The desert mirage of easy housing profits – Phoenix Arizona home prices on track for four consecutive years of year-over-year home price declines. 55 percent fall from peak and nominal home prices back to 2000 levels. What happens when investors dominate the market?
The foreclosure epidemic in states like Arizona and Nevada is breathtaking and incredibly disheartening. Prices have cratered much more quickly than the methodical rise up in the last decade. Home prices in Phoenix now sit precariously where they did in 2000 without adjusting for inflation. These desert communities largely built on a dream, fast construction, [...]
Living paycheck to paycheck with the housing albatross – Survey finds one in three Americans unable to make their mortgage or rent payment beyond one month if they lost their job. 61 percent unable to make payments beyond five months.
One of the unnerving revelations brought about by the current recession is how many Americans are living precariously close to the economic edge. The Band-Aid of credit cards, home equity loans, and other vehicles of debt masked the problem for many years. Debt was rolled over on a continuous basis and as long as the [...]
Scorching the desert housing markets – Arizona and Nevada real estate blossomed with cheap fuel and easy access to debt. For last two years 40 percent of buyers came from all cash purchases. What happens when the well runs dry in the financial desert?
The Arizona housing market is a perfect example of what happens when the housing religion spirals out of control and implodes in dramatic fashion pushing up against environmental limits. I remember driving in the blistering summer heat through Arizona before all the housing mania launched out of control in the late 1990s and thinking that [...]
Phoenix real estate breaks a record with 50 percent of all home sales coming from all cash investors. Locals barely can buy with FHA insured loans. Can a desert market dependent on cheap oil and survive in the $100+ a barrel world?
The Phoenix real estate market is a fascinating case examination of an area guided by FHA loans for first time buyers and all cash investors purchasing 50 percent of properties. In January of 2011, the latest month of stunning data, 1 out of every 2 homes sold went to an all cash buyer. We are [...]
Phoenix real estate market being held up by all cash buyers – 47 percent of Phoenix sales were from all cash buyers in December. The $1 priced Detroit home.
The Phoenix real estate market has collapsed after reaching a price apex in 2006. It is hard to imagine another market with similar real estate fundamentals but Las Vegas is a mirror image of foreclosure ridden Phoenix. These desert cities rose up during the housing bubble with plentiful and cheap land to expand on. Builders [...]
The road least pillaged – S&P 500 up 90 percent from bottom but housing values down 30 percent nationwide. Wealthy store most of their wealth in stocks while most Americans have their net worth in housing. 2010 record year in foreclosures and the upcoming lost decade in housing.
There are few investments in the US that are so heavily subsidized like housing. Residential and commercial real estate included benefit from favorable government policies to increase demand. Some of these policies may have merit but a large part of the housing market has been injected with so many perks that the true value of [...]
The stalling of the California housing market – California Foreclosure Prevention Act has institutionalized a drawn out foreclosure process. 470,000 MLS listed and distressed homes in the state. California construction industry employing the same number of workers as it did in the early 1990s.
The state of California continues to grapple with the collapse of the enormous housing bubble. The Governor earlier in the week called for a special emergency session to deal with a $6 billion deficit that emerged just weeks after the state budget was signed and the ink dried. States with a large dependence on the [...]
Las Vegas city has 3 times the rentals of Los Angeles city and L.A. has 6 times the population – U-Haul rate trends and home sales higher in Las Vegas than peak months of the bubble driven by absentee investors.
The Las Vegas housing market expanded and popped the quickest and highlights the gambling euphoria that engulfed the housing bubble. The housing market in Las Vegas has served as an albatross to drag the state of Nevada down to the point that now the desert state ranks as number one in unemployment nationwide. One of [...]
Real estate is a bad investment does not show up in Google News and other interesting housing trends – Strategic default searches went viral in 2010. Banks betting against American homeowners.
82 percent of American households have internet access. Of those with internet access, a large number are homeowners. The vast majority use Google to search for many things including foreclosure advice or investigating the real estate market. The online trends give of a sense of what is happening in the collective psyche of our country [...]
Shipping the housing market overseas. Long-term housing prospects hinge on an economic recovery for working Americans first – No housing bottom until middle class recovers a foothold in the U.S.
The housing market can have no sustainable recovery without the employment market improving. It is incredible that over three years into this crisis that there has been little focus on coupling employment with housing. Banks argue that many are simply not paying their mortgage yet they want the Federal government to ease lending restrictions. Who [...]
