Renters also are losing homes to foreclosure
The foreclosure crisis is causing hardship, not just for homeowners but for an unknown number of renters. The Houston Chronicle today tells the story of a contractor who rebuilds Louisiana homes damaged by Hurricane Katrina, now facing eviction because the house he rents in Houston was foreclosed on.
Sapna Aiyer, a Houston legal aid attorney, told the Chronicle that new owners in Texas aren't required to continue leases that previous owners signed. Even tenants who are up-to-date on payments can be given just 30-days written notice to vacate.
New York real estate tax revenue way down
The New York City real estate market -- though real estate tax revenues fell during the first nine months of the budget year.
Real property transfer taxes fell 12.7% and mortgage recording tax collections dropped 20.1%, Reuters reported. The New York City, which has already lost jobs on Wall Street in the wake of the subprime crisis, could lose another 36,000 jobs, the city's labor department reported last week.
Housing rescue slows as defaults rise
The pace of housing rescue efforts slowed in the first quarter of the year, according to a new report, while the number of people losing their homes to foreclosure skyrocketed during the same period.KB Home co-founder says home prices could fall 20% more
Eli Broad, the co-founder of KB Home, told Bloomberg TV yesterday that home prices could fall another 20%. Here's a link to the story. That is an absolutely enormous amount when you consider that prices have already fallen a bunch. Today the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller Home Price Index for February was released. It showed that the 20-city index fell 12.7% from a year earlier and is down 14.8% from its all-time high in July 2006.
I'm guessing that the execs at KB Home aren't real happy with Eli Broad, because who's going to buy a house now if they think that Broad is right about where prices are heading? I don't know how many shares of KB Home that Broad himself still owns, but it can't be too many because he doesn't appear on the list of holders of 5% or more of KB Home shares in the latest SEC filing.
^^^^^^^
Trivia: KB Home was founded in 1957 in Detroit as Kaufman & Broad Building Company
California builders aren’t building
Home production in California is grinding to a halt. The number of single-family home permits dropped 61% to 8,189 during the first quarter of this year compared to the same period in 2007, according to an April 25 report from the California Building Industry Association.
To put it in perspective, 35,329 single-family home permits were issued in california during the 1st quarter of 2005.
These days building new homes makes little sense with so many foreclosed homes competing for buyers. Builders are waiting for the market to turn around, said Alan Nevin, the builder group’s Chief Economist.
“It basically is a case where builders have more or less decided not to build," Nevin said. "They are almost viewing this as being custom home builders to the extent that they almost won’t start a new home until somebody has bought it.”
Are you more likely to catch the flu or face foreclosure?
It depends on where you live. In Nevada, the odds of losing a home to foreclosure could soon be about the same as getting the flu if predictions in a new Pew Charitable Trusts report come true.
One in 11 Nevadans will be in foreclosure within the next two years as a result of subprime loans made in 2005 and 2006, Pew Charitable Trusts predicts in San Diego Union Tribune.)
Nationally, the group predicts that one in 33 current homeowners will be in foreclosure within two years. Go to page 10 of the report to see what the foreclosure odds are in your state.
A Minnesota painting contractor with four houses in foreclosure
The Minneapolis Star Tribune tells the amazing story of a painting contractor, living with his wife and three children in a trailer park, who three years ago managed to buy four homes worth $1.2 million. He was hoping to flip the homes and get rich off the appreciation. Instead, the real estate market collapsed and his investment properties sank into foreclosure.
The story is part of a series that started April 20 about the unraveling of the investor-heavy Wright County real estate market.
Is Canada’s six-year housing boom history?
The red hot Canadian housing market has shown tremendous resilience even as home prices on its southern border tumble. But a new Canadian Real Estate Association report indicates that the market is losing steam.
The price of an average Canadian home climbed 5.5% in the first quarter of 2008 compared to a year earlier -- the smallest annual jump since the fourth quarter of 2001. And first-quarter sales dropped 13% from a year ago.
The U.S. median existing home price, by contrast, fell 8.2% in February from a year earlier to $195,900.
"Canada’s six-year housing market boom is officially over," Doug Porter of BMO Capital Markets told CBC.
$109M in Financing Closes for Affordable Housing Complex in Brooklyn
A financing package totaling $109 million has been put in place for Linden Plaza, a 1,527-unit affordable housing complex in Brooklyn. Red Stone Partners orchestrated the deal on behalf of The DeMatteis Organization, which plans to use the funds to rehabilitate and preserve the 36-year-old property.A really, really, really bad time to be a carpenter
The March report on housing construction was even worse than economists expected. Starts on construction of homes fell twice as much as expected. They dropped 11.9% in March from February, leaving them at their lowest point since 1991. A big part of the decline was starts on multifamily dwellings, which tend to fluctuate a lot. Analysts say the number to pay attention to is the decline in starts on single-family homes. That was off 5.7% from February, making it the 12th monthly decline in a row. Believe it or not, single-family starts in March were 63% below their record level of January 2006, when they were going at an annualized rate of 1.84 million.
David Rosenberg, North American economist for Merrill Lynch, says this is "turning out so far to be among [the] worst housing cycles in recorded history."
Amid such gloom, it might seem strange that a new Reuters/Zogby poll has found that a majority of Americans think this is a good time to buy a house. But the two things aren't necessarily contradictory. The steep drop in housing construction is reducing the oversupply of unsold homes, which will eventually lead to a firming of prices. I'm not saying that the bottom for housing prices is here or near, but the pain suffered by carpenters today is going to translate into gain for homeowners sometime in the future.
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