The Housing Bubble

The Des Moines Register reports from Iowa. “Iowa’s largest home builder, Regency Cos. of Des Moines, has laid off the entire staff of its home building business and left behind 300 homes that lenders and buyers will now have to sell or finish. Jamie Myers, president of Regency, said it became impossible for the company to continue after a lending agreement with Wells Fargo & Co. ended in December without a renewal. ‘We don’t have the cash flow to pay them,’ he said of employees.”

“Regency now has about 300 homes in its inventory. Some are finished and awaiting sale, while others are still under construction. The suddenness of the decision was driven home by a draft of a press release that said home buyers and contractors are likely to have ‘more questions than there are answers at this point.’”

“Myers said lenders, who typically financed a portion of the homes the company was building, ‘are not wanting to take any more risk.’ Without their support, the company couldn’t continue to build.”

The Beacon News from Illinois. “As of March 2008, Aurora had an average 7.75-month supply of homes on the market throughout the city’s four-county area. In comparison, the supply of inventory is 10.57 months in Bolingbrook, 10.27 months in Plainfield and 8.63 months in Wheaton.”

“The average supply for the Chicagoland area’s 190 communities is about 11 months as of March, according to Chip Wagner of Headrick-Wagner Consulting Group.”

“Wagner worries that smaller communities like Oswego and Yorkville will struggle with sales of new home construction as those towns welcomed growth spurts. Wagner, who appraises homes throughout Chicagoland, said he is noticing more homeowners in Oswego dropping prices to compete with new construction from builders.”

“He worked with a client that was selling a home for $325,000, the lowest price in the subdivision. The builder of an adjacent subdivision has been offering homes valued at $425,000, but offered $150,000 in options.”

“And because the Fox Valley area is still a highly transient area, Wagner says competition will continue among resale homes and new construction. ‘Some builders are reducing homes by 50 percent. It’s a tough scenario,’ he said.”

“Billy Atchison of Yorkville, who has had his house on the market for a month, said it’s a price range that is attracting many buyers. His four-bedroom home at $258,000 has drawn serious interest from about three couples, he said.”

“‘I would be worried if I had a $500,000 home because those houses right now are a whole lot harder to sell than my price range,’ Atchison said.”

The Courier News from Illinois. “In the Fox Valley is that prices are pretty much holding their own, even though it is taking much longer to sell them. In Elgin, for example, average home sales prices have inched up 1.31 percent over the last two years, but it is taking 13 months, on average, to sell your home — almost three times as long as it took in 2006.”

“Sales prices in Kane County over the past 12 months have dropped a little more than 2 percent, said Peter Swaufield, associate co-executive of the Realtor Association of the Fox Valley. But a majority of that is due to ‘people who have had their house on the market for a while and had to drop their selling price.’”

“How long a home stays on the market often depends on its perceived value, Swaufield said. ‘Two years is not abnormal for a million-dollar home,’ he said.”

“He acknowledged that it is taking longer to sell a home these days compared to the hot real estate market prior to 2006. ‘At the peak of the housing boom, the average market time was 40 days. Now, 120 days is a typical timeline,’ depending on price point, Swaufield said.”

“Because there are so many homes on the market, those that are not in their prime…often are passed up for ‘that perfect doll house. And there are a lot more perfect doll houses these days,’ he said.”

“Realtor Judi Falbisaner of Re/Max of Northern Illinois, a 25-year veteran of the industry, describes the Elgin area market as the worst she’s ever seen.”

“Falbisaner said sellers are no longer in the driver’s seat. ‘I don’t think the market is going to change at all until sellers are willing to accept the fact that their homes are (not going to sell) at their perceived value,’ she said. ‘Right now, they want top dollar for their house — and buyers are not paying it.’”

“Asked is she saw a turnaround anytime soon, Falbisaner said, ‘No. How do you like that for optimism?’”

“Swaufield agrees — to a point. ‘Real estate is a cyclical industry. It will always change — and not always up,’ he said.”

The Toledo Blade from Ohio. “Opinions on what downtown Toledo needs have been as bountiful through the years as vacant storefronts are today. While the number of people living downtown has grown in the past decade, the real estate market has not taken off in the ways that some urban pioneers anticipated.”

“Downtown restaurants and shops are closing, condominiums remain unsold, and plans have slowed for new housing units. In the condo market, Bartley Lofts at 745 Washington St., has sold only 31 of its 52 units.”

“Downtown investors once held hopes for the 2002 opening of Fifth Third Field, home of the Triple-A Mud Hens. There was talk of how the new ballpark would help lure a ‘critical mass’ of people whose dollars would then support a host of new amenities such as cafes and restaurants. Those new businesses, the theory goes, in turn would attract more people to set up residence downtown.”

“Luke Welch, 22, said that three years ago he and a roommate moved to a market-rate apartment at New Cheney Flats apartments in the UpTown area. A year later, they moved out.”

“We said, ‘Downtown - that sounds exciting. There should be coffee shops, and there are art galleries, and we should be right where the action is,’ Mr. Welch recalled. ‘And as soon as we moved in, we realized there pretty much was no downtown action. We didn’t have any problems or break-ins, but it was just super boring; there was just more to do in the suburbs.’”

“He added: ‘Once we moved downtown, we actually started driving more.’”

“For others, downtown offers an amenity seldom found in the suburbs: DUI-free nightlife. ‘It’s like, ‘Oh man, I can just walk to the bar,’ said Ryan Agee, property manager for Museum Place apartments.”

The Detroit News from Michigan. “Carl Grewe has tried to sell his Richmond childhood home for almost two years. Despite monthly open houses, the 1900s-era home originally listed at $279,000 is now priced at $149,000, and he’s still getting nary a nibble.”

“‘The market is just not there,’ said Grewe. ‘We’re going to stay where we’re at. It’s a steal at that price.’”

“Real estate agents hope to sell Grewe’s and nearly 2,100 other Metro Detroit homes by hosting an open house Sunday being billed as the biggest event of its kind nationwide. Organizers of the Big Open House expect hundreds of prospective home buyers to tour homes and jumpstart the regional housing market, devastated by the foreclosure crisis.”

“Lori Polzin put up her recently renovated 744-square-foot ranch in Rochester Hills for sale in February after she and her husband found a new home in Armada set to close next week. They’ve already dropped the asking price $10,000 to $119,000.”

“‘There’s so many foreclosed homes right now. We’re trying to compete,’ she said.”

The Appleton Post Crescent from Wisconsin. “Anyone seeking local proof of the national foreclosure crisis can find it papering the lobby at the Outagamie County Justice Center. The public notices of sheriff’s foreclosure sales posted there numbered 76 on Friday. That’s three more than at the start of the week.”

“The trio of glass-enclosed bulletin boards that have been put up expressly for foreclosure postings could not contain them all, so 22 packets of legal paperwork were taped to the wall.”

“If anyone could have foreseen the mortgage meltdown, it might have been Jeff Daniel of Appleton. Daniel, a homebuyer and rehabilitator since 1971, faces four separate foreclosure actions — one involving his heart-of-the-city home and another that claimed a duplex he purchased in 1973.”

“‘I debt-serviced it until there was nothing left,’ he said of the duplex. ‘Now, they have my money and the property.’”

“Each of the foreclosures grew from adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) he obtained on separate properties between 2003 and 2006. Last spring, the interest rates on each of the loans reset, causing the minimum monthly payments to soar.”

“The monthly payments on his Appleton residence rose from $601 to $849. The mortgage was sold from one lender to another, then to a third company along the way. ‘The people who did the mortgage filed for bankruptcy,’ Daniel said.”

“More than half of the loan originators in Wisconsin left the business during 2007, their number dropping from about 15,000 to fewer than 7,000, said Caty Patton, manager of the Wisconsin Association of Mortgage Brokers.”

“Daniel referred to a real estate trade group’s estimate that about 1,100 Fox Valley homes are in some state of foreclosure right now. ‘These are people who had good credit and they took pride in that, and they all got hooked,’ he said.”

“Fox Valley Home Buyers owner Jim Couch, who began buying, fixing and reselling repossessed homes about a decade ago, said he has noticed few other third-party bidders at the sheriff’s sales in Outagamie County since the year began.”

“‘A lot of the other people went broke,’ Couch said. ‘Or else they got out of the business when the (real estate) market went bad.’”

“That happened more than a year ago, Couch said, admitting he didn’t recognize the signs at first. Couch noted both of one recent day’s opening bids were well below their respective bank debts — about $30,000 less in one case. Still, nobody was willing to buy them.”

“Andy Lewis, a UW-Extension analyst, said his office began studying state court records of foreclosure cases in Wisconsin last year, after learning no other state agency was doing so. Lewis said the four-county foreclosure case filings…total of 473 was about double the volume five years earlier and about six times that of the same period a decade ago.”

“Lewis said the above-state- average Fox Cities foreclosure rates probably reflect on its above-average rate of growth during the building boom.”

“‘When you were in markets like the Fox Cities or Dane County where the property values were going up 10 or 15 percent a year, the prices of those mortgages probably didn’t seem out of line,’ he said.”

“The mortgage attached to Daniel’s residence was $59,000 at its start. The debt grew to more than $100,000 while he made the scheduled monthly payments, he said. ‘Now I’m 58, and I’m having to start all over again,’ he said, adding that he doesn’t know if he will lose his present home or not.”

“For Daniel, the cost of the mortgage he took out on his residence wasn’t realized until it was already too late. A handmade for-sale sign sprouts from his home’s lawn, advertising his willingness to cut his losses. ‘No money down,’ the sign said.”