"The following chart from Credit Suisse fully explains why the US housing 'recovery' has just ground to a halt: in a few short weeks, US housing affordability (a topic we first covered a month ago) has collapsed as a result of the monthly payment on the median home sold soaring by nearly 40% from under $800 to just shy of $1100, a level not seen since 2008. Now if only US personal incomes would keep pace, instead of doing this." Continue reading →
"The City by the Bay is going through one of its worst housing shortages in memory. With typical high demand intensified by a regional boom in tech jobs, apartment open houses are mob scenes of desperate applicants clutching their credit reports. The citywide median rental price for a one-bedroom is $2,764 a month, but jumps to $3,500 in trendy areas. One reason for the shortage? Me. I’ve recently joined the ranks of San Francisco landlords who have decided that it’s better to keep an apartment empty than to lease it to tenants. Together, we have left vacant about 10,600 rental units. That’s about five percent of the city’s total." Continue reading →
"Most people know that a mansion costs much more than a farmhouse. What many might not be aware of is that the style of a home can also have a major impact on its price. A Mediterranean-style home sold in the U.S. costs an average of $1.32 million, while a ranch-style home costs less than a fifth of that. Real estate site Trulia provided 24/7 Wall St. with data on the price and popularity of different home styles for which the average price listed by Trulia was greater than $650,000. Descriptions of home style characteristics and history came from groups including Realtor Magazine and Better Homes & Gardens." Continue reading →
"If you’re looking to buy a home right now, you'd better find some cash and you'd better find it fast. Right now homebuyers across the country, already in frenzied bidding wars for homes, are increasingly losing out to the almighty all-cash buyer. These folks are mostly investors -- but not just the monolithic, institutional investment investors that have been snapping up distressed properties and foreclosures over the past few years. There are also a slew of well-heeled individuals with extra cash to invest, and they believe the real estate market is the place to put it. In fact, many of the buyers paying cash don’t plan to actually keep all that cash in the house." Continue reading →
"Looking for a cheap fixer-upper? You might check the list of the 15 best cities for do-it-yourself housing bargains, published this week by RealtyTrac, the Irvine-based real estate data firm. Shocker: No California cities made the list. The five best cities to find a bargain home are in the Rust Belt: Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, St. Louis and Cincinnati. The rankings come from the number of bank-owned homes that were built before 1960 and are valued under $100,000. There are 3,773 such homes in Detroit, which is more than double Chicago's inventory, which is ranked just below the Michigan city." Continue reading →
"Tiny — and affordable — modular living spaces could soon become the latest real estate craze in the highly crowded city of New York. Fifty-five micro apartments are being constructed in Manhattan to test whether New Yorkers are willing to follow the example of Tokyo and Mumbai. According to Bloomberg News, micro apartments at the new 'My Micro NY' building will be only 250 to 370 square feet. Rents will range from $939 to $1,873. Currently, the average monthly rent for a studio is more than $2,000." Continue reading →
"There’s nothing trashy about Gregory Kloehn’s Brooklyn pied-a-terre: a live-in dumpster that sleeps two with ease, hosts impromptu barbecue parties and sports its own sundeck. In a nation where the average home is 2,600 square feet (241 square meters), tiny houses are fetching more attention, not least from aging baby boomers looking to downsize in their retirement years. 'There are more builders. There are more people seeking to live in tiny houses,' Mitchell told AFP by telephone. There would be even more tiny homes, he said, if if local zoning regulations and housing codes were not so restrictive." Continue reading →
"Fannie Mae is a classic crony capitalist progeny of the New Deal that began life in 1938, quite innocently, as still another ad hoc New Deal program to boost the depression-weakened housing market. It grew into something quite different: a monster that deeply deformed and corrupted the nation’s entire financial system seventy years later. The policy aim of Fannie Mae was 'forcing water to flow uphill' in the residential mortgage market so that low-rate thirty-year home mortgages became available to wage-earning households of modest means. Such mortgages did not then exist for a good reason: they were not economic." Continue reading →
"House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) has described Fannie and Freddie as the product of a ‘government laboratory’ and one that exposes taxpayers to ‘unlimited risk.' Hensarling and others in the House are working on legislation to end the companies for good. Now that the president is on board, with apparent bipartisan support, it seems that reality may not be far off. Investors appear to be speculating on news the feds may actually pay off debt to taxpayers and recapitalize. Since liquidation appears to have broad support in the government, Fannie and Freddie look like stock to steer clear of." Continue reading →
"Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are masking billions of dollars losses because of the level of delinquent home loans they carry, a federal watchdog said, and it said the companies should be required immediately to recognize the costs of some bad mortgages. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were seized by the U.S. government in September 2008 as rising mortgage losses threatened them with insolvency. The mortgage companies have cost taxpayers almost $188 billion to stay afloat. Fannie and Freddie have reduced their funds reserved to cover potential losses on bad loans due to the strengthening housing sector and higher home prices." Continue reading →