Real Estate – Page 12 – Infinite Unknown

Home Prices Fall to Lowest Level Since Housing Bubble Burst In Most Major US Cities

February 23, 2011 by Infinite

Change:

– Obama Administration To Hand The Entire Housing Industry Over To The Banks

– Frightening Satellite Tour Of America’s Foreclosure Wastelands

– US Home Values Lost $798 Billion Last Quarter, Nearly $10 Trillion Destroyed Since Peak

– Coming Soon: A 300-Percent Increase in Foreclosures!

– California Cities Top Most Miserable List – ‘As Goes California, So Goes The Nation’ Still Rings True

– Housing Armageddon: 12 Facts Which Show That We Are In The Midst Of The Worst Housing Collapse In US History

The average home is down 27 percent from peak. This puts the total loss from the housing crash at an incredible $9.8 trillion.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Home prices in a majority of major U.S. cities tracked by a private trade group have fallen to their lowest levels since the housing bubble burst, and analysts expect further declines this year.

The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller 20-city home price index fell 1 percent in December from November. Prices fell in all but one of the metropolitan markets tracked.

The only city to see a gain was Washington, where hiring by the federal government has helped boost the region’s job market.

Eleven of the markets hit their lowest point since the housing bust, in 2006 and 2007: Atlanta, Charlotte, N.C., Chicago, Detroit, Las Vegas, Miami, New York, Phoenix, Portland, Ore., Seattle and Tampa, Fla.

US Home Values Lost $798 Billion Last Quarter, Nearly $10 Trillion Destroyed Since Peak

February 11, 2011 by Infinite

Yes, it’s not over yet and it will get a lot worse:

– Coming Soon: A 300-Percent Increase in Foreclosures!

This is the Greatest Depression.

The total value of U.S. homes dropped another $798 billion last quarter, according to numbers out from Zillow.

The average home is down 27 percent from peak. This puts the total loss from the housing crash at an incredible $9.8 trillion.

And sorry, but it’s not over yet.

Gus Lubin | Feb. 9, 2011, 9:17 AM

Source: The Business Insider

UK Home Prices Plunged Record 3.6% in September

October 8, 2010October 8, 2010 by Infinite

Oct. 07 (Bloomberg) — U.K. house prices plunged in September by the most since at least 1983, adding to evidence that the housing market faces a renewed slump as the government readies the biggest spending cuts since World War II.

The average cost of a home fell 3.6 percent from August to 162,096 pounds ($258,000), Halifax said in an e-mailed statement today. That’s the biggest drop since the mortgage lending division of Lloyds Banking Group Plc began its housing gauge in 1983. Property values were 0.7 percent lower than the same month a year earlier.

“I think housing is already in a double dip,” Alan Clarke, an economist at BNP Paribas in London, said in a telephone interview. “We’re probably looking at house prices being down 5 percent year-on-year by the middle of 2011. It’s going to be very hard for the U.K. recovery to continue on an upward sloping trajectory.”

China Has Enough Vacant Properties To House Over Half Of America

December 18, 2010September 10, 2010 by Infinite

Property stocks in China were weak today due to media reports that the Beijing and Shanghai authorities were investigating the high vacancy rate for Chinese property. Markets are worried they’ll be shocked by what they discover and clamp down on speculation even harder than they have.

How large might the vacancy problem be? Here’s a taste:

Finance Asia:

Recent statistics show that there are about 64 million apartments and houses that have remained empty during the past six months, according to Chinese media reports. On the assumption that each flat serves as a home to a typical Chinese family of three (parents and one child), the vacant properties could accommodate 200 million people, which account for more than 15% of the country’s 1.3 billion population. But instead, they remain empty. This is in part because many Chinese believe that a home is not a real home unless you own the flat.

And so people prefer buying to renting, and as a result, the rental yield is relatively low.

Why would so many properties be held vacant? They’re seen as long-term investments, even if renters aren’t available. This is due to the dearth of investment options available to most Chinese, butting up against their rapid wealth creation.

They need to put their money somewhere, but the stock market is under pressure and bank interest doesn’t cover inflation. So they plunk their money into a new property, just as a place to store their wealth, even if they don’t intend to live in the place and can’t find renters.

Multiply this behavior by a few hundred million, and the result is enough vacant properties to house over half of America.

Vincent Fernando, CFA | Sep. 8, 2010, 6:34 AM

Source: The Business Insider

China’s Property Market Braced For 30 Percent Drop

July 7, 2010 by Infinite

Standard Chartered has told clients to prepare for a fall in property prices of up to 30pc in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzen, and other large cities in China as the delayed effects of monetary tightening begin to bite.

Migrant workers from outside China’s major cities have flooded to fill jobs created by the construction boom. Here a worker in Shanghai steps outside his temporary accommodation to check his phone.

Stephen Green, the bank’s China economist, said a glut of newly built homes were hitting the market just as buyers are restrained by higher down-payments and curbs on speculation. “We believe developers will be forced to cut prices,” he said.

Kenneth Rogoff, ex-chief economist for the IMF, told Bloomberg Television in Hong Kong that the denouement could prove abrupt after such a torrid boom. “You’re starting to see that collapse in property and it’s going to hit the banking system,” he said.

The government is trying to deflate the housing market gently, mostly using tools known as “financial repression” rather than Western style rate rises. Xu Shaoshi, land minister, said sales are already dropping. “In another quarter’s time or so, the property market will probably come to a full correction and prices will fall. It’s hard to say to what extent they will fall,” he said.

With The US Still Trapped in Depression, This Really Is Starting to Feel Like 1932

July 5, 2010 by Infinite

This is the Greatest Depression.

The US workforce shrank by 652,000 in June, one of the sharpest contractions ever. The rate of hourly earnings fell 0.1pc. Wages are flirting with deflation.

People queue for a job fair in New York. The share of the US working-age population with jobs in June fell from 58.7pc to 58.5pc. The ratio was 63pc three years ago. Photo: EPA

“The economy is still in the gravitational pull of the Great Recession,” said Robert Reich, former US labour secretary. “All the booster rockets for getting us beyond it are failing.”

“Home sales are down. Retail sales are down. Factory orders in May suffered their biggest tumble since March of last year. So what are we doing about it? Less than nothing,” he said.

California is tightening faster than Greece. State workers have seen a 14pc fall in earnings this year due to forced furloughs. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is cutting pay for 200,000 state workers to the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour to cover his $19bn (£15bn) deficit.

Can Illinois be far behind? The state has a deficit of $12bn and is $5bn in arrears to schools, nursing homes, child care centres, and prisons. “It is getting worse every single day,” said state comptroller Daniel Hynes. “We are not paying bills for absolutely essential services. That is obscene.”

Roughly a million Americans have dropped out of the jobs market altogether over the past two months. That is the only reason why the headline unemployment rate is not exploding to a post-war high.

Let us be honest. The US is still trapped in depression a full 18 months into zero interest rates, quantitative easing (QE), and fiscal stimulus that has pushed the budget deficit above 10pc of GDP.

The share of the US working-age population with jobs in June actually fell from 58.7pc to 58.5pc. This is the real stress indicator. The ratio was 63pc three years ago. Eight million jobs have been lost.

The average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks. Nothing like this has been seen before in the post-war era. Jeff Weninger, of Harris Private Bank, said this compares with a peak of 21.2 weeks in the Volcker recession of the early 1980s.

“Legions of individuals have been left with stale skills, and little prospect of finding meaningful work, and benefits that are being exhausted. By our math the crop of people who are unemployed but not receiving a check amounts to 9.2m.”

Republicans on Capitol Hill are filibustering a bill to extend the dole for up to 1.2m jobless facing an imminent cut-off. Dean Heller from Vermont called them “hobos”. This really is starting to feel like 1932.

Washington’s fiscal stimulus is draining away. It peaked in the first quarter, yet even then the economy eked out a growth rate of just 2.7pc. This compares with 5.1pc, 9.3pc, 8.1pc and 8.5pc in the four quarters coming off recession in the early 1980s.

The housing market is already crumbling as government props are pulled away. The expiry of homebuyers’ tax credit led to a 30pc fall in the number of buyers signing contracts in May. “It is cataclysmic,” said David Bloom from HSBC.

US: Pending Home Sales Plunge Record 30 Percent in May

July 1, 2010 by Infinite

WASHINGTON July 1 (Reuters) – Contracts for pending sales of previously owned homes plunged a record 30 percent in May, far more than expected, after a popular tax credit expired at the end of the prior month, a survey from the National Association of Realtors showed on Thursday.

The Realtors said its Pending Home Sales Index, based on contracts signed in May, fell to a record low 77.6 from 110.9 in April. Economists polled by Reuters had expected a smaller decline of 12.5 percent in May.

US: New Home Sales Plummet to Record Low

June 23, 2010 by Infinite

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — New home sales plummeted to a record low in May, the first month following the expiration of the homebuyer tax credit. This snapped a two-month streak of gains.

New home sales declined 32.7% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 300,000 last month, down from an downwardly revised 446,000 in April, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. Sales year-over-year fell 18.3%.

This is the slowest sales pace since the Commerce Department began tracking data in 1963. The prior record was set in September 1981, when new homes sold at an annual rate of 338,000.

Ireland: Central Bank Hid Property Crash Forecast

June 14, 2010June 14, 2010 by Infinite

* Data showing boom over was buried in report

THE Central Bank buried sensational data forecasting a crash in the property market months before the housing market began to crumble in early 2007.

Last week’s report into the banking crisis by Central Bank boss Professor Patrick Honohan revealed that minutes from the bank’s financial stability group had shown that predictions of a crash in the market were deliberately left out of a crucial report in 2006.

“It was decided in 2006 to exclude from the main text of the report data and references to a likely 15 per cent house price overvaluation that was contained in a themed research paper,” according to Prof Honohan’s report.

Gulf Blowout May Cost $4.3 Billion in Property Values

June 11, 2010June 11, 2010 by Infinite

June 11 (Bloomberg) — BP Plc’s oil spill may drive down the Gulf Coast’s shore-area property values by 10 percent for at least three years, according to CoStar Group Inc.

Losses may total $4.3 billion along the 600-mile (966- kilometer) stretch from the Louisiana bayous to Clearwater, Florida, the property-information service estimates.

“It’s just another blow to an already depressed real estate market,” Norm Miller, CoStar’s vice president of analytics, said yesterday in a telephone interview from San Diego. “The best thing you can do if you’re in real estate in this area is bide your time, don’t panic and don’t try to sell in this environment.”

China: April Inflation Accelerates, Property Prices Jump 12.8 Percent, Lending Surges

June 24, 2010May 11, 2010 by Infinite

‘A Bubble in China’ (Would be a nice title for a book.):

– Marc Faber: China May ‘Crash’ in Next 9 to 12 Months (Bloomberg):

May 3 (Bloomberg) — Investor Marc Faber said China’s economy will slow and possibly “crash” within a year as declines in stock and commodity prices signal the nation’s property bubble is set to burst.

People walk in front of advertisements outside a department store in the Xidan district of Beijing in April. (Bloomberg)

May 11 (Bloomberg) — China’s inflation accelerated, bank lending exceeded estimates and property prices jumped by a record, increasing pressure on the government to raise interest rates and let the currency appreciate.

Consumer prices rose 2.8 percent in April from a year earlier, the fastest pace in 18 months, and property prices jumped 12.8 percent, the statistics bureau said in statements today. New lending of 774 billion yuan ($113 billion), announced by the central bank, was more than any of 24 economists forecast.

Asian stocks fell, with the local benchmark index entering into a bear market, and oil and copper slumped on concern the government will move to cool the fastest-growing major economy. China should focus on preventing excessive increases in asset prices and liquidity after Europe’s almost $1 trillion loan package reduced the risk of another global slump, central bank adviser Li Daokui said yesterday.

Ghost Estates: Unwanted Brand New Homes in Irish Republic Could Be Soon Demolished

April 30, 2010 by Infinite

(BBC NEWS) — They have been called the ‘ghost estates’ of the Irish Republic – about 300,000 homes built in the frenzy of the property boom that no-one wants to live in now.

Soon, many brand new houses could be demolished.

Q&A With Billionaire Jim Chanos Part I: ‘Greece Is A Prelude’

April 13, 2010 by Infinite

Last week had the opportunity to visit Kynikos Associates in Manhattan and speak with its President, famed short-seller James S. Chanos.

The billionaire hedge funder is the stuff of legend. He made a killing shorting companies like Tyco, Worldcom, and of course, Enron. Chanos spoke with us at length on everything from how he discovered Enron’s problems to the issues at hand with Greece to the ongoing problems in China.

We’ll be running several posts on our Q&A sessions with Chanos throughout the week.

Today we talk about Dubai, Greece, and the role of derivatives in these markets.

———————–

Business Insider: Let’s talk about Dubai and Greece. Dubai – was it just a case of a nation that saw too much growth and excessive debt?

Jim Chanos: No, no. Dubai was a property bubble. Plain and simple. Go to Dubai and see what happened. It was…what I call it the “Ediffice complex” – it’s just, we can grow by putting up lots and lots of buildings and trying to attract people to come here, stay here, and put up offices here and sooner or later, you put up too many. And whether it’s the Palm Island project or the indoor ski resort or, you know, take your pick because everyone has lots of Dubai stories. At first it seemed plausible and economic and by the end of the boom, they were putting on drawing boards all kinds of crazy projects. So it didn’t take a rocket scientist to see the excesses. They were pretty visible to the naked eye.

Greece is a different issue. We’re not involved. We don’t trade sovereign debt, we don’t trade CDSes. You know I feel bad for my mother country in that they’re going through a lot of austerity now and I actually think that the Prime Minister and his team are doing the right thing. I met with them recently, actually, in Washington [DC] and they gave a pretty rational response to a problem that they, quite frankly, inherited.

You know they came in and discovered the hole in the budget deficit and discovered a lot of the off balance sheet stuff that was not of their doing. And he’s taking the politically unpopular step of extending the retirement age and cutting government wages not knowing if it’s going to be enough and so far the market is pretty skeptical, but I think the Greek government is being more courageous than some of the other western-European governments who aren’t addressing these issues and are going to be facing these same problems like Greece down the road. So Greece is a prelude to the problems that a lot of other countries will face that have made promises to their people without the ability to pay for them.

The No.1 Trend Forecaster Gerald Celente on ObamaCare, Dollar Devaluation And Gold

April 12, 2010April 12, 2010 by Infinite

Just in case you think what Gerald Celente says here is far-fetched:

– ‘All bets are off’ if US under WMD attack: Clinton (AFP):

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday the United States could not rule out using nuclear weapons if it came under biological attack, saying in that case “all bets are off.”

“If we can prove that a biological attack originated in a country that attacked us, then all bets are off,” Clinton said in an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

This is your government preparing you for the next false flag terrorist attack.

The next US target will (most probably) be Iran:

– US shipping hundreds of powerful bunker buster bombs for coming attack on Iran

An attack on Iran will start WWIII.

“The Worst Is Yet To Come.”

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Date: 11th Apr 10

“We Believe Gold 2000.”

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Date: 11th Apr 10

More from Gerald Celente:

US: ‘The Coming Wave is the Commercial Foreclosures’

April 6, 2010April 6, 2010 by Infinite

The commercial real estate crisis will not be a wave, but a tsunami that will dwarf the subprime mortgage crisis.

The 5-foot alligator lurking in the algae-green waters of the community swimming pool was not the worst thing code-enforcement officers have found in recent years at AAA Apartments in Cocoa.

Bathrooms infested with mold. Walls with gaping holes where air conditioners had been ripped out. Garbage and trash strewn about the 52-unit complex. The city began issuing code-violation fines in 2007, back at the beginning of the housing slump, and the apartments’ co-owners soon owed the city $1.8 million — more than three times the current list price of the property, and enough money to motivate the now-former co-owners to try bribing a code-enforcement officer.

AAA Apartments, now bank-owned, may be an example of things to come. As home foreclosures continue to mount throughout Central Florida, code-enforcement officers say apartments, condominiums and other commercial buildings are being abandoned by their owners and repossessed by banks in growing numbers.

“The coming wave is the commercial foreclosures,” said Mike Rhodes, code-enforcement division director for the city of Orlando.

Trepp LLC, a New York-based provider of commercial-mortgage information, recently reported seven Orange County apartment properties as being in foreclosure: Mallard Cove Apartments, Orlando; Cornerstone Apartments, Orlando; Nob Hill Apartments, Winter Park; Seville Place Apartments, Orlando; Woodbridge Apartments, Winter Park; Windover of Orlando, Orlando; and Oak Cluster West Apartments, Orlando.

US Banks Facing $1.4 Trillion Crisis Over Commercial Real Estate Loans

February 15, 2010 by Infinite

– Commercial Real Estate Losses Could Hit $300 Billion: TARP Panel:

“The banks that are on the front lines of small-business lending are about to get hit by a tidal wave of commercial-loan failures,” said Elizabeth Warren, a law professor at Harvard University who heads the COP.

Warren and her fellow panel members warn that “a significant wave of commercial mortgage defaults would trigger economic damage that could touch the lives of nearly every American.”

• Commercial property set to lose $300bn on $1.4bn of loans

• Nearly 3,000 banks face dangerous exposure as loans mature

Wall Street banks and other financial institutions may be heading for the wall as a further crisis looms in 2011 over commercial property loans. Photograph: Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images

America’s fragile high street banks are bracing themselves for a fresh financial crunch as a wave of commercial property mortgages go sour on offices, shops and factories, causing losses of up to $300bn (£192bn) hitting nearly 3,000 small- and medium-sized financial institutions.

A congressional oversight panel charged with scrutinising the Obama administration’s bailout efforts has warned that $1.4tn of loans covering commercial premises will reach maturity between 2011 and 2014. After a plunge in property prices, nearly half of these loans are underwater, with borrowers owing more than their underlying property is worth.

An analysis by the panel found that 2,988 of America’s 8,100 banks have potentially dangerous exposure to commercial property loans. The impact could damage hopes of a US economic recovery and could cause a further squeeze in the availability of credit to consumers and businesses.

Beijing Seen Vacant for 50% of Commercial Space, Experts Expect Crash

February 14, 2010 by Infinite

Beijing’s Financial Street on Feb. 4, 2010. (Bloomberg)

Feb. 12 (Bloomberg) — Jack Rodman, who has made a career of selling soured property loans from Los Angeles to Tokyo, sees a crash looming in China. He keeps a slide show on his computer of empty office buildings in Beijing, his home since 2002. The tally: 55, with another dozen candidates.

“I took these pictures to try to impress upon these people the massive amount of oversupply,” said Rodman, 63, president of Global Distressed Solutions LLC, which advises private equity and hedge funds on Chinese property and banking. Rodman figures about half of the city’s commercial space is vacant, more than was leased in Germany’s five biggest office markets in 2009.

Beijing’s office vacancy rate of 22.4 percent in the third quarter of last year was the ninth-highest of 103 markets tracked by CB Richard Ellis Group Inc., a real estate broker. Those figures don’t include many buildings about to open, such as the city’s tallest, the 6.6-billion yuan ($966 million) 74- story China World Tower 3.

Empty buildings are sprouting across China as companies with access to some of the $1.4 trillion in new loans last year build skyscrapers. Former Morgan Stanley chief Asia economist Andy Xie and hedge fund manager James Chanos say the country’s property market is in a bubble.

“There’s a monumental property bubble and fixed-asset investment bubble that China has underway right now,” Chanos said in a Jan. 25 Bloomberg Television interview. “And deflating that gently will be difficult at best.”

Report: 1 in 5 US Homeowners Underwater; Foreclosures at Record High

February 11, 2010 by Infinite

Green shoots!

– Rep. Alan Grayson: ‘20 Percent Of Our Accumulated Wealth Over The Course Of 2 Centuries Gone in 18 months!’

Foreclosures Across The Country Rose To A New High In December

NEW YORK – One of every five U.S. homeowners owed more on their mortgage than their home was worth in the fourth quarter, a trend that poses a serious threat to the U.S. housing market’s recovery, real estate Web site Zillow.com said on Wednesday.

Homeowners with “underwater” mortgages are more prone to defaults and foreclosures. They typically do not qualify for refinancings and are unable to sell their homes because they would need to cough up cash at closing time to pay off their mortgage.

The percentage of American single-family homes with mortgages in negative equity rose to 21.4 percent in the fourth quarter from 21 percent in the third quarter, according to the Zillow Real Estate Market Reports.

U.S. home values declined again in the fourth quarter, as the Zillow Home Value Index fell 5 percent year-over-year and down 0.5 percent quarter-over-quarter, to $186,200. It was the 12th consecutive quarter of year-over-year declines, the reports showed.

“The prevalence of markets in or near a double-dip situation shows that we are not yet at the bottom, in terms of home values,” Stan Humphries, Zillow chief economist, said in an interview.

US Economy: Sales of New Homes Fall, Capping Worst Year Ever

January 27, 2010 by Infinite

‘Unexpectedly’:

– US Housing Starts ‘Unexpectedly’ Fall in December:

WASHINGTON, Jan 20 (Reuters) – New U.S. housing starts unexpectedly fell in December, pulled down by a drop in construction activity for single-family dwellings, a government report showed on Wednesday.

– ‘Surprise’ rise in new US jobless claims

(Financial Times) — The number of US workers making first-time claims for jobless benefits unexpectedly rose last week, as the government worked through a pre-holiday backlog of filings.

There is no recovery!

A sign publicizing a tax credit for first-time buyers stands outside a home for sale in Raleigh, North Carolina (Bloomberg)

Jan. 27 (Bloomberg) — Sales of new homes in the U.S. unexpectedly dropped in December, capping the worst year on record and signaling the government’s tax-credit extension has yet to shore up demand.

Purchases declined 7.6 percent to an annual pace of 342,000, marking the fourth decrease in the past five months, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. For all of 2009, sales declined 23 percent to 374,000, the lowest level since records began in 1963.

The falloff following the expected expiration of an $8,000 incentive for first-time buyers indicates the market remains dependent on government assistance. A setback in housing, combined with a jobless rate projected to average 10 percent this year and record foreclosures that will push up supply, may pressure home prices and builder profits for much of 2010.

“It’s going to be a long slog for housing,” said Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist at Maria Fiorini Ramirez Inc., a New York forecasting firm. “We will see a decline in home prices and there is still a lot of shadow inventory out there that we need to get through.”

The Stuyvesant Town Collapses Under $4.4 Billion Mountain of Debt

January 25, 2010 by Infinite

Recommended: More Ponzi Failure: Stuyvesant (By Karl Denninger)

Tishman Venture Gives Up Stuyvesant Project

A First Avenue view in New York of Peter Cooper Village, foreground, and Stuyvesant Town apartment complexes in October.

A group led by Tishman Speyer Properties has decided to give up the sprawling Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town apartment complex in Manhattan to its creditors in the collapse of one of the most high-profile deals of the real-estate boom.

The decision comes after the venture between Tishman and BlackRock Inc. defaulted on the $4.4 billion debt used to help finance the deal. The venture acquired the 56-building, 11,000-unit property for $5.4 billion in 2006—the most ever paid for a single residential property in the U.S. The venture had been struggling for months to restructure the debt but capitulated facing a massive debt load and a weak New York City economy that has undercut rents and demand for high-priced apartments.

Tishman Speyer’s deal for Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, which was the biggest real estate deal at the time, may end up in bankruptcy, the News Hub panel reports.

The property’s owners signaled they would be unable to reach a deal with lenders and instead decided to allow creditors to proceed with what amounts to an orderly deed-in-lieu of foreclosure, which means a borrower voluntarily gives the property back to lenders to avoid a foreclosure proceeding.

US: December home sales down nearly 17 percent, the largest monthly drop in more than 40 years

January 25, 2010 by Infinite

In this Jan. 5, 2010 photo, a home is seen advertised for sale in Alameda, Calif. Sales of previously occupied homes took the largest monthly drop in more than 40 years last month, plunging far more than expected after lawmakers gave buyers more time to use a tax credit.(AP Photo/Ben Margot) (Ben Margot – AP)

WASHINGTON — Sales of previously occupied homes took the largest monthly drop in more than 40 years last month, sinking more dramatically than expected after lawmakers gave buyers additional time to use a tax credit.

The report reflects a sharp drop in demand after buyers stopped scrambling to qualify for a tax credit of up to $8,000 for first-time homeowners. It had been due to expire on Nov. 30. But Congress extended the deadline until April 30 and expanded it with a new $6,500 credit for existing homeowners who move.

“It’s ‘exit stage left’ for first-time homebuyers,” wrote Guy LeBas, an analyst with Janney Montgomery Scott.

December’s sales fell 16.7 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.45 million, from an unchanged pace of 6.54 million in November, the National Association of Realtors said Monday. Sales had been expected to fall by about 10 percent, according to economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters.

The report “places a large question mark over whether the recovery can be sustained when the extended tax credit expires,” wrote Paul Dales, U.S. economist with Capital Economics.

Rep. Ron Paul: State of the Republic Address – ‘Dangerous Times Indeed.’

January 24, 2010January 23, 2010 by Infinite

“The collapse of the financial system is still in its early stage.”

“The social unrest will illicit cries for the government to exert unusual force to head off a complete breakdown of law and order. The ultimate trap will be set for a system of government claiming to protect a free society.”

“If more power and police authority are not given to the Federal government, it will be argued that only anarchy will result. If more government policing power is given, it will mean a lethal threat to civil liberties.”

“We are rapidly moving toward a dangerous time in our history. Society as we know it is vulnerable to political and social unrest. This impending crisis comes as a consequence of our flawed foreign and domestic economic policies, a silly notion about money, ignorance about central banking, ignoring the onerous power and mischief of out of control intelligence agencies, our unsustainable welfare state and a willingness to sacrifice privacy and civil liberties in an attempt to achieve safety and security from an inept government.”

“Dangerous times indeed.”

“The only way that we can prevent blood from running in the streets is to offer a better idea of the proper role of government in a society that desires, first and foremost, liberty.”

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The Fed and the US government are destroying America:

– America’s Impending Master Class Dictatorship! (MUST-READ!)

– The CFR Controls American News/Media

– Senate Proposes Increasing US Debt Limit to $14.3 Trillion: “If Congress does not enact this legislation, and soon, then the Treasury would default on its debt for the first time in history,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus

– US: Unfunded Benefits Dig States’ $3 Trillion Hole

– Illinois enters a state of insolvency: ‘We’re close to de facto bankruptcy, if not de jure bankruptcy.’

– The No.1 Trend Forecaster Gerald Celente: Financial Mafia Controlling US and Wall Street

– Peter Schiff: The Lunacy of US Government Programs

– Former Dean of Harvard College Harry R. Lewis: Larry Summers, Robert Rubin: Will The Harvard Shadow Elite Bankrupt The University And The Country?

US Mortgages: Walking Away Goes Mainstream

January 18, 2010 by Infinite

Related information:

– To all homeowners in foreclosure: Judge wipes out $460,000 mortgage debt

Banks, Realtors, the Obama Administration, and credit lenders are engaging in an all out campaign to get people to honor “moral obligations” that simply do not exist.

There is an interesting post on Tech Ticker with Henry Blodget called Yes, It’s Okay To Walk Away From Your Mortgage.

As many Americans begin to realize that it will be many years (if not decades) before their houses are worth what they owe on them, the idea of walking away from your mortgage is going mainstream. Not surprisingly, the mortgage industry is doing everything it can to prevent this, including telling homeowners that they have a “moral obligation” to pay.

But do they?

There’s no universal answer here, but in most cases, the answer is “Yes, it’s okay to walk away.” Importantly, the reason is not that “Wall Street deserves it” or “We’ve got to teach the banks a lesson” or any of the other retribution logic being thrown around these days. The reason is that you and your lender engaged in an arms-length transaction in which both parties balanced competing interests and spelled out their obligations in a clear, signed contract. And unless that contract states that you have a “moral obligation to pay,” you don’t have a moral obligation to pay.

You, meanwhile, also made a business decision. You decided to borrow money to buy your house even though it meant risking your equity, home, and credit rating.

And now it turns out that both of you made a bad decision.

Fortunately, you don’t have to fight about what happens next. The contract between you spells everything out: If you stop paying, the lender gets the house. That’s it. Unless the contract specifically differentiates between a failure to pay based on hardship (involuntary) and a failure to pay based on a collapse in the value of the house (voluntary), there’s no difference. If the lender thought at the beginning that you had a “moral obligation to pay,” it would have specified that in the contract.

Now, compare this to a situation in which you DO have a moral obligation to pay: When you borrow money from a friend at no interest, for example, and you promise that friend that you will give him or her every penny back. THAT is a moral obligation to pay. In this case, your friend did not lend you money to make a profit. Your friend loaned you money to help you out–with no collateral or contract other than your promise to pay.

Blodget makes a powerful case distinguishing moral obligations of paying back a friend or family member vs. the moral obligation (none) on a mortgage with a bank.

If the lender thought at the beginning that you had a “moral obligation to pay,” it would have [or should have] specified that in the contract.

US slides deeper into depression as Wall Street revels

January 11, 2010 by Infinite

December was the worst month for US unemployment since the Great Recession began.

History repeating itself? President Obama has been accused by some economists of making the same mistakes policymakers in the US made in the Great Depression, which followed the Wall Street crash of 1929, pictured Photo: AP

The labour force contracted by 661,000. This did not show up in the headline jobless rate because so many Americans dropped out of the system. The broad U6 category of unemployment rose to 17.3pc. That is the one that matters.

Wall Street rallied. Bulls hope that weak jobs data will postpone monetary tightening: a silver lining in every catastrophe, or perhaps a further exhibit of market infantilism.

The home foreclosure guillotine usually drops a year or so after people lose their job, and exhaust their savings. The local sheriff will escort them out of the door, often with some sympathy — just like the police in 1932, mostly Irish Catholics who tithed 1pc of their pay for soup kitchens.

Realtytrac says defaults and repossessions have been running at over 300,000 a month since February. One million American families lost their homes in the fourth quarter. Moody’s Economy.com expects another 2.4m homes to go this year. Taken together, this looks awfully like Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.

Judges are finding ways to block evictions. One magistrate in Minnesota halted a case calling the creditor “harsh, repugnant, shocking and repulsive”. We are not far from a de facto moratorium in some areas.

This is how it ended between 1932 and 1934, when half the US states declared moratoria or “Farm Holidays”. Such flexibility innoculated America’s democracy against the appeal of Red Unions and Coughlin Fascists. The home siezures are occurring despite frantic efforts by the Obama administration to delay the process.

Peter Schiff on Fast Money: ‘America is broke’; ‘The Fed created a currency crisis’; ‘Dollar to collapse 50-70% or more’

January 6, 2010 by Infinite

Added: 5th Jan 2010