The Housing Bubble

The Capital Times reports from Wisconsin. “It was billed as a $100 million ‘urban village,’ a project to energize the entire east side. Union Corners promised to transform the site of a contaminated battery factory three miles from the Capitol into a mix of condominiums, offices and retail shops. But today the 15-acre site is a tangle of empty lots, broken concrete and piles of gravel along one of the city’s busiest corridors.”

“With the new housing market here at a virtual standstill, Union Corners remains on hold. ‘Things have absolutely come to a halt,’ says John DeWitt, CEO of DeWitt Real Estate Development in Madison. ‘The question is, how long can you keep sitting on this stuff? I guess the answer is until you go broke.’”

“Already, developers have put the brakes on condo projects at the Hilldale Shopping Center and near Wingra Park on Monroe Street. Phase II of Metropolitan Place downtown is unfinished and in receivership. The backlog of new and existing homes on the market remains high.”

“Bill Jackson, VP of business development at Engineered Construction, Inc. in Verona, says the slowdown is affecting everyone. ‘Nobody really wants to talk much about it, but a lot of guys are really struggling,’ he says.”

“Local real estate attorney Harvey Temkin (says) that the concept of buying a house, living in it and building up equity remains sound. The problem, he maintains, is that credit markets roared out of control and nobody stepped in to limit the damage.”

“‘This is a crisis created by Wall Street,’ he says. ‘I mean, getting calls at home at 7:30 p.m. from people trying to sell you a credit card or home equity loan, that’s where the problem is.’”

“Property taxes alone on the four parcels that make up Union Corners LLC amounted to nearly $95,000 last year, according to city real estate records. The owners are also facing some $320,000 in special assessments from the city for street, sewer and water improvements. And those figures don’t include the interest payments on undeveloped land valued at $4.4 million.”

“But (developer) Lance McGrath isn’t panicking yet. ‘Bottom line: It’s better to be holding vacant land than holding vacant buildings,’ he says.”

From WKBT.com in Wisconsin. “A housing market slowdown is happening in La Crosse County. It’s frustrating news for some people who expected to sell their homes months ago.”

“‘We listed it last September near the end of the month, and we’ve had it steady in the market since,’ said Kathy Baumgartner, a resident of Losey Boulevard.”

“Kathy and Gary Baumgartner’s house is still up for sale after at least ten showings, two open houses, and a $10,000 price cut in January. ‘We were real excited the first couple months but now that it’s been lingering on so long, we’re just kind of waiting and seeing what happens,’ said Baumgartner.”

“King Holley, president of the La Crosse Area Realtors Association, said he still considers the local housing market strong. However, after seven months of waiting, the Baumgartner’s may not agree.”

“‘I just know the market is bottomed out and I know that’s just the way things are gonna be now,’ said Gary Baumgartner. ‘We just got to kind of sit it out and see what happens.’”

“Also in La Crosse County, the number of foreclosures continue to rise. Between now and the end of June, there are 104 foreclosure auctions scheduled. At this time last year, there were 57 auctions scheduled.”

The Herald News from Illinois. “While Will County commonly comes in as one of the hardest-hit areas for foreclosures in the Chicago metro region, local Realtors still find room for optimism. ‘There are tons of listings,’ said Monica Decker, marketing director for real estate mogul Ron McColly. ‘The problem is people hear all these reports in the media, and they are afraid to purchase.’”

“Over the past year, home prices have slipped at least 10 percent, said Kathy Bulian, of the Closers Real Estate Specialists, which recently opened a new office in Minooka. Gone are the days when sellers can routinely price homes at prices 20 percent higher than the figure they would really take.”

“‘We just need some man-eaters to come out and buy these properties,’ she said. ‘I’m telling anyone and everyone to come out and buy these properties.’”

“‘We realized a downturn would happen,’ said Ed Prodehl, of Coldwell-Banker Honig Bell, speaking from a 12,000-square-foot corporate office in Joliet. ‘We just didn’t know when.’”

The Pioneer Local from Illinois. “Just a few years ago, it was common for Donna and Jeff Fishman to get a letter, or a knock on the door, from someone offering to buy their Northbrook home. In truth, it wasn’t their three-bedroom, 1 and 1/2 bathroom home that was getting the attention. It was the land.”

“But now the Fishmans are ready to sell. That once-frenzied rush to gobble up potential building sites throughout the North Shore has slowed to a more restrained real estate market. Their home, listed at $470,000 — a price tag perhaps 25 percent lower than what they could have commanded a couple of years ago — has been on the market since July.”

“For a long time, it’s been ‘location, location, location,’ Donna Fishman said. ‘But in this market, it isn’t about that anymore.’”

“For certain price points in specific North Shore communities, there does appear to be a glut. In Glenview, for example, about 120 properties priced between $1 million and $2 million are on the market, amounting to a more than 20 months’ supply based on the previous rate of sales. In Glencoe, 20 homes priced at $3 million or more are the market, reflecting a two-year supply.”

“Some builders, unable after a year or so to find a buyer for their homes, have actually taken those homes off the market and now have them occupied by renters, said John Houde, head of Glencoe’s community development division.”

“Between the purchase of the property, the costs in building a high-end North Shore home and then the escalating property tax bills, ‘a year or so (builders) can hold it, but then it becomes overwhelming,’ Houde said.”

“If the times are frustrating for builders or sellers wanting to maximize profit, the reverse may be true for renters. Elisabeth Hoff, her husband and toddler son lived with family in Wilmette until deciding recently to rent a sunny, second-story apartment in northwest Evanston.”

“Hoff, who also was investigating home purchases over that time, said renters have a lot of options available to them right now. A good number of apartments or even small homes are available for rent here for $1,500 a month or less, far less than the cost of purchasing an equivalent property, and some of those have sat for months without tenants, she noted.”

The Chicago Tribune from Illinois. “Mirroring national trends, Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will Counties have seen a bounce in the number of borrowers at least 60 days past due on their mortgages.”

“‘It’s a clear indication that foreclosure problems are not abating,’ said Geoff Smith, research director for Chicago-based housing researcher Woodstock Institute. He was struck by DuPage’s 60-day delinquency rate, which rose from 0.82 percent to 1.73 percent in one year.”

“‘DuPage is not an area traditionally with high levels of foreclosures, and while the raw numbers are smaller, it indicates this is a spreading issue,’ Smith said. ‘Loans 60 days delinquent in the fourth quarter can become the foreclosures of the first quarter.’”

“A handful of buyers have showed up to board the 12-seat shuttle parked at Woodfield mall amid the drizzle on a recent Saturday morning. As they take their seats, the home shoppers are handed a slick binder listing the repossessed properties they will see in the next two-and-a-half hours.”

“‘Welcome to Chicagoland’s Premier Foreclosure Tour,’ it says.”

“Local real estate broker Bill Diehl is hoping the demand for bargain homes is as strong here as it is in such places as California and Florida. ‘It’s a buyers’ market. They’ve waited a long time for it,’ said Diehl.”

“‘Everybody wants to know where the people in the house went,’ Diehl tells the folks on the bus. ‘We don’t know.’”

“Dorothy Piotrowski is looking for a low-priced property, something in the $200,000 to $250,000 range, that she can quickly rent out to earn income. ‘I have two children that I want to put through college. I figure you can’t lose with real estate,’ Piotrowski said. ‘It would be my first investment. It’s a great time to buy.’”

“Mark D’Ambrosia, owner of the house next door, has stepped into his front yard for a smoke as the potential buyers troop back to the bus. Does it bother him that his subdivision is a stop on the repossessed-home tour?”

“‘As long as it’s not me, I don’t care,’ said D’Ambrosia, who bought his house in October. ‘I have a couple young kids. All we care about is getting good neighbors in.’”

The Courier News from Illinois. “The advertisement really is a sign of the times — as is the reaction to it. Foreclosure Home Bus Tour: View foreclosures on the market in Sandwich, Somonauk, Sheridan and Plano.”

“Light lunch provided after tour.”

“To the realtors and mortgage company sponsoring this tour on Saturday and Sunday, it’s another marketing tool, a way to survive in an industry hit hard by the struggling economy. Banks need to get rid of homes. Buyers and investors are looking for the best deals. Realtors and mortgage brokers need to pay their bills.”

“Problem is, for some people the ad is a slap in the face. ‘I couldn’t believe what I was reading,’ says Amanda, an Aurora mother of two who asked that her real name not be used.”

“Amanda is speaking from her own pain. She was close to losing her home until recently when she and her husband, who was laid off from his construction job six months ago, were able to work with the bank and pull it out of foreclosure.”

“‘Imagine some luxury tour bus pulling up and letting people gawk at the suffering of other people . . . and then serve lunch afterward like it’s a party,’ she said.”

The Beacon News from Illinois. “Yvette Wilkinson is trying to put a positive spin on the high number of foreclosures in this area. Wilkinson, real estate agent in Naperville, has scheduled a foreclosure bus tour, among the first in the region, for southern DuPage and northern Will counties.”

“The tour is designed to educate participants on short sales, pre-foreclosures and bank owned properties. It will include tips from a home inspector, mortgage broker, real estate attorney, contractor and appraiser. ‘That (education) is really what people are paying for,’ Wilkinson said. ‘They’re not just paying to ride around and look at houses.’”

“Wilkinson said most people whose homes have been foreclosed lost their jobs, were hit with catastrophic medical bills or had adjustable rate mortgages that adjusted beyond their budgets.”

“‘Bad things happen to good people,’ she said. ‘But we can’t do anything about that. That’s the past.’”

“What real estate agents can do is get some of the foreclosed properties sold so the banks have more money to loan out and the inventory of homes is decreased, she explained. ‘Until we get the inventory down on the market, there won’t be a lot of other people who will be able to own homes,’ she said. ‘We have to get the inventory down to get the market straightened out.’”

The Pioneer Press from Minnesota. “More than 16,400 for-sale listings have expired or been canceled in the Twin Cities during the first four months of this year as sellers face a dearth of buyers and buyers have a near-record number of houses on the market to choose from. That’s some 700 more listings than in the same period a year ago and nearly double the total for the first four months of 2005.”

“Could it be a nascent signal of a change in sentiment or bottoming out of a dismal market? Or it could be more churn.”

“There also are other reasons to pull. One of the recently expired Ramsey County listing is a Mounds View home headed to another mass foreclosure auction at the end of May. The owner of a house just blocks from White Bear Lake, facing foreclosure, recently canceled her listing after a year on the market because the clock was running out and she decided to deed the house over to the lender.”

“Some frustrated sellers just switch agents to breathe new life into their listing. Agent Kathleen Doucette said one of her clients in Vadnais Heights just canceled because they didn’t want to take her suggestion to lower the price below $300,000.”

“‘We see it a lot,’ said Doucette. ‘They’re frustrated. They see their house as better than it is.’”

“Some sellers, under water in mortgages costing more than their houses are worth, wind up taking their homes off the market because they simply can’t afford to drop the price.”

The Star Tribune from Minnesota. “The subprime mortgage fallout continues. Banks have tightened lending on even credit-worthy customers. Foreclosures are at record levels.”

“Critics blame regulators who appeared more concerned about prolonging the housing boom in 2005-2006 than they were about the bad underwriting practices that had infected the mortgage industry.”

“‘We saw evidence of this coming in 2005,’ said Andy Winton, chairman of the banking and finance department at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management. ‘Becoming vigilant when the boom becomes the bust isn’t enough.’”

“Winton and others charge that the Fed and the Securities and Exchange Commission ignored anecdotal evidence that parts of the housing market were rife with fraud.”

“‘The Fed lost sight of its role to take the punch bowl away from the party,’ Winton said last week at a forum. ‘You had newspaper articles suggesting problems. I’m not going to say I knew the housing bubble would pop in 2007, but I knew when prices turned down, some of these no-down-payment and no-documentation loans would be in trouble.’”

“Glenn Wilson, the Minnesota commerce commissioner, said the debt-rating agencies are rightfully being criticized for giving investment-grade standings to some subprime credit because they were using historical underwriting standards that did not properly take these nontraditional loans into account.”

“‘There was no underwriting, and Wall Street was buying that trash,’ Wilson said in an interview. ‘I was in the mortgage industry for 30 years and never have I seen no underwriting. You always verified Social Security numbers, income tax filings, double-check appraisals, preapprove the borrower. … None of that was being done in some cases.’”

“The state started or joined investigations that have led to prosecutions of bad brokers. But by then the damage was done.”

“Gary Stern, president of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank, told the Caux Round Table forum that the Fed ‘would not claim perfection in the way we’ve done our job.’ He added that as much as 80 percent of subprime mortgages are performing. He said a few articles were not conclusive evidence in 2005 about the subprime threat to the financial system.”

“Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said in late 2005: ‘In the event of a widespread cooling in house prices, these borrowers, and the institutions that service them, could be exposed to significant losses,’ according to the Baltimore Sun.”

“But Greenspan & Co. did too little to highlight unsavory lending practices, even though Congress empowered it years ago to write rules banning ‘unfair and deceptive practices’ across a wide variety of mortgage lenders, according to the Consumer Federation of America.”