housing crisis

Are Housing Solutions Really Part of the Real Estate Problem?

by Chris Clothier | February 7, 2012

Cash is King If you’ve been paying attention recently to the drivers of the real estate market, you may have noticed that there is a decided uptick in the number of ‘Cash Purchases’ taking place throughout the country. Some estimates put the actual number of cash transactions at over 100,000 monthly across the U.S. This [...]

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Real Estate Market

Home Buyer Credit Extension Does Its Job, but what’s next?

by Ryan Hinricher | June 7, 2010

Crunching the recent Pending Homes Sales Index (PHSI) numbers revealed the home buyer credit extension worked. The extension proved not to have diminishing returns as the index nearly matched the recent high set in October, 2009 (110.9 vs. 112.4). This is short term good news for the economy as the extensions have helped the real [...]

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Economy

The Shadow Inventory Debate

by Ryan Hinricher | March 22, 2010

I’ve been tracking what people are saying about the shadow real estate inventory that many economists, real estate professionals, and bankers are frightened of. Seems there’s some debate if the shadow inventory, will stymie the housing recovery. First the definition of shadow inventory is up for debate. Depending on who you’re listening to it can [...]

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Mortgages & Lending

Fed Leaving Door Open to Extend Mortgage Backed Security Purchases

by Ryan Hinricher | February 8, 2010

I’ve been curious lately about the end of the Mortgage Backed Security (MBS) purchases by the Federal Reserve in March. The Fed is planning to end the program in less than 60 days on March 31st. Currently they stand at about 94% having purchased 1.17 trillion of the 1.25 trillion allocated to purchase these securities. [...]

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Foreclosures

Investors: How to show you truly care in 2010; Save a Foreclosure!

by Winston Westbrook | November 30, 2009

In today’s market, more and more people are losing their homes; this is plain fact. The second one of your fellow Americans start to fall behind in their mortgage payments they begin to suffer greatly. They start to anguish mentally the second they know they cannot make the mortgage payment. They go through a plethora [...]

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BiggerPockets News

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid Responds to BiggerPockets Article About National GO Zone

by Joshua Dorkin | February 12, 2009

On Monday, January 12, 2009, BiggerPockets.com’s own Richard Warren wrote a compelling piece here on the Real Estate Dispatch called A National GO Zone?, proposing a solution to the nations housing crisis. At a time when housing is one of the most critical issues in the national debate, I’m excited to let our readers know [...]

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Commentary

Down Payment Assistance Rears It’s Ugly Head Again

by Rob K. Blake | January 31, 2009

Down payment assistance programs or DAPs are the pet project of every Realtor and home builder lobbyists ever since they came into existence. However, HUD got courageous a few months ago and outlawed them only to them get resurrected by the NAR (National Association of Realtors) in a House bill and now by the home [...]

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Commentary

Barack Obama and The Housing Crisis — Yours, Not His

by Charles Feldman | November 5, 2008

Well, there’s a least one person who won’t have to worry about his mortgage. Barack Obama goes to the White House, but what happens now to all his fellow Americans who are at the brink of being expelled from their homes? If the truth be told, probably not a lot. Most experts agree that the [...]

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Commentary

A Walkaway Joe

by Richard Warren | May 5, 2008

In the late 1990s country music star, Trisha Yearwood, had a hit song titled Walkaway Joe. The title of that song would be an apt description of many borrowers today. These people invested in real estate by leveraging themselves as much as possible. Many of them bought homes with little or no money down. The [...]

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Commentary

Global Economic Picture Darkens; Is it a Good or Bad Time To Invest In Real Estate?

by Charles Feldman | April 16, 2008

The last posting I had last week generated much discussion–I advanced the argument that the real estate mess we find ourselves in, and the resultant global credit crunch, is not likely to end anytime soon. And, that unless one happens to know what one is doing, this is not a very good time to learn [...]

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Real Estate News

Economy Continues To Take A Beating From Housing Crisis Fallout

by Charles Feldman | March 7, 2008

The economy is sinking faster than a mafia hitman wearing cement shoes in water; and, the mortgage/housing crisis is clearly to blame. Wall Street was apparently totally shocked today when the Labor Department reported that 63, 000 nonfarm jobs were lost last month….As Reuters points out, the problem is that Wall Street experts had expected [...]

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Economy

Mortgage Crisis:The Knee Bone’s Connected To The Leg Bone

by Charles Feldman | January 6, 2008

If anyone had any doubt that the subprime mortgage/credit crisis is taking its grim toll on other aspects of the U.S. and world economy, here’s a sobering figure:The unemployment rate skyrocketed to 5 percent (and,yes, that is considered high for the U.S. and a sign of a faltering economy) while employers added only about 18 [...]

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Housing

Housing Crisis Hits California Economy Like Ton Of Bricks

by Charles Feldman | November 6, 2007

Anyone living in California knows that it is the aftermath of an earthquake that reveals its true intensity, not the numbers generated by some graph at a university. An earthquake is really measured in dishes broken, windows smashed or, in the worst cases, houses destroyed. And so it is that in California, the aftermath of [...]

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Commentary

Treasury Secretary Awakens From Coma: Finally Realizes Housing Bubble Exists

by Charles Feldman | October 17, 2007

Well,it took long enough. Henry Paulson Jr. — that would be the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury — admitted that the housing/credit/confidence crush (HCCC for short) is a hell of a lot worse that he ever imagined (clearly the Secretary does not exactly have a fertile imagination!) and, . . . now this is the [...]

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Housing

Housing Crisis Quote of the Day from Alan Greenspan

by Joshua Dorkin | September 21, 2007

Alan Greenspan revealed more about his thoughts on the Housing Crisis in Vienna, Austria today: “So far, prices have dropped only slightly. But it was enough to cause alarm around the world,” he said. “Prices are going to fall much lower yet.” “There is no doubt about the fact that low interest rates for long-term [...]

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