The Housing Bubble

The Star Tribune reports from Minnesota. “While second-home values have started to slip in the past two years, cabin values held their value better than primary homes. Linda and Woody Holder have lived on Big Sandy Lake in Aitkin County for several years in their ‘dream home,’ a 2,800-square-foot house with a big yard and a guest cottage. Woody Holder built it all by hand. Originally from California, the Holders planned to spend summers there with their grandkids and travel for part of the year. They got older, didn’t have grandchildren and the upkeep on the all-wood house is getting to be too much. Since listing the house for almost $850,000 in May, they’ve had nearly 900 inquiries in various places. Still, not a single offer. ‘The minute they hear the price, that’s it,’ she said.”

“Their hope is to relocate closer to their children, but Linda said that if they don’t get an offer or get an acceptable price, they’ll simply stay put until the market improves and continue spending six months out of the year on the road.”

The Chicago Tribune in Illinois. “When Tamara Harney’s 18-year-old son, Patrick, opted to attend Columbia College this fall, Harney had two choices. She could pony up for dorm room and board fees or buy a condo. Patrick’s decision to stay in the South Loop year-round made the decision easy. ‘It’s cheaper to purchase a condo,’ said the Michigan resident, following through with a three-bedroom, two-bath condo unit for Patrick and two roommates.”

“In May, southwest suburbanite Faisal Nabulsi bought a two-bedroom condo on North Dearborn in Chicago for his two daughters attending DePaul and Loyola universities. ‘After 10 years, when everybody is out of college, I expect to have made a profit on the condo,’ Nabulsi said.”

The Chicago News Cooperative in Illinois. “Far west suburban Yorkville scarcely looks as if it was once one of America’s hottest boomtowns. In some subdivisions, lots for big homes are patches of scrub grass and rocky soil. Weeds crawl up around some curbs. A mere handful of houses dot the barren landscape. ‘This was going to be the place to be,” said Jay Waldvogel, a dentist who is one of the tiny number of residents in a lonesome neighborhood of Yorkville, the seat of Kendall County, about 50 miles southwest of the Loop. ‘And now it’s dead.’”

“In exurban Sycamore, a 70-mile drive to downtown Chicago, the population roughly doubled, to some 17,000, in the 2000s. Those were heady times. ‘We were tripping over buyers,’ said Diane Hammon, the president of the DeKalb Area Association of Realtors, recalling the people eager to build homes in subdivisions carved out of farmland in Sycamore. ‘We didn’t take the time to stop and think, ‘This could come down.’ And then all of a sudden, we just fell off a cliff.’”

The News Democrat in Illinois. “A new day could be dawning for the defunct Forest Lakes subdivision. For three years, the nearly 500-acre luxury home and retail development — the biggest ever planned for the metro-east — has languished in real estate limbo while the banks that loaned money to its developer pursued a twisty road to foreclosure. But now, with the foreclosure process nearly complete, and most of the site under the control of its two biggest lenders, home construction on the site off Illinois 159 could soon get going, according to George Chance, Caseyville’s mayor.”

“Kevin Kaufhold, a Belleville attorney who represents the tax increment finance district, acknowledged that home construction can’t take off until the residential real estate market rebounds. Even so, it won’t take much for a developer to make progress at the site, Kaufhold said. ‘There are at least 150, if 200 plus lots in the back that are ready for development now if there was a residential market,’ he said.”

From WJBC in Illinois. “Senior in Economics, Jake Mann and Associate Professor of Economics, Diego Mendez-Carbajo spent three months compiling McLean County foreclosure data from the past five years. The study found 70 percent of mortgages in default in the community are valued over $100,000. And, of 2,000 mortgages in default over the last five years, half were issued between 2004 and 2006. ‘So, banks are in trouble. Banks find that the mortgages they issue are in default. Well, you know, they issued a lot of those too easily, probably, during those particular three years,’ said Mendez-Carbajo.”

From WBEZ in Michigan. “Brandon Johnson runs a property preservation company. Johnson says it’s been bad enough in Michigan that he sometimes sees houses two or three times. ‘The same home,’ he said. ‘We’ve come in; we’ve cleaned it out; we’ve cleaned it up; we’ve maintained it. It’s sold. And then 24 months later, we’re right back to the same house again. It’s mind boggling. It really is.’”

The Detroit News. “In a city with more than 100,000 vacant properties, city officials and residents say they’re increasingly seeing people take over empty houses and call them their own. Once they’re in, it’s tough to get rid of them. Gretchen Barrow knows the problem all too well. She fought for months to remove two families in her neighborhood on the west side and fears the situation will only worsen.”

“‘With families losing houses, they’ve got to go somewhere,’ said Barrow. ‘They are canvassing the neighborhoods, and there are houses on every one of those streets. Our area has been hit with a number of abandoned houses and foreclosures, and that’s a major concern for us. I wish I knew how to tackle that, but I don’t have a clue.’”

The Plain Dealer in Ohio. “In Ohio, 9.1 percent of all home loans are behind but not yet in foreclosure, up from 8.3 percent three months ago, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. More disturbing: Loans in Ohio that are newly delinquent - 30 days’ behind - jumped by 20 percent from the first quarter to the second. About 4.1 percent of homeowners with loans are one month behind on payments. The same uptick occurred nationally. The survey includes 88 percent of all loans nationwide.”

“‘The signs of improvement that we had been seeing . . . that has clearly now stopped,’ Jay Brinkmann, the association’s chief economist, said in a conference call.”

The Door County Advocate in Wisconsin. “Door County has taken some hits in real estate with lagging home construction and backed up housing inventories. Local agents say the current real estate Door County is great for buyers, but home sellers may want to wait for an improved market. Bob Starr, who has been in the real estate business for 33 years, said it’s the first time he remembers agents advising some sellers not to list their property.’

“‘The buyers have the power and are making offers that four years ago would have been insulting,’ Starr said. ‘Today, sellers are just grateful to have an offer to even look at.’”

“‘On the other hand, with the volatility of the stock market, I don’t know of a better time to buy than I remember either,’ he said.”

“About five Door County families a month receive default notices from their banks warning of possible foreclosure. The county has never seen housing failures of this magnitude, and it doesn’t look like it will end anytime soon. ‘It’s sink or swim,’ said a 72-year-old Door County woman who faces foreclosure. She asked to remain anonymous as most of her neighbors are unaware of her circumstances. ‘We’ve tried to swim. Right now we’re hardly treading water,’ she said.”

“The woman was in her mid-60s when she took out a loan against her property to help her son battle his own legal troubles. Then, after 22 years with the same employer, she lost her job. ‘It was a predatory lender that has since been taken over by some other outfit,’ the woman said. ‘I mean, come on … who gives a woman in her 60s a 30-year mortgage?’”

Wisconsin Business. “After eight years in the political wilderness, the Wisconsin Realtors Association, headed by Bill Malkasian for more than three decades, has re-emerged as a major player on the state’s political scene. Now Malkasian is taking his political acumen to the National Association of Realtors. He will remain in Madison and, come October, become a vice president for political strategic planning, leading a nationwide based initiative on political and legislative engagement at the federal, state and local levels of government.”

“In a wide-ranging interview, Malkasian said Wisconsin real estate values, compared to many other parts of the country, are holding up relatively well. Still, he said, it’s a buyer’s market with high numbers of homes for sale, sellers willing to negotiate and mortgage rates at 30-year lows. However, he noted, it’s become more difficult for many people to get a mortgage.”

“‘If you have a good credit rating and… can make the mortgage payment, it’s a great time to buy,’ said Malkasian, who traced the housing bubble to federal efforts by the Bush and Clinton administrations in the 1990s to make owning a home easier.”

“Malkasian said real estate remains a local marketplace. Homes in some Madison neighborhoods sell within days of being listed because of price, location and uniqueness of the property. Conversely, he said he knows of condominiums in Madison that have been for sale for two years.”

“Malkasian said people are ‘dreaming’ if they think that the real estate market will ever return to the heady days of 2005-2006. That won’t happen because credit is much tighter, which means that many people won’t be able to buy homes, he said. Secondly, pricing has leveled off and 10 to 15 percent appreciation on housing won’t happen, he added. ‘Normal appreciation is 2 to 3 percent… but we certainly have a ways to go to get back to that point and where we are today,’ he said.”

“Malkasian said abuse of loan and mortgage programs on the national level led to fraud. ‘I don’t think Wisconsin lenders were the problem,’ he said. ‘But now we are paying the price. What used to be local control is now federal control, so it’s sort of a one size fits all.”’

“Malkasian said he’d like to see the government ‘get out of the way’ and let the market work. Although he said it sounds ‘cruel,’ Malkasian advocates eliminating programs that keep people in their houses if they can’t make payments. ‘We need to find a way with dignity and grace to get those people out and get them into a rental situation so those properties can be sold,’ he said. ‘As long as we have this glut of property, the market can’t normalize itself.’”