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The last feature on the list of links below is on CRE in Washington D.C. where the economy is fairly robust. If you know anything about these properties, you would agree these are not poor properties at all. The problem with them is not location or property maintenance; it’s the debt.  The properties were leveraged [...]

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The National Association of Realtors® announced today that existing home sales dropped a hefty 7% in January, adding further evidence that the resurgence of the housing sector is stalling. Wednesday, we saw a very soft new home sales number. Now, we see more softness in existing home sales as well.
Their press release stated:
Existing-home sales fell [...]

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This comes today via Reuters:
The Commerce Department said sales dropped 11.2 percent to a 309,000 unit annual rate, the lowest level since records started in January 1963, from an upwardly revised 348,000 in December.
It was the third straight month that new home sales fell and the percentage decline in January was the largest in a [...]

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The December 2009 data for the widely followed S&P/Case-Shiller Indices were released this morning.  The data are showing a mixed picture. On the one hand, the unadjusted numbers are down on both a month-to-month and year-over-year basis (Composite-10 and Composite-20 respectively down 2.5% and 3.2% versus December 2008). Only four of twenty markets saw price [...]

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Xie believes the Chinese economy is in no near-term threat. But he does see problems down the line because of a property bubble. He recommends even more monetary tightening to reduce the ill effects of this bubble.
Xie comments on the U.S. and on Europe as well. The video of his comments runs just under ten [...]

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According to data released today by the Halifax, UK house prices are now up almost 10% above the levels of just 9 months ago.  Low interest rates have certainly been a big factor in the rise, with Nationwide’s figure showing an even steeper rise since April, as the chart from BBC News below attests.
 

When [...]

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Below is a Jim Chanos video on China now making the rounds in the financial blogosphere. 
Chanos says that most financial bubbles are the result of excess credit creation and believes that is exactly what we are witnessing in China.  Although Chanos sees serious overcapacity problems in China, he is not calling for a market [...]

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If I could relate the concept of malinvestment to business administration I would do it using the concept of depreciation. 
Depreciation is a term used in accounting and business to represent a writedown of a real asset on a company’s balance sheet to reflect its actual depreciation in value. If you build a building, it [...]

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A reader who invests in emerging markets sent me an interesting article from the South China Morning Post. Excerpts are below.
China’s economic stimulus programme has accelerated the already aggressive pace of urban development in the country. But while investment in construction is creating much-needed infrastructure in some cities, it is also adding to the [...]

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When I wrote about house prices six months ago, I said:
house prices are bottoming because we have seen a trend in year-on-year changes from January through May that looks likely to continue into the present day.  If this trend (of less negative data) holds for a few more months, say through September or October’s data, [...]