Category Archives: housing

Floyd Norris today finds one of the worst bonds ever underwritten: a securitization, by Merrill Lynch, of second-lien mortgages mostly originated by Ownit. The kicker? When the bond was sold, Ownit had already gone bust, a victim of the fact … Continue reading →

Richard Florida thinks the Hamptons property market is about to crash: It’s clear as a bell that the tremendous run-up in housing prices in places like the Hamptons, Miami, Naples, Florida, or other similar high-end vacation spots had little to … Continue reading →

Cyril Moulle-Berteaux says "the housing market is bottoming right now": During the 1990s and early 2000s, it took 19% of average monthly income to service a conforming mortgage on the average home purchased. By 2005 and 2006, it was absorbing … Continue reading →

Watching the television on the plane over to LA, I saw this ad for the National Association of Realtors telling people that buying a house "is a good move" using the grounds that the average homeowner has 60% of his … Continue reading →

People say that given the non-recourse nature of mortgages in states like California, homeowners don’t normally buy their houses so much as buy a call option to buy the house at the purchase price, along with a put option to … Continue reading →

Tom Brown has a very interesting essay over at bankstocks.com, where he looks at 2006-vintage subprime mortgages and tries to come up with a cumulative loss rate for them. He makes the reasonable assumption that the ABX index represents subprime … Continue reading →

One of the biggest questions overhanging the housing market right now concerns the behavior of underwater mortgage borrowers. If the mortgage is non-recourse – and let’s assume for the moment that it is – does it always make sense for … Continue reading →

Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann has one of the best plans for reducing foreclosures that I’ve seen yet. It targets homeowners rather than lenders, it costs a known and not particularly large amount of money, and it has the potential … Continue reading →

Remember youwalkaway.com? It was $995. Sound a bit too expensive? Well, do I have good news for you! Youwalkaway.com now has a competitor, walkawayplan.com, which is only $495! And the new site quotes bloggers, to boot! Apparently, if you go … Continue reading →

FDIC chairman Sheila Bair’s Plan A for modifying troubled mortgages is, by her own admission, not working out very well. But never worry, she’s got a Plan B: One idea is to provide loans directly to troubled borrowers to pay … Continue reading →

The Mortgage Bankers Association is having difficulties with its mortgage. (Via Campbell)

Remember youwalkaway.com? The idea there is that you stop making your mortgage payments but you can live in your house for 8 months or more before finally being evicted. Well now Barry Ritholtz has found a couple of articles, in … Continue reading →

The NYT checks in to see how the much-vaunted Hope Now coalition of mortgage lenders is doing, and you probably won’t be surprised at the results: Kenneth Goodman, a homeowner in Fontana, Calif,. said he did not have a good … Continue reading →

Ben Bernanke lives with his wife and two children in a house on Capitol Hill. Oh, wait, scratch that: according to Brendan Murray, Ben Bernanke lives with his wife and two children "in an investment that’s turned cold". Maybe it’s … Continue reading →

OFHEO, the regulator in charge of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, has designed to loosen a key capital requirement which has been restraining the mortgage giants: To support growth and further restore market liquidity, OFHEO announced that it would begin … Continue reading →

Barry Ritholtz doesn’t like Alex Tabarrok’s "happy talk". Is he talking about this? If the financial markets can predict where and when house prices will stabilize, then credit conditions can quickly return to normal, the economy can expand and house … Continue reading →