The Housing Bubble

The Sublette Examiner reports from Wyoming. “Sublette County has not only avoided the housing-market crash, it has remained protected from global economic instability. Jeff Patterson, 1st Bank president, pointed out there are no troubled banks in Wyoming, ‘particularly in our area,’and any savings that fall under the FDIC are guaranteed should a bank fail. On the bigger economic picture, Patterson sees the nation’s economic stability in terms of the government’s commitment to the system.”

“‘You know that the government is standing behind (the economy),’ he said. ‘And your faith in the financial system should be as strong as your faith in the government.’”

The Vail Daily on Wyoming. “A study by a California-based firm found that the median home price in Teton County had dropped 9 percent in the last year. But David Viehman, a local appraiser and real estate agent who has studied the market for number of years, says the Californians crunched the numbers in ways that don’t necessarily make sense.”

“As Viehman crunches the numbers, prices for single-family homes have actually increased in the last year by 2 percent. However, he discounts condos, townhouses and fractional ownerships — which may have been included in the tabulation of a 9 percent decline.”

“What clearly is happening, he says, is that locals continue to escalate their prices as if a boom were still occurring. As a consequence, lots of properties are on the market. ‘Locals can’t get over the fact that their property is not worth more than it was last year,’ Viehman told the Jackson Hole News&Guide. ‘They won’t come off their price.’”

The Flathead Beacon from Montana. “There are factors contributing to the lending climate in the Flathead that took effect long before the volatility of the last few weeks. The market for ‘jumbo loans,’ mortgages for more than $417,000, ‘disappeared sometime last spring,’ according to Bob Schneider, commercial market president for Northwest Montana branches of First Interstate Bank. While these loans aren’t widespread in the Flathead, they are often necessary when the buyer of a multi-million dollar home wants to finance part of the sale. But the housing market collapse in California, Arizona and Nevada has made secondary market financing for these loans hard to find everywhere.”

“‘We have to keep it in-house to satisfy that borrower,’Schneider said. ‘We don’t want to take the rate risk with a whole bunch of those loans.’”

“The slowdown in residential and commercial construction in the Flathead, which has set in over the last year, has few investors interested in financing such ventures. ‘Would we be looking at new subdivisions? No. Looking to finance a spec house? No,’ Schneider said. ‘That type of lending, I think, is being slowed down all over the valley.’”

The Idaho Mountain Express. “The housing and financial industry crunch has left another casualty, this time in Idaho’s Blaine County where a developer has suspended a planned 421-unit project. Kevin Adams, a Tennessee developer who is behind the so-called Sweetwater Community in Hailey, says ‘No one is doing anything out there - it doesn’t matter what the square footage price is.’”

“So far, only 49 town home units have been completed. None of the units has sold.”

The Seattle Times from Washington. “The Seattle-area housing market, once touted as bulletproof against the forces that were pulling down other markets across the country, is now stressing out sellers. Sellers are accepting terms they might have scoffed at before, such as contingent offers and lease-purchase deals.”

“The first offer Jason Stanifer got on his Factoria town house was in April — six months after he put it on the market and one month after he stopped paying his mortgage, which started the foreclosure clock ticking. While waiting for the deal to close, he took the town house off the market for more than a month. But that buyer backed out. In July, he got another offer and took the property off for two months. Again, the deal cratered, this time because of financing — one day before the deal was to close.”

“Stanifer bought the three-bedroom home four years ago and took out a second loan on it, investing the money in his mortgage-brokerage business. As his business dropped off dramatically in summer 2007, he did the math. With one of the loans, an adjustable-rate mortgage, about to increase by $1,000 a month, he realized he no longer could make the monthly payments, which totaled $4,000.”

“So he put the home on the market in October 2007 for $479,000, confident it would sell. But no offers came. When he received his first late-payment notice in March, ‘I was on my knees over a trash can’ getting sick.”

“He thought the town house would show better vacant, so he moved his family to a rental in May. By the time the third offer came along, he had dropped the price about $115,000 from the original listing.”

The Stranger on Washington. “Behind an overgrown laurel hedge, a house perches over Lake Union on the north slope of Capitol Hill. Andrew (not his real name) moved in two years ago, splitting the $2,200 monthly rent with three housemates. Although the relationship between the four tenants and their landlord devolved over time, that conflict, combined with the foreclosure crisis, produced an unexpected windfall: free housing.”

“The tenants found a notice from U.S. Bank taped to their front door. It said the landlord was $15,000 behind on his mortgage payments and that the bank would auction the house off in April. April came and went. ‘No one called us, no one said rent was late, and no one said that if we don’t pay rent we will be evicted,’ Andrew says. The residents…continued to pay utilities in their own names. But they didn’t pay any rent.”

“In early September, the bank posted another note on the door. This time, it offered the residents a deal: If they moved out within a week, they’d get $1,500 to divide among them. Knowing eviction could take months, the tenants let the week run out. They’re currently in their tenth month of rent-free living. ‘Neither the owner nor the bank has told us we need to leave the premises at all,’ Andrew says. ‘We are renters turned squatters.’”

“This August, home foreclosures in King County were up 60 percent over the previous year, according to RealtyTrac. Tammy Chan, a company spokeswoman, says banks repossessed 272 properties in King County via foreclosure that month; as of August, more than 1,300 repossessed homes were sitting in inventory, unsold.”

The Lake Oswego Review from Oregon. “The bankruptcy of Lake Oswego-based Renaissance Custom Homes is already squeezing Metro-area companies. Kim Whitman, VP of sales and marketing at Renaissance, said the company has been particularly hard hit by failed sales on 95 homes. Renaissance builds high-end housing in the $350,000 to $1 million price range.”

“Buyer inability to sell existing homes, however, left the company holding 95 custom-built homes in 2007. Those homes were nearly a third of the 318 built that year by Renaissance. Gary White at White Wykoff and Company said his advertising agency is owed $97,600 by Renaissance Homes. With uncharted waters ahead, he said it’s difficult to know what businesses tied to homebuilding should expect.”

“‘I’ve been in the business for 40 years and I have seen the spikes before and usually, like during the 70s and into the 80s, interest rates would spike and home sales would drop off,’ said White. ‘It’s always been a cyclical business. But nothing like this. This is just unbelievable.’”

The Oregonian. “In 2005, during the building boom, Bend added more than 2,000 new single-family homes. So far this year, the city of Bend has processed just 234 permits for single-family homes. Locals say the market dropped almost overnight.”

“‘People at first believed we were immune to the slowdown. By mid-June 2006, things stopped selling, but they didn’t stop building,’ said Sharon Miller, executive director for Neighbor Impact, a community action agency providing food, energy and housing assistance in Deschutes, Jefferson and Crook counties.”

“”Right now we’re seeing families and individuals who never thought they’d be here,’ said Angie Albiar, a local Human Services manager. The newcomers include builders, small-business owners, massage therapists, hairstylists — and many are ashamed to be there, Albiar said.”

“On Thursday, they included a middle-age blonde who works in the real estate industry. A deal she’d been waiting for had fallen through, and because she works on commission, that means she hasn’t had a paycheck since July 15. ‘I’ve been living off my savings and credit cards,’ she told Chris Perris, a food stamp intake worker. Now, the woman said, she’s two months behind on a $4,100 mortgage payment — on a property that would sell for less than she owes.”

“Later that day, Perris saw a builder and his wife. He’s still owed for past jobs. Meanwhile, he said, the flow of new houses has dried up. The couple just received a foreclosure notice from their bank because they’re two months behind on their $3,000 monthly mortgage.”

“‘We’ve come to the point where we can’t pay that mortgage anymore,’ the wife told Perris.”

The Bend Bulletin from Oregon. “With three months left in the year, Deschutes County is on pace to nearly triple the number of notices of default filed in 2007. The city of Bend’s Quarterly Financial Outlook released Monday reported 130 foreclosed homes for sale in the county in August, with a total of 139 foreclosed homes sold in the county since the start of the year.”

“RealtyTrac listed 390 bank-owned properties for sale in Deschutes County as of Wednesday.”

“It remains to be seen if the federal government’s mortgage rescue program, passed with much fanfare in July, and the current market bailout bill working its way through Congress will cushion the economic blow to Main Street. For Tumalo resident Robert Austin, a homebuilder with 39 years in the trade, it’s too little, too late. On Tuesday, a notice of default was filed against a 20-acre Tumalo property he built a home on two years ago. He and his wife intended to move into the house. But first, Austin had to sell his existing property, on a neighboring 20 acres.”

“After more than two years on the market, nobody has bought it, and Austin could no longer keep up payments on the two homes. ‘We did everything we could do,’ he said. ‘We made payments as long as we could and then couldn’t make payments anymore. Times have been real (bad).’”

“Austin has two other homes he built for sale. If neither sells, he’s likely headed for bankruptcy, he said. ‘I’ve built for 39 years and I’ve never been in a default position, and to be in this position is frankly just unbelievable to us,’ Austin said.”

“With so much foreclosure activity, it’s bound to affect property values for homeowners current on their mortgages, said Bend real estate appraiser Scott Buckles. When sales of distressed homes become predominant in a neighborhood, an appraiser has to take those values into account, he said. ‘If you think your house is worth $500,000, but four similar houses sell for $350,000 in a foreclosure process, then those become the predominant value indicator in the neighborhood, so it’s going to bring home values down,’ Buckles said.”

“He said he used to do upwards of 600 appraisals a year. Now, he’s down to eight or 10 a month, he said, and those are coming from the somewhat steady stream of divorces and deaths. Were it not for those, he said he’d have to fold up shop.”

“‘What’s happened, from the top of Awbrey Butte to the double-wides in Plainview, these people who bought overvalued property then took out a (home equity) line of credit then saw their values drop 20 to 25 percent and they are upside down, and no one is going to refinance that because they don’t have enough equity,’ Buckles said. ‘I don’t think the refinancing boom is coming back, even if rates drop to 3 percent, because no one has equity. It’s really distressing … I’m looking for something else to do.’”