The Housing Bubble

The News Journal reports from Delaware. “For Delaware in particular, key industries are sensitive to national economic conditions. That point has been hammered home in recent weeks with employers dumping bad news on workers. ‘”If you look at the major industries in Delaware, they all do seem to be exposed to recessionary conditions,’ said Robert Dye, an economist for PNC Financial Services Group in Pittsburgh. ‘Delaware is definitely going to be feeling the effects of the downturn, and we do expect that to get worse before it gets better.’”

“As incomes have dropped relative to the rest of the country, Delawareans also have watched median home prices in the state fall 9 percent after peaking in late 2006. John Stapleford, an economist who covers Delaware for Economy.com., said housing sales are not likely to match the pace of earlier this decade, when a housing bubble inflated and helped spark the current economic crisis. ‘We’re never going to go back to the heyday,’ Stapleford said.”

From WTOP in Maryland. “A Maryland woman is among the thousands of people losing their homes to foreclosure. But she’s actually using the situation to her advantage. While she foreclosed a couple of years ago, she’s still living in the home - and paying nothing. Deborah was renting a townhouse in Gaithersburg in the north Montgomery Village area in August 2005, when the owner decided to sell the home. ”

“Although Deborah was making less than $32,000 a year and had just been through a divorce, she decided to purchase the home. She was told she could qualify for a home in the $200,000 - $250,000 range, but the townhouse was $379,000 — and escalated to $405,000 at closing.”

‘In order to buy the home, Deborah got what’s called a No-Document Loan, meaning she did not have to document any income as long as she got a certain credit score. Deborah combined the No-Document Loan with another loan and was able to buy the townhouse.”

“Deborah knew she couldn’t afford it but says she planned on finding someone to rent the basement of the home. She never found someone to rent. Deborah tried to refinance in April, but didn’t qualify. She tried to sell the home in June 2006, but didn’t receive any offers. In September 2006, her home went to foreclosure auction.”

“‘It’s very hard to repossess a house and get someone out of it,’ Deborah says. ‘It just means I’m smart.’”

“It’s been 42 months since Deborah moved into the home, and she has not paid a single penny for her mortgage. She says her situation is fair. ‘I made my choice fully knowing what I was doing and knowing it was a gamble,’ Deborah says. Deborah plans to rent next, and says she has a deposit down on a building under construction.”

The Virginian Pilot. “When the dividend check he expected in April didn’t arrive, Tim Moore made repeated phone calls to WexTrust Capital’s offices in Norfolk and Chicago. The check eventually came, but it bounced. Moore’s trusted adviser, Paul Clemmons, said he expects to recover much of what he put into a warehouse, a hotel and other WexTrust real-estate deals. Clemmons, who recommended WexTrust to investors and helped some refinance their homes to raise investment funds, said he, too, borrowed on his home to invest. Because of the lost income, he sold his home in July and refinanced an investment property.”

“‘I’ve gone from home ownership to renting, and I got rid of my toys,’ including a $130,000 Mercedes-Benz and a boat, Clemmons said.”

“Moore figures that whatever he recovers will come too late to help save his house. Earlier this month, he and his wife put it on the market for $595,000 but have yet to hear from any prospective buyers. Moore said he already asked their mortgage lender, ‘Should I give it back now?’”

“Foreclosure activity in Hampton Roads continued to climb last month and has increased more than threefold since last year. Vinod B. Agarwal, an economist at Old Dominion University, predicted that the number of foreclosures would continue to rise in the coming months.’

“‘There’s anxiety right now in many households,’ he said. ‘The other problem is the credit conditions have tightened up so much. People with adjustable-rate mortgages they cannot afford cannot refinance that easily.’”

The Daily Press in Virginia. “The market in Hampton Roads, including the Peninsula, is righting itself, said Cliff Wells, managing broker of Century 21 Nachman Realty’s Norfolk office. Historically, real estate doubles in value every 10 years. For a long time, that didn’t happen in the Hampton Roads market, including the Peninsula. Prices only went up a few thousand dollars between 1980 and 2000, until the real estate boom hit, he said.”

“‘In a year’s period of time, in essence, the market picked up that double that had been missing the first 10 years,’ Wells said. ‘In the second or third year, it picked up that second double.’”

“Then, in some cases, values continued going up, but it’s now dropping down to the value where it should be, he said. ‘We’re back to a stable market, with prices holding,’ he said. ‘It has come back to the ‘real’ real estate market.’”

The Falls Church News Press. “One of the region’s foremost economic forecasters warned Tuesday that Northern Virginia may be ‘behind the curve’ in planning its next economic driver, once the defense contracts buoyed by the war in Iraq expire and the war winds down.”

“John McClain, senior fellow at George Mason University’s Center for Regional Analysis, said that the regional office market is ’softening’ as a follow-on to the housing downturn, with vacancy rates climbing from nine to 12 percent.”

“While housing values in the District of Columbia and inside the Beltway in Northern Virginia and Maryland have remained relatively stable, they’ve dropped dramatically in areas like Prince William County, McClain noted, making the D.C. Metropolitan Region the victim of the sixth-highest rate of housing foreclosures nationally, behind only Los Angeles, Phoenix, Miami, Las Vegas and San Francisco. This was after the region had the lowest rate of foreclosures in the entire U.S. only two years ago.”

“Average housing prices have declined 31 percent in Northern Virginia, and the number of homes on sale for less than $400,000 has tripled. In Prince William County, which he called ‘the eye of the storm’ in the region, the average housing price has dipped from $415,000 to $285,000.”

“In the last four months in Northern Virginia, he said, 4,500 construction jobs have been lost, mostly due to the housing slowdown, along with another 1,500 in the retail trade and 2,000 in financial services. Nationally, McClain said, ‘2009 will be worse than 2008,’ noting that (Former Federal Reserve Chairman) Alan Greenspan’s ‘irrational exuberance’ between 2002 and 2006 created the current crisis. Job growth turned from two million annually to a net loss of 600,000 jobs in 2008. ‘In this national environment, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere by the D.C. region,’ he said.”

From Bloomberg. “Home sales are booming once again in Prince William County, Virginia, an area hit hard by the housing bust. Foreclosures are responsible. Lenders are modifying some mortgages to prevent defaults and keep loans on their books. But because each mortgage-and-borrower pairing is different, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution.”

“‘If a borrower has no job, or other income, we can’t help,’ said Evan Wagner, an IndyMac spokesman. Nor is the bank accepting offers from investors to pay off a loan at a big discount. ‘We’re not erasing principal,’ he said.”

The News Record from North Carolina. “One thing is sure: The number of foreclosure filings against Guilford County homeowners has increased since this time last year. There were 1,106 foreclosures in Guilford County’s two major cities during the third quarter. That’s an increase of 192 percent compared with the third quarter of 2007 and a 10 percent increase from the second quarter of this year.”

“The rise in foreclosures continues a trend that dates back a decade but has accelerated recently, said local economist Don Jud. ‘Beginning about 10 years ago, the banks started making weak loans, weaker loans than they had ever made before,’ he said. ‘What we’re seeing now is the weaker loans are being foreclosed on.’”

The Times News from North Carolina. “The number of foreclosures in Henderson, Polk and Transylvania counties continues to rise as the effects of bad loans, job losses and a sagging housing market set in. They are worrisome numbers that have only gone up in recent memory, said Wanda Sizemore of the Henderson County Clerk of Court’s office.”

“‘Where we used to have one or two a week, now we have between five and seven a week,’ she said.”

The News & Observer from North Carolina. “The global economic crisis has struck indiscriminately at North Carolina’s most resilient industries. In the past few weeks alone, the roiling economy has taken out several thousand jobs in the state as businesses reduce production and close facilities.”

“Because its arrival lagged in this state and because real estate values here never overheated and didn’t crash, some had hoped we might be spared the worst. ‘It’s here,’ said Harry Davis, an Appalachian State University economist. ‘We’ve got to admit it. It’s in the room.’”

The Star News from North Carolina. “If you heard a builder singing Friday, it must have been the blues. Gathered for a general membership meeting, the local builders heard the sober reality of the Wilmington market: ‘The marketplace is ugly,’ researcher Bernard Helm told the Wilmington-Cape Fear Home Builders Association Thursday. ‘The outlook is dismal.’”

“Sales of new-construction homes were down nearly 40 percent in New Hanover, 37 percent in Brunswick and more than 56 percent in Pender, according to data from Helms. The local sales declines came on top of figures for 2007 that showed a more than 25 percent decline from 2006.”

“But fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, and builders have to build if they’re going to make money. (Apologies to Oscar Hammerstein and Jerome Kern.) Two subdivisions with certified green-built homes are newly open in Brunswick County, and sales have begun for a planned for 4,500 homes on 2,000 acres in (where else?) Leland.”

“All aboard the foreclosure bus tour of Carolina Beach. In a sign of the depressed housing market on Pleasure Island and in other beach towns, Century 21 Brock has signed up 30 people so far to tour 20 properties Saturday that range in asking price from $112,900 for a 500-square-foot condo to more than $400,000.”

“‘It’s very unusual for this area. This is our first one,’ said Faye Brock, owner of the agency at 265 Racine Drive in Wilmington. ‘Every three months we’re going to have a foreclosure preview for our clients.’”

“‘Values at Carolina Beach and Kure Beach were driven up by speculators,’ said Clinton Howlett of Century 21 Brock, ‘and the problems with foreclosures in these two beaches is probably as bad as some parts of California and Nevada.’”