Post Tagged with: "mortgages"
Bubble Trouble In Finland?
by Edward Hugh According to an intriguing article I read in Bloomberg recently an alert signal has been sounded due to the fact that house prices in the Scandinavian countries have been rising very rapidly of late. Judging by what they explain what is now going on in the housing markets of Norway, Sweden and
Wednesday Washington Watch
by Annaly Capital Management Today Mike Farrell appeared as a panel participant at a House Financial Services Committee entitled The Future of Housing Finance – A Review of Proposals to Address Market Structure and Transition. The comments of each panel participant are available on the committee’s website. We post Mr. Farrell’s comments below. Chairman Frank,
LSAP 2: A Question for the Chairman
by Annaly Capital Management We attended Chairman Bernanke’s lecture last Friday at Princeton University, primarily because there was going to be open Q&A. As it turns out, despite our eagerly raised hand we were not called, the questions that were asked were beside the point, and in any event his talk steered far away from
Where is the Bottom for Housing? We May Not Know for Years
How far are we from a bottom in U.S. home prices? There are many estimates that there could be another 10% or more for the national average and median prices to decline. This author estimated that 2010 had a most probable decline around 11% from December 2009, with further declines possible in 2011. Little decline
The Pig in the Python
by Annaly Salvos The title of this post may sound like a fable told by Aesop, but we assure you it’s not. We spent the early part of this week in Dallas attending the 3rd Zelman & Associates Housing Summit. The conference was attended by CEOs of housing and housing finance companies, senior officials in
On GMAC’s Halting Foreclosures and Other Links
Quick note: We have temporarily switched to summary RSS feeds instead of full feeds. One problem the CW site was having before we switched platforms had to do with the feeds crushing the CPU whenever we posted or edited a post. It is still not clear why. As a result, we are experimenting with summary
Outlook for Home Prices May Be Degrading
by John Lounsbury Average home prices are virtually unchanged from July 2009 to July 2010 according to the latest report form First American CoreLogic, which provided the data for the following graph from Calculated Risk. The graph has notations added by the author. Click on graph for larger image. The 15% further price decline from
Get Government Out of the Mortgage Business and Other Links
A few comments today: I like Sheila Bair. She acts like a regulator should. When she warns of government exposure in mortgages, you should read the subtext as "if we in government are going to be the entire mortgage market, we have to ensure good lending standards." Joseph Stiglitz thinks the government should get out
Michael Burry Discusses Investing in Farmland, Real Estate, Gold
Michael Burry, the former head of Scion Capital LLC, made a big name predicting the housing market’s decline by taking short positions against it as lionized in Michael Lewis’ book "The Big Short." Here he talks with Bloomberg’s Jon Erlichman about the blame game post-housing crash. No one is taking any blame; He calls it
Eastern European Concerns To Rise, Hungary To Come Under Further Pressure
By Win Thin, Senior Currency Strategist, BBH Harvard Professor (and former IMF official) Kenneth Rogoff expects some Eastern European countries to face sovereign crises over next 2-3 years. In a weekend interview, Rogoff predicted that not every country will be able to successfully consolidate their budgets, naming Ukraine, Romania, and Hungary as “potential wobblers.” Due
Estonia’s Long Awaited Recovery May Still Be Delayed Yet Awhile
In a recent FT Op-ed, entitled "Estonia’s recovery defies economists and academics", columnist John Dizard argued that "the “internal devaluation” policy, which means cuts in nominal costs such as wages and rents, was very hard on the population, but appears to have worked ahead of even the Estonian government’s schedule". But as I said to
Home Sales: Up, Down or Sideways From Here
By Annaly Capital Management Existing home sales can’t go to zero, can they? They clocked in at 3.83 million on a seasonally adjusted annualized basis in July, down 27% from the prior year, half of the 2005 peak of 7.25 million and the lowest since the National Association of Realtors started keeping records in 1999.