author Holly Peterson, the wife of a … Continue reading →

John Gapper tells us today that there’s "No property crash so far in Abu Dhabi". Which I daresay is true. But next door, in Dubai, a single recent foreclosure was on property worth $3.5 billion — and, to make matters … Continue reading →

Andrew Bary reports on the status of the $5.4 billion purchase of Stuyvesant Town in New York: Rental income at Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village last year fell to $108 million from $112 million in 2006, owing in part to slower-than-anticipated … Continue reading →

Justin Fox asks for his readers’ questions about the Frannie bailout. Since I’m in a more-questions-than-answers mood today, I’m happy to oblige: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are still publicly-listed companies. Does that mean they’re still owned by their shareholders, … Continue reading →

Andrew Ross Sorkin today says there’s a relatively simple reason why Fannie and Freddie were forced into conservatorship: they needed fresh capital, but Hank Paulson essentially prevented them from raising any. According to this theory, Fannie and Freddie would have … Continue reading →

Dean Baker is right that the failure of Fannie and Freddie was due to the incentives that being private corporations gave them to take excess risk. In the future, Fannie and Freddie can best serve their role of providing the … Continue reading →

File under "strange bedfellows": over the weekend, both the Observer of London and Jim Cramer published desperate calls for the government to intervene to prop up the housing market. The Observer’s is the one with the weakest logic: The financial … Continue reading →