You might find some analysts looking for some green shoots in the just released Case-Shiller Home Price Index.  For instance, the year-on-year change in house prices showed a slower decline in the latest month (February) than in the previous release.
So, this report is better for homeowners than the last one which I surveyed in a [...]

House prices increased in March in the U.K. according to Nationwide Building Society. Below is what Nationwide’s Chief Economist Fionnuala Earley had to say about this surprise good news:
“Spring brought a surprise bounce to house prices in March. The price of a typical house increased for the first time since October 2007, rising by [...]

You might have thought house price declines were slowing. I certainly had hoped so. The latest data from January 2009 from the S&P/Case-Shiller index suggests this is wishful thinking as year-on-year declines hit another record of 19%. The decline was not only steep, but very broad-based.
Data through January 2009, released today by [...]

The website You Walk Away has become pretty popular because it teaches mortgage holders how to dump their properties on banks and get out from under their mortgage without losing everything. Apparently, banks are getting into the act too — and walking away. That leaves some people holding the bag when they didn’t [...]

This comes from Angus Robertson of Research Recap.  Expect some major writedowns here going forward:
A dramatic rise in delinquencies has led Fitch Ratings to raise its average loss estimates for recent vintage jumbo prime mortgage pools to between 3 and 5 times higher than its previous estimate.
Fitch’s revised average loss estimates as a percentage of [...]

Make no bones about it, Manhattan real estate prices have been in an extreme bubble.  With stock prices down and Wall Street shedding jobs massively, this has come to an end.
With sales prices of Manhattan apartments having tumbled by perhaps a quarter in just the past few months, pinpointing the bottom has become a [...]

The details on Obama’ new mortgage relief plan are out. The key parts are the following:

Below is an interview with an expert on the issue of mortgage cramdowns. Basically, this issue is all about debt forgiveness for borrowers and writedowns for lenders. Lenders do not like cramdowns for that reason. See below for a view on cramdowns from Paul Van Valkenburg of the Mortgage Industry Advisory Corp.

Warning: you should expect him to have a negative bias given who he works for. I actually like cramdowns. Van Valkenburg is looking at this from an investor’s perspective and wants senior creditors not to be negatively impacted by the coming cramdown legislation. Nevertheless, I am posting this video because it is informative as to the impacts on mortgage-backed securities, mortgage servicing and housing.

The Nationwide has released its latest house price survey, showing a very large 1.8% fall in British house prices between January and February 2009. This brings the yearly decline to a record 17.6%.

Yet, incongruously, the Nationwide revealed this information on its website under the heading “improving affordability helps new and existing buyers.” If this does not smack of cheerleading, I don’t know what does.

The S&P Real Estate Index is down 60%. This segment gives a good overview of how commercial real estate is doing and what to expect going forward.

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