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Good times are here again in residential property. House flippers are back and have now moved to foreclosure auctions.  Below is a house that was bought in foreclosure at $945,000 in November and is now on the market for $1.4 to 1.5 million. 4100 square feet and swimming pool. Fairbanks Ranch. Cheapest house in the [...]

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John Hussman’s latest weekly contribution contends that the market is now extremely overvalued, to the point where long-term returns will likely be low.
As of last week, the S&P 500 nearly matched the richest valuations, on normalized earnings, ever observed prior to 1995. While it is quite true that valuations have been higher for the majority [...]

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This comes via the Wall Street Journal:
Fairfield Residential LLC, one of the nation’s largest apartment owners and developers, filed for bankruptcy on Sunday, the latest casualty of the turmoil engulfing the U.S. real-estate market.
Fairfield, which has built some 64,000 apartments, condominiums and off-campus student-housing units throughout the country, failed amid an inability to refinance debt [...]

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The closing of the Bank of the United States could be considered the event during the Great Depression that was most akin for the U.S. to the collapse of Lehman Brothers last year.  The event occurred on 12 December 1930 – so 79 years ago yesterday.  The blog News from 1930 details the events from [...]

This December 2009 post is a reminder of the issues at stake with Greece. It is not credible for the EU to lend psychological and political support given the debt loads now burdening the Greek government. More is needed, either financial support, debt guarantees, or austerity – most probably all of the above.

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Greece has been downgraded by Fitch Ratings to BBB+ over concerns about its budget deficit. Despite the cut, Fitch maintained a negative outlook on the country’s ratings, meaning it could fall further in the near future.  This action highlights how the real sovereign debt crisis is in Europe not in Dubai.
The ratings agency said:
The downgrade [...]

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You kind of knew this was going to happen.  Given the fact that AmTrust Financial, the holding company filed bankruptcy (see my story here) after a bit of asset stripping, the FDIC was forced to come in and seize the banking subsidiary which was woefully undercapitalized.
The FDIC press release says:
AmTrust Bank, Cleveland, Ohio, was closed [...]

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Yesterday I wrote how bank bankruptcies are crushing small business and households in Georgia. Today we got three more to bring the total to 23 this year, 29 since the subprime crisis began.
The Buckhead Community Bank, Atlanta, Georgia
As of November 6, 2009, The Buckhead Community Bank had total assets of approximately $874.0 million and total [...]

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Recently, I have been writing a lot about regional banks and the capital problems they have been having. This is having a direct impact on lending capacity available to small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) and households. As a result, a lot of workers are losing jobs in these smaller enterprises. And the unemployment statistics [...]

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AmTrust Financial, a privately held regional bank holding company based in Cleveland, has just filed for bankruptcy. With well over $10 billion in assets, AmTrust Bank is fairly large. The circumstances surrounding its failure are unusual in that the Bank Holding Company (BHC) has filed for bankruptcy but the banking subsidiary is still operating. The [...]