The Housing Bubble

The Sacramento Bee reports from California. “‘Welcome,’ says the letter dated May 20, 2005. ‘It is a pleasure to have you as a new loan customer of Fremont Investment & Loan.’ Mailed to Erin O’Hagan of Sacramento, and multiplied hundreds of thousands of times elsewhere in the United States, they launched a financial crisis that is now rocking the world. More than three years after getting that letter, O’Hagan said, ‘Who would have thought it all would crash and burn the way it did?’”

“In the spring of 2005, Erin O’Hagan worked at Chicago Title’s Roseville branch, helping close the thousands of escrows that were part of the region’s sizzling housing boom. ‘I was making a better salary than at any time in my life,’ she said. ‘I never thought it would end.’”

“Today, she can’t believe what they signed. ‘I had to have 100 percent financing no matter what,’ she said. ‘But we had a chance to get a hell of a lot better deal than that.’”

“On Jan. 15, 2008, the house went into foreclosure, one of 5,278 homes turned over to the bank during the first three months of 2008. O’Hagan and her family had missed eight payments. O’Hagan lives today in a rented town house in Woodland. But she still cringes when the phone rings. Collection agents are demanding payment for her $95,000 down payment – a tactic that’s illegal in California, said Elk Grove foreclosure attorney Jonathan Stein.”

“When she drives east on I-80 she can see the top of the duplex on Hamilton Street. ‘But I try not to even look,’ O’Hagan said. She hopes to buy another house someday.”

From Bloomberg. “For almost a year, Luis Flores has been lobbying mortgage lender IndyMac Federal Bank FSB to cut his house payments. They have doubled since he refinanced his home loan in 2005 and he can’t afford them, Flores says. ‘Every time I call them they say they can’t help,’ said Flores, a graphic designer and bartender in Contra Costa County, California. ‘They tell you the solution is that they take Visa or MasterCard.”’

“Flores refinanced his mortgage through IndyMac, the Pasadena, California-based company that was seized by the FDIC in July. Two months after his loan was issued near the end of 2005, it adjusted from 1.5 percent interest to about 9 percent, Flores said. That lifted his monthly payment to $3,700 from $1,700 and covered only the interest. He said his home is worth $255,000 today and he owes about $480,000.”

“‘I want a payment that I can afford, and I want to feel like I’m making payments toward the house,’ said Flores. He’s told the bank in e-mails and phone calls that he can pay $2,300 to $2,500 a month, he said.”

From ABC News. “Each day from July through September, more than 2,700 Americans lost their homes in foreclosure…up from 1,200 a day a year ago. Sophie Lapointe, a mortgage broker in Las Vegas, has found there’s little that can be done to help people who owe more than their homes are worth. ‘The biggest problem is negative equity,’ she said.”

“Plunging prices have had even more impact on investors than on homeowners because investors have less emotional attachment to a house. They’re even more likely to walk away, especially if they’ve put little money into a property. Investors purchased one of every five homes last year, and almost one of every three when the market peaked in 2005, according to the Realtors trade group.”

“Maria Martinez, an administrative worker at the county jail in Stockton, Calif., is typical of homeowners who have gotten help, but not enough. She is three months behind on her mortgage, even after receiving a loan modification earlier this year. Though Martinez bought the house more than a decade ago for only $76,000, she now owes about $230,000 because she refinanced her home loan several times.”

“‘I was trying to borrow some money to pay some bills,’ said Martinez, who is on leave from her job this month after being diagnosed with cancer. ‘I didn’t really think…that I would get into a bind like this.’”

From National Public Radio . “Over the past three months, a record number of Californians lost their homes to foreclosure. And some of those financial losses are turning into human tragedies, as reports of suicide and other desperate behavior emerge.”

“Scott Harden lives on a quiet street in North Pasadena. But before dawn one recent morning, Harder woke up and smelled smoke coming from the home of his 53-year-old neighbor. Harden called 911. When emergency personnel arrived, they found Dunn’s body in her rear bedroom. She’d apparently set her house afire and shot herself in the head. Dunn had been facing eviction from the only home she’d ever known.”

“Dunn had inherited her bungalow from her family and lost it after she stopped working because of a disability; she had also made some bad financial decisions. The new owner let Dunn rent the yellow stucco bungalow, but he lost the house when the subprime meltdown sent all of California’s real estate into a tailspin.”

“Beverly Hills psychologist Kenneth Siegel says Californians are especially attached to their residential real estate. ‘California represented for many of us the pinnacle of the effects of hard work,’ Siegel said, ‘of the ability to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.’”

“Owning a home, Siegel said, ‘represented the physical manifestation of all we have done and how hard we have worked.’”

“But Californians’ dream of a modest detached home, Siegel says, often morphed into something far grander when the economic boom of the 1990s made home loans — many of them subprime — easier to come by. ‘So here, as much as anyplace else, people did overbuy, their houses were bigger than their egos,’ Siegel said, ‘and they in fact invested more of themselves and more of their savings in them.’”

“Middle-class status that once seemed a given isn’t anymore. Scott Harden says there are more and more signs reading ‘BANK OWNED’ popping up on his town’s lawns — something he never thought he’d see. ‘As this is happening in Pasadena — I think it’s sort of shaking people to their core,’ Harden said.”

The Glendale News Press. “The Glendale Pawn Shop, a Brand Boulevard store specializing in relatively inexpensive jewelry and easily acquired loans, has experienced a recent surge in business as the economy sinks south on continued fiscal concerns.”

“But the difference between now and a year ago, said manager Meredith Rosenberg, is that more well off customers are utilizing the pawn shop’s services to either secure loans or shop for jewelry that is comparatively cheaper. Lending and pawning items make up 90% of the company’s business as bank lending becomes more tepid, Rosenberg said.”

“‘Right now a lot of people are in destitute times,’ she said. ‘We’re seeing a lot of people that come in who don’t have the best credit or access to credit cards. People of all walks of life. And we’re making the most of it.’”

The Recordnet. “There may be a financial crisis on Wall Street and a housing crisis on Main Street, but it’s a busy time for jewelry buyers and pawnbrokers. That’s a mixed bag for Annette Hoag, co-owner of Annette’s North Stockton Jewelry and Loan. In terms of making small, short-term loans, she said, ‘We’re up 57 percent in the last six months, but what people don’t realize, the retail side of the business … is gone. People aren’t buying anything.’”

“While the business has many regular customers, it is also seeing more first-time customers, who often display a mixture of trepidation, fear, shame and sadness. Hoag said she’s had customers begin to cry in her shop.”

“The story’s much the same at Cassidy’s Jewelry & Loan in downtown Stockton, where Tim Cassidy recently showed a visitor a few of 64 drawers overflowing with envelopes containing jewelry on pawn. ‘The biggest reasons we used to make loans was PG&E,’ he said, noting that being disconnected and then hit by the utility’s heavy penalty and reconnection fees far exceed the cost of a pawnbroker’s loan. ‘The biggest reason we’re making loans now is gas.’”

“One day last week, while there was an ongoing string of customers visiting the pawnshop that faces south onto Clarane Avenue, no one stopped by the jewelry shop that fronts on Pacific Avenue. ‘Last year, Christmas was off. This year, I don’t know if there will even be a Christmas,’ Hoag fretted.”

The LA Daily News. “When her children were little, Tina Wisner used to read them the book about the Grinch who stole Christmas, but she never thought she would one day be living out the story. In Wisner’s real-life account, the Grinch is corporate. ‘We are canceling Christmas. We have no choice,’ said Wisner, who this week was laid off from her position as product manager at American International Group’s insurance division in Woodland Hills. ‘We joked about it a few weeks ago. But now it’s serious. It’s not figurative. It’s literal.’”

“The Wisners have annually hosted a big Christmas party for family and friends at their comfortable brick home that spills out to a spacious patio and pool. That’s canceled.”

“It has become a difficult time for her as she looks for a high-paying executive job for the first time in almost a decade and knows the nest egg is almost gone. ‘We used our savings for two years - a lot of our savings,’ she said. ‘We actually depleted our savings. We used some of our investment money. I borrowed from my retirement fund, and I’m still paying that.’”

The County Sun. “Tightened credit markets, layoffs and a meltdown in the nation’s housing and financial sectors have created a lot of uncertainty for consumers. But one thing’s certain - this holiday shopping season is not going to be pretty for retailers.”

“Belen Macias, staffing manager for CORESTAFF Services in West Covina, said her office has been getting fewer calls this year from companies seeking temporary workers. ‘The clothes are on the racks but people are not buying,’ she said. ‘I asked a gal who works at the mall what she was forecasting for Christmas and she said it would be very slow. People will be shopping the discount racks. I’ve been doing this for 14 years and this … is the worst I’ve ever seen.’”

The Manteca Bulletin. “It’s 32 days until Thanksgiving. But Gail Teunissen and the rest of the Turkeys R Us volunteers have just 20 days to raise $18,725 to make sure 1,250 struggling families in Manteca, Ripon and Lathrop have at least a turkey for the main course. They’ve collected just $90 so far.”

“Unlike in the past 10 years when the community has come through with $37,500 each holiday season to cover the main course for needy families for both Thanksgiving and Christmas this year is offering a more daunting challenge. In previous years, construction workers often would donate $100 a pop to the effort. This year, some of those previous donors are now struggling to make ends meet.”

“‘We’re not too worried,’ Teunissen said. ‘It’s still kind of early.’”

The Naples News reports from Florida. “In Collier County, it’s the more affordable communities that have been hurt the most. From Jan. 1 to Oct. 8, the county had 1,500 final judgments for mortgage foreclosures on single-family homes, with a total mortgage balance of more than $522 million, according to a report. Construction workers and real estate agents have been hard hit in Southwest Florida. They are among the hundreds who have lost their homes this year in Golden Gate and Golden Gate Estates. Tony Perez, a real estate agent in Naples, is working with a seller in Golden Gate Estates who has seen his work dry up with a pool company and has fallen behind on his mortgage payments. With creative financing, many buyers put no money down and got into homes they couldn’t really afford, Perez said.”

“‘If you lose your job and you have 100 percent financing on your house, your chances of staying in the house are pretty slim,’ said Rick Parlante of the Parlante Group with Coldwell Banker Residential Real Estate in Southwest Florida. ‘They are walking away from it. That is what is happening.’”

“Investors in Golden Gate and Golden Gate Estates have also been hurt by plummeting values and sluggish sales. They are abandoning mortgages they can’t or don’t want to pay. ‘A lot of people got caught up in this. A lot of good Realtors got caught up in this,’ Parlante said.”

“There haven’t been any judgments this year in such wealthy communities as Port Royal or Aqualane Shores, where there are multimillion-dollar mansions, said Naples real estate expert Ross McIntosh. If the economy doesn’t improve soon, however, more expensive homes could fall into foreclosure.”

“‘People aren’t prepared to go five years without any income, whether they make $50,000 or $500,000 a year. When the spigot gets shut off, sooner or later you lose your house,’ McIntosh said.”

“Many Western Europeans are beginning to feel the effects of their own real estate and lending problems, said Steve Barker, a local broker who focuses on buyers from the U.K. He said his British clients have been hit especially hard. ‘They have as big of a mortgage crisis as we do,’ Barker said. ‘That makes it very difficult to look across the ocean to buy a home.’”

“In the past 12 months or so, Barker said, his clients have seen their down-payments rise to as high as 50 percent, up from 25 percent, of a home’s value. The difficulty in securing loans means that real-estate attorney Raymond Bowie has seen his Naples law firm hit hard. ‘Not even a call,’ Bowie said of his international business in the past month. ‘The financing market for foreign nationals has pretty much dried up.’”

The News Press. “The Lee County court system is amping up its processing of foreclosures - good news for neighbors of some abandoned homes but carrying with it an added risk of driving down prices in an already declining market. The system has a backlog of 29,000 cases, the result of about 2,400 foreclosures filed per month.”

“The real urgency in speeding things up is that many of the homes being foreclosed on in Lee County are decaying as vandals, mold and heat take their toll, county Clerk of Court Charlie Green said. ‘How long do you want to stretch this agony out?’ he said. ‘You don’t want those properties out there decaying.’”

“Others are less enthusiastic. ‘I would much rather just stay the course,” said Elmer Tabor, owner of Wonderland Realty in Cape Coral. ‘If all of a sudden we get a huge supply that starts coming out of the court system, if anything that’s going to drop (prices) further.’”

“With about 15,000 houses already on the market, a surge in supply could drive down prices and make it less attractive for even solvent home owners to continue paying their mortgages, he said. The median price of an existing single-family home reached a peak of $322,300 in December 2005 at the height of the housing boom but had fallen 56 percent to $141,400 in September, according to the Florida Association of Realtors.”

“One property owner in a foreclosure-plagued condominium said he’d like to see things speeded up so lenders will take back the homes they’re foreclosing on and start taking care of them. Bill Davis has a second home in the Renaissance condominium in Fort Myers. Lenders have filed foreclosure actions on 20 of the project’s 112 units in the past two years and 11 are pending, according to clerk of court records.”

“As a result, Davis said, fewer of the owners of Renaissance’s 112 units are contributing to the complex’s upkeep and some have fallen into disrepair. ‘We’ve got a few that are pretty bad’ with serious mold problems but nobody’s taking responsibility for them, he said.”

“Property owners are protesting the value of more than 6,700 parcels in Lee County, down about 21 percent from last year’s record. Debra Swain invested in a $48,000 foreclosed San Carlos Park property this year, but the county valued it at $161,540. ‘That is a little far-fetched in my mind,’ said Swain, who thinks a value less than $100,000 is more reasonable, based on her research.”

“Pat Mitchell moved into her home in Harlem Heights in 1986. This year the county appraised the property at $189,000, down about $6,000 from last year. ‘I say it should come down at least $30,000 or $40,000,’ Mitchell said. ‘These taxes are killing me,’ said Mitchell, who will pay about $1,300 this year. Ten years ago she paid $292.”

From Reuters. “At the height of Miami’s condo construction boom, a stretch of South Dixie Highway south of the city was the place to be for a painter or drywaller looking for work or a contractor looking for workers. But those days are long gone. Subcontractors like Alex Soto, a flooring and carpentry specialist who once worked on fancy condo towers in the Brickell banking district and on the Miami River, are scrambling for a few days work each month.”

“Where he once pulled down $2,000 to $3,000 a week, Soto said he is lucky to make $1,500 a month and might get one week of work. ‘The other weeks I am looking for work,’ he said. ‘The situation is desperate.’”

“The market is so choked with hungry workers that a bathroom installation for which Soto once charged $1,500 to $2,000 now brings $300. ‘People are working for nothing. Just to survive.’”

The Sun Sentinel. “Home and condo buyers are scooping up South Florida bargains, priced low to sell by desperate homeowners and banks overwhelmed with foreclosure properties. Agent Sharon Castrillon-Harrington said she was recently showing a Canadian buyer homes in South Florida for $280,000 to $325,000. It was difficult to compete with bank foreclosures in the neighborhood, priced around $130,000. ‘They’re just putting them on the market at the lowest price possible and dumping them,’ she said.”

“Condominium sales also saw a marked increase. Broward sales were up 38 percent in September, to 549 from 397 a year ago. The median price fell 26 percent, from $174,600 to $129,600. Palm Beach County’s existing-condo sales were up 35 percent for the month, to 487 from 360. Median condo prices fell 22 percent from $180,000 to $139,800.”

“Broward County had 38,319 homes and condos on the market in September, down 5 percent from 40,297 last September, according to the Keyes Co. Palm Beach County had 32,334 properties for sale in September, down 12 percent from 36,785 a year ago. ‘The system cannot recover before foreclosure activity works its way through the system,’ said David Dabby, a housing consultant in Coral Gables. ‘It’s just the beginning stage.’”

From Florida Today. “Speculators or ‘flippers’ unable to keep up maintenance fees and mortgages and buyers given loans they couldn’t afford have spiked the number of condominium foreclosures in Brevard County. As a result, associations have to make up the shortfall in monthly assessment fees from the remaining members or forgo some maintenance and repairs.”

“‘One of the misconceptions is that it’s a carefree, maintenance-free living,’ said Gary Poliakoff, an expert whose column appears in FLORIDA TODAY. ‘When other owners are not able to meet their obligations, the ones who are paying have to meet the shortfall.’”

“Under Florida statute, a bank that acquires a property through a foreclosure is liable for regular and periodic assessments that became due during the six months before the mortgage acquisition or 1 percent of the original mortgage, whichever is less. ‘What we’re running into now is the banks are saying we’re not going to pay anything,’ said Bill White, chairman of Community Association Institute’s Florida Legislative Alliance.”

The Orlando Sentinel. “Statewide, more than 21,000 jobs were lost in July from the previous month. In mid-August, Linda Nagle, executive director of the Home Builders Association of Lake County, said it was hard to find any homes being built in Lake County. ‘There is virtually nothing,’ she said.”

“Don Magruder, general manager of Ro-Mac Lumber & Supply Inc. in Leesburg…(added)…that the subprime mortgage meltdown has contributed to the slowdown. ‘The root cause of this is that housing has gotten so unaffordable that people had to go to exotic mortgages,’ Magruder said. ‘So now you have a desperate situation where they can’t pay back the loans.’”

The Pensacola News Journal. “There is growing tension between hotel and motel owners and condominium associations. As consumer dollars shrink, and the number of rooms available for nightly rental grows, condos and hotels are going head-to-head, forcing down nightly rental rates in the process. ‘I’m frustrated because from the hotels’ standpoint, condos are soaking up a lot of our business,’ said Beverly McCay, manager of Holiday Inn Express on Pensacola Beach.”

“At the heart of the matter, says McCay, is the decision by several large beach condos starting to offer owners’ rooms on a nightly basis, rather than weekly or longer. While hotel owners are complaining, condo rental agents are losing business to the fast-growing Web site, Vacation Rentals by Owner. On that site are hundreds of local condos available for rent at highly negotiable prices.”

“‘VRBO is really hurting the rental agencies out there,’ McCay said.”

The Herald Tribune. “Some Realtors have advised would-be home sellers that if you don’t have to sell your residence now, don’t try. Helen Sosso is taking a different approach. The owner of Prudential Palms Realty, a long-time observer of the Sarasota housing market, has picked now to put her highly customized, 6,500- square-foot Bird Key home on the market for $6.3 million. Given the current high inventory of homes and the dismal national economy, why would she do that? What does this woman know that you don’t?”

“Sosso isn’t naïve about residential competition in trying to sell her Mediterranean-style, two-story home, so she’s adhered to a proven strategy that she recommends to others seeking a sale with a satisfying financial result. ‘Have your home independently appraised and then price your house under the appraised value,’ she advised.”

The St Petersburg Times. “After an 8-year run as one of the region’s best-regarded builders, Tripp Trademark Homes is calling it quits. Company founder Doug Tripp, a former Pulte Homes president who branched out on his own in 2000, said he can no longer afford to sell houses at a loss.”

“‘We’re going to walk away from this with our reputation intact,’ said Tripp, who has spent the past month clearing debts with banks and contractors. ‘There isn’t a builder out there that’s making a profit.’”

“Tripp said this is the worst housing slump in his 32 years in the business. Sales tanked in previous real estate recessions, but he’s never seen housing values plunge 30 percent. Blame falls mostly on the investors who created ‘false demand’ in 2004 and 2005, he said.”

“Tripp admits he made a mint in the building boom and points to a group photo on his conference room wall. There, he stands with his sister, wife, brother, nephew and mother-in-law: All were employees. ‘It’s really killing me. I’ve got to throw out my ‘For Sale’ signs,’ he said. ‘What do I need them for?’”

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