Home

Dec

5
2008

Who's counting?

By Matt Carter, Friday, December 5, 2008.

D'oh!!! FDIC announces bank failure number 23 for the year -- that's 13 since the first week of September, when FDIC chairwoman Sheila Bair warned of more to come. The previous high in recent years was 11 failures in 2002. If you go back to the early 90s, a total of 291 FDIC insured banks failed from 1991 to 1993.  more...

Feedback loop

By Matt Carter, Friday, December 5, 2008.

Judy Jones, who used to police homes in Corona, Calif. for code violations until she was laid off, could now be facing foreclosure herself.  more...

'Mortgage Fairy' can't save us Premium Content

By Lou Barnes, Friday, December 5, 2008.
Flickr image by <a href="http://flickr.com/photos/redstar/45495640/" target=blank>levaine</a>.

In one of the few benefits of increasing age: The older you get, the more times you've blown off your eyebrows in the lab and the less shocked you are when things that "can't happen" ... happen.

The markets today, a bunch of kids under 50, are jaw-dropped -- so whacked upside the head they can't even find the big river in Egypt. They've spent their whole working lives back-testing risk models back to the Civil War (between Athens and Sparta), absolutely certain of what can and cannot happen, leveraged to the eyeballs based on those boundaries.  more...

President of Prudential franchiser to retire

By Inman News, Friday, December 5, 2008.

Laurie Keenan, president of Prudential Real Estate Affiliates Inc., a franchise network that had about 2,100 offices and 64,000 sales associates as of June 30, has announced that she will leave the company around the close of first-quarter 2009.

Keenan, who has served as president since January 2007, joined Prudential Real Estate in 1992 and earlier served as executive vice president, chief operating officer and vice president of network education and business development for the company.  more...

Report: Home prices to fall below fundamentals Premium Content

By Matt Carter, Friday, December 5, 2008.

A new report suggests that homes are no longer overpriced in the vast majority of markets, but concludes prices will continue to fall in areas hard hit by foreclosures -- in many cases overshooting market fundamentals on their way down.

IHS Global Insight's quarterly report, House Prices in America, looks at historical home-price-to-income ratios in 330 metro areas. The latest report concludes that homes were fairly valued in all but 33 of those markets at the end of September.  more...

Job losses to fuel foreclosures  Premium Content

By Matt Carter, Friday, December 5, 2008.

A record one in ten home loans were delinquent or in foreclosure at the end of September, some 2.2 million homes are expected to enter the foreclosure process in 2008, and with the economy deteriorating the outlook for next year is worse, the Mortgage Bankers Association said today.

Until recently, excess inventory, speculation and lax underwriting by lenders have been the prime drivers of foreclosures in states like California and Florida, the MBA said. States like Michigan and Ohio were hardest hit by unemployment and population loss.  more...

Everything you wanted to know about wood

By Paul Bianchina, Friday, December 5, 2008.

Wood. It's one of the single most common materials we use for home improvement projects, from rough framing to fine finish work. Take one glance through a well-stocked lumberyard and you'll quickly see that there is a huge variety of different woods available, with an equally huge collection of terminology. So to simplify things a little for your next project, here -- in alphabetical order -- is a basic look at some of the things you might want to know about wood.  more...

As China grows, so do its problems

By Arrol Gellner, Friday, December 5, 2008.

(This is Part 2 of a multipart series. Read Part 1, "China's growth has lessons for U.S.")

Americans are no doubt getting tired of hearing how well things are going for China. Having painted much the same picture in my last report from Suzhou -- my Chinese home away from home -- I thought I'd dwell on a few of China's biggest headaches for a change.  more...

Feds warn of real estate fraud scheme

By Inman News, Friday, December 5, 2008.

Realtor Magazine, a publication of the National Association of Realtors on Thursday reported on a fraud scheme in which individuals have attempted to purchase real estate and vehicles using bogus documents.

The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Inspector General has "been made aware of incidents in Arizona and Colorado where ... fraudulent documents were used to attempt to purchase homes and an office building."  more...

Trillions in mortgage debt loom large

By Inman News, Friday, December 5, 2008.

Sean O'Toole is founder and CEO of ForeclosureRadar.com, a company that focuses on California real estate foreclosure statistics. He will speak about foreclosure realities and opportunities during the Inman News Real Estate Connect conference in New York City, which runs from Jan. 7-9.

He responded to a set of questions posed by Inman News:

What do you see happening in the real estate market in 2009?  more...