The Housing Bubble

The Herald Tribune reports from Florida. “Like so many other new home builders, Adams Homes of Northwest Florida was left holding a lot of inventory in Sarasota and Charlotte counties when the housing market started its swoon heading into 2006. But like few others, the Gulf Breeze-based builder was able to survive that blow and has made a remarkable recovery. But Adams Homes is a relative babe in the woods in Sarasota and Charlotte counties, markets the company entered in late 2004 to take advantage of the Southwest Florida’s rampant flipping during the housing boom.”

“‘Everything was selling. That is the way it was at the time and we just continued to sell and sell and people thought they were going to flip forever because houses were going up $10,000 in value every month,’ said Nancy Carroll, the company’s North Port-based sales manager. ‘Since we build with $1,000 down they would come in with $10,000 and buy ten homes. It all came to a screeching halt in January of 2006 — and then they wouldn’t close on them.’”

The Palm Beach Post in Florida. “Sales of new homes jumped last month, but don’t get too excited: June still was the second-weakest month on records dating to 1963, the Commerce Department said. For June’s weak reading, there are plenty of culprits. ‘The biggest issue is the foreclosures and the short sales and what they’re doing to the appraisal value of homes,’ said Ray Puzzitiello, owner of Puzzitiello Builders in West Palm Beach and president of the Gold Coast Builders Association.”

“Not even rock-bottom mortgage rates, usually a reliable driver of sales, have done much to spur demand for homes. ‘People either have another house to sell, which they can’t sell, or they don’t have the down payment, or maybe their credit score isn’t perfect,’ Puzzitiello said.”

From Florida Today. “Foreclosure filings in Brevard County have dropped sharply this year. But the slowdown could be nothing more than a temporary reaction to changes in the filing procedures that took effect in February, and within a few months foreclosures could return to — or even surpass — previous high levels. ‘It just created a temporary dam, and these things have backed up,’ said Melbourne attorney Tom D. Waldron, who defends property owners in foreclosure cases.”

“The Florida Supreme Court earlier this year instituted changes in the state’s foreclosure process that may have prompted the slowdown in new filings. Over the past decade, mortgages have increasingly been packaged into Wall Street securities that were then sold and resold to different investors. Along the way, mortgage ‘notes,’ — the documents that show that a debt exists — often were misplaced or destroyed. Now, as part of a foreclosure filing a lender has to sign an affidavit saying they are in possession of the note.”

“‘That caused them to take thousands of foreclosure filings off the table and start all over,’ Waldron said of law firms representing lenders.”

The News Journal in Florida. ” CNNMoney.com ranks Deltona fourth in affordability among 25 cities across the country where residents ‘can see their incomes go the furthest.’ In her work at Prime Real Estate, which specializes in short sales, Julie Norton, a real estate broker who lives in Deltona, said transactions are closing for 50 to 60 percent less than what houses previously sold for in West Volusia. ‘Unfortunately because of the housing bubble we seem to be the foreclosure capital of the world, so things are definitely half-price these days,’ she said.”

From GoUpstate in Alabama. “Nick Wilmott bent down on the beach near the high-tide mark and touched one of the reddish-brown pads of oil. It had washed up overnight from the BP spill off Louisiana and had yet to be cleaned up by the machines that sweep the beaches here every night. ‘Here’s your problem,’ said Mr. Wilmott, president of the Baldwin County Association of Realtors. ‘What’s happening is buyers are just on hold and there are great deals, but they are saying, ‘We are going to wait and see what happens with the oil.’”

“Rusty and Deana Swanson of Thomasville, Ala., are among them. In late May, they had done everything except close on a three-bedroom condominium on the fourth floor in the Seawind building overlooking the gulf. As the oil spill dragged on, Ms. Swanson said she saw similar condominiums selling for far less than the $290,000 she had agreed to pay. She became worried that she wouldn’t be able to rent the apartment to help pay the mortgage, and that it would be worth less than what she was investing. The Swansons pulled the plug on the deal.”

“‘I’m not going to follow through with something when I am watching the prices plummet,’ said Ms. Swanson, a dietitian.”

The Atlanta Journal Constitution in Georgia. “Regulators on Friday shut down Jasper-based Crescent Bank & Trust, the 10th Georgia bank to fail in 2010, and the 40th since the banking crisis started two years ago. Crescent, like other failed Peach State lenders, succumbed to the collapse of the real estate market.”

“Crescent was a heavy lender to subdivision developers, strip retail centers and builders of vacation homes. From 2004 to 2008, Crescent doubled in size from $500 million in assets to $1 billion, fueled by a diet of real estate development loans. Problems started in 2007 with the collapse of the housing market.”

“Problem loans, those late, in default or foreclosed, grew from $14.8 million in June 2007 to $82.5 million a year later. Meanwhile, Crescent’s reserves plunged. The bank lost $13.7 million in the first quarter this year, after losses of more than $30 million in each of the past two years. ‘Unfortunately, timing is everything,’ said Chip MacDonald, a banking attorney at Jones Day.”

“Just before Bruce Gallman and Jerry Miller opened their $33 million-plus Castleberry Point project near downtown Atlanta in the fall of 2008, they thought they had 70 percent of the units sold. Nearly two years later, they consider themselves lucky to have sold 60 percent of the units. ‘We had a lot of pre-sales that walked away’ during the turbulent months after the October stock market crash and collapse of some Wall Street titans, said Gallman. Only a fifth of those original customers actually completed their deals, he said.”

“As the partners planned the project during the height of the real estate boom in 2006 and 2007, they expected the lofts to sell for $160,000 to $700,000 for the largest penthouse unit. In retrospect, the partners said as they stood on the top floor of the complex and showed off the penthouse units, rooftop pool and courtyard fountain far below, they should have left their dream on the drawing board.”

“‘If you had really known the depth of what was coming, you would have done nothing and stayed in cash,’ said Miller.”

“Miller said they were reluctant to lower prices. Some economists were predicting at the time that the economy would recover the following summer. ‘We thought we had brought [the project] out at the bottom of the market rather than the beginning of the crash,’ said Gallman. They would learn they were wrong.”

“By the summer of 2008, they were almost done. They had recruited many of their retail tenants. About 70 would-be buyers had paid deposits on loft units. When Napoleon Williams became the project’s second resident that fall, in a live-work unit that includes both his Vitesse eXchange clothing boutique and living quarters upstairs, he expected plenty of other neighbors, including two restaurants, a bookstore and a fitness center. He enjoyed the quiet at first. ‘I didn’t realize how bad it was,’ he said.”

The Sun News on South Carolina. “Grand Strand real estate sales are outpacing those in other parts of South Carolina but prices continue to fall at a faster rate than the state average, according to a report. The Grand Strand and other areas that also have many investor-buyers are following a similar pattern of low prices driving up sales, said Tom Maeser, a real estate analyst with the Coastal Carolinas Association of Realtors.”

“‘We saw probably more extreme price increases in 2005, 2006, 2007 because investors were buying properties and were bidding properties up,’ he said. ‘It seems only natural that we were the ones taking the bigger hits.’”

The Post and Courier in South Carolina. “Summerville homebuilder Arnold Goodstein remembers the exact moment that he grasped the severity of the Charleston area’s real estate market slowdown. It happened in 2007 during a routine meeting for his company, Summerville Homes, when a sales rep said the regional homebuilder had sold three homes the prior month.”

“‘The company had 3,000 lots and 30 subdivisions. I looked at him and said, ‘What do you mean we only sold three homes?’ Goodstein said at a court hearing Friday afternoon. ‘When (the real estate market) died, it died — like Wile E. Coyote going off a cliff.’”

“Recently, he asked a judge to convert his bankruptcy case from a Chapter 11 reorganization, which would give him a chance to propose a pay-back plan, to a Chapter 7 liquidation case, a telling move for a businessman who’s been described as aggressive and optimistic. ‘I’m 66 years old,’ he said after the hearing. ‘It’s time to put this behind me.’”