Bernanke urges more to be done on housing crisis

Quite a punchy speech from the Fed Chairman, especially the conclusion, which suggests big support ahead for housing:

In this regard, reducing the number of preventable foreclosures would not only help families stay in their homes, it would confer much wider benefits. Significant efforts have been taken in this direction, but more can be done

More on California Housing data

Marshall here, as Ed is busy sunning himself in the Bahamas, whilst I am stuck in snowy Denver! It sounds as if JMP Securities has also read the California report that I discussed recently. This is the first outside source that I have seen respond to that report.

It is so ironic. I think that the blue collar areas that were the most in danger financially have been corrected, perhaps even over corrected and yet the markets are focused on other things even though, housing was always what America’s monetary and fiscal authorities were looking to cure for the financial system to stabilize

Treasury to Consider Further Measures to Halt Housing Slide

The Treasury Department is considering a plan to halt the slide in home prices that would lower mortgage rates using Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The plan could reduce rates for newly issued loans to as low as 4.5%. Slowly, but surely, the government is moving in the right direction. It is beginning to dawn on Treasury (albeit, belatedly) that a prerequisite for economic recovery is not just the stabilisation of the banking system, but some sort of program which provides mortgage relief for home owners. This plan is a small start.

I have a problem with this though. It is “trickle down”

More on Fannie and Freddie – Signs of life in the Refi Market?

Below is a chart of variable rate loan applications as per cent of total. This can be looked at from a contrary opinion point of view, that is people are afraid of variable rate loans after they got burned on the upside in the last several years and thus they are moving to fix rate

Why not use Fannie and Freddie?

I don’t understand the lack of imagination in DC. All the politicians have to do is tell the banks to lower their variable rate mortgage loans on the books to 4% right now, today or else and it is like $600-$750 billion of stimulus. With short rates as zero it’s the least the banks can do.

That probably offends the free market sensibilities of many of our readers, so here’s an alternative approach: Why not Fannie and Freddie, which are now de facto arms of the US government

UK: House price fall moderates, prices still down 13.9% in year

Today the Nationwide released their monthly UK-wide figures on house prices and the numbers were better. House prices fell 0.4% in the last month, bringing the annual fall to 13.9%, down from 14.6% in October.

Nevertheless, this is the 13th month in a row that house prices have fallen in the UK. Obviously, the UK is poised to have a sharp property fall that is worse than in the early 1990s

Case-Shiller Home Price index shows a 17% fall

The S&P/Case-Shiller® Home Price Indices were released yesterday. Unfortunately, I was away all day and could not post. The indices showed a further decline in home prices in the United States through September 2008 (the data most recently available). In the year to September, prices dropped 17.4% for the Composite-10 index and 18.6% for the

Toronto house prices in free fall

Canada has been one of the last housing bubble markets to crack. But, crack it has. The Toronto Real Estate Board reported that house prices crashed 13% from $434,022 on average last October to $376,896 this past October. With job losses mounting on Bay Street in Toronto as the financial services sector contracts globally, Toronto

Nationwide: UK house prices down 14.6%

The rate of decline in house prices in the UK is accelerating. Today the Nationwide released their monthly UK-wide figures on house prices and the numbers were fairly grim. House prices fell 1.4% in the last month alone, bringing the annual fall to 14.6% or nearly 20% in inflation-adjusted terms. This is the 12th month

Canada’s housing market is coming unstuck

I have run several stories in the past about Canada’s housing bubble because I have visited a number of Canadian cities over the past few years and all of them seemed to be building like mad. Vancouver and Toronto were the worst of the lot as far as condos go. But, as the United States

Case-Shiller: home prices fall even further

The S&P/Case-Shiller® Home Price Indices were released today. They showed a further decline in home prices in the United States through August 2008 (the data most recently available). In the year to August, prices dropped 17.7% for the Composite-10 index and 16.6% for the Composite-20 index. Among the twenty cities tracked in the index, particularly

Subprime good, prime bad

The latest trend in the U.S. housing market is the move of problem loans from the subprime category and into Alt-A and prime mortgages. We have been sounding the alarm bells on this since about June. See the related posts below. However, now it seems we have reached that critical state where subprime is relatively