Category Archives: Housing
On Tuesday morning, the Case-Shiller data on US housing was released. Here’s what CNBC’s website showed: At the same time, Reuters looked like this: Which is it ? We’ll examine the data in more detail in a minute. The fact that one organization (CNBC) skimmed the data to pull out any positive morsels while Reuters painted a slightly negative view speaks to the […] Read the rest of this entry
The third estimate of 1Q 2011 US GDP was released on Friday. It showed the US economy grew at an annualized rate of +1.9% in the first quarter — a revision of +0.1% from the previous estimate of +1.8% growth. That makes for one of the most anemic quarters at this stage of an economic recovery — ever. I was expecting a larger revision […] Read the rest of this entry
There is a thin wedge of equity protecting millions of US homeowners from being under water with their home. This thin wedge –down 90% in the past 4.5 years– is what stands between large US banks and insolvency. Unfortunately this wedge continues to shrink as mortgages are being paid down (red line below) slower than house prices are falling (blue line). This is reducing the amount of […] Read the rest of this entry
Zillow -a real estate research company- says 28.4% of home owners with a mortgage are now under water (owe more on the mortgage than the house is worth). This agrees with the forecast I made last year: that real estate would roll over again in winter 2010-11 seeing prices fall to the previous trough (spring 2009). But –per what I wrote last year– the winter of 2011-12 has the potential to […] Read the rest of this entry
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