The Housing Bubble

As some of you may remember, my company went through some lay offs at the beginning of the year. My group lost about 45% of all engineering resources; the workload for the group stayed the same.

Upper management has realized deadlines will not be met with the current staff, so they have decided to offer last-minute interns to fill gaps! Fired a senior engineer? No problem! You get an intern to so his job! Do y’all wanna know what’s even worse? After interviewing a couple of people, management has come back and said the applicants not experienced enough!

Simpson Mazzoli was approved in the United States Senate on September 19, 1985 by a vote of 69-30, when the GOP held the majority in that chamber 53-47. And yes the filibuster rules existed then.

So, Reese Witherspoon and other big name stars along with Mayors Against Gun Violence “demand a plan” and are taking a stand against assault rifles which kill less than 323 people a year (mostly criminals killing criminals) while she takes part in an activity that kills 9,878 people a year and injures 1 every 90 seconds.
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By Victoria Cavaliere / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Thursday, December 27, 2012, 3:09 PM

Big names join the Mayors Against Gun Violence “demand a plan” campaign by taking a stand against assault rifles.

A long list of celebrities joined Mayor Bloomberg’s efforts to pressure Washington to pass gun control legislation that could prevent tragedies on the scale of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.

Beyonce, Jon Hamm, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Reese Witherspoon and Will Ferrell are among the celebrities who recorded a public service announcement sponsored by the group Mayors Against Illegal Guns.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE DAILY NEWS ONLINE PETITION TO BAN ASSAULT WEAPONS

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/beyonce-jon-hamm-stars-backing-gun-control-article-1.1228314 - -
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Reese Witherspoon charged with disorderly conduct

By JONATHAN DREW

The Associated Press

ATLANTA —
Oscar-winning actress Reese Witherspoon was arrested on a disorderly conduct charge after a state trooper said she wouldn’t stay in the car while her husband was given a field sobriety test in Atlanta.

Witherspoon was released from jail after the Friday morning arrest and was in New York Sunday night for the premiere of her new film “Mud.” She posed for cameras on the red carpet but did not stop to talk to reporters.

The trooper noticed the car driven by her husband wasn’t staying in its lane early Friday morning, so a traffic stop was initiated. Her husband, James Toth, had droopy eyelids, watery, bloodshot eyes, and his breath smelled strongly of alcohol, according to the report.

Toth told the trooper he’d had a drink, which Witherspoon said was consumed at a restaurant two hours before the traffic stop, the trooper writes.

Before the field sobriety test began, the 37-year-old Witherspoon got out of the car, was told to get back in and obeyed, the report said. After the “Walk the Line” star got out a second time, the trooper said he warned her that she would be arrested if she left the car again.

As the test continued, “Mrs. Witherspoon began to hang out the window and say that she did not believe that I was a real police officer. I told Mrs. Witherspoon to sit on her butt and be quiet,” Trooper First Class J. Pyland writes.

Toth, 42, was then placed under arrest. He was charged with driving under the influence and failure to maintain the lane.

At that point, the report says, Witherspoon got out and asked the trooper what was going on. After being told to return to the car, she “stated that she was a ‘US Citizen’ and that she was allowed to ’stand on American ground,’” the report states.

The trooper then began to arrest Witherspoon. The report says Witherspoon was resistant at first but was calmed down by her husband.

“Do you know my name?” Witherspoon is quoted as asking the trooper. She also said: “You’re about to find out who I am” and “You’re about to be on national news,” according to the report.

Toth and Witherspoon were then taken to jail.

A message left at the office of Witherspoon’s publicist, Meredith O’Sullivan Wasson, wasn’t immediately returned Sunday.

News of the arrest broke shortly before Witherspoon arrived on the “Mud” red carpet.
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In 2011, 9,878 people died in drunk driving crashes - one every 53 minutes

In 2010, 211 children were killed in drunk driving crashes. Out of those 211 deaths, 131 (62 percent) were riding with the drunk driver.

Almost every 90 seconds, a person is injured in a drunk driving crash.

MADD - Statistics - Mothers Against Drunk Driving
http://www.madd.org/statistics/ - 44k -

Good Question: How Many People Are Killed By Assault Rifles?

February 12, 2013 11:04 PM

The same story plays out across the nation. Of the 12,664 murders in 2011 reported to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, 6,220 were committed with handguns — about 49 percent of the total report.

By comparison, killers used a rifle on 323 people, 2.5 percent of all murders. Assault rifle murders aren’t split out, but it’s safe to assume it’s less than the 323.

Most put the number of assault weapon murders as between 1 and 2 percent of all murders.

In 2011, knives were used in 1,694 murders. Fists and feet were used in 728 murders, and blunt objects –like clubs, bats and hammers – were used in 496 murders.

http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2013/02/12/good-question-how-many-people-are-killed-by-assault-rifles/ - 112k -

Is the Federal Reserve Insane?

By Matthew C. Klein Apr 19, 2013 9:39 AM ET

Americans have been whipsawed by devastating cycles of boom and bust over the past three decades. Now some at the Fed want us to go through it again.

There is a word for people who do the same thing over and over again, expecting different results: insane. Let’s hope that they don’t constitute a majority of the Fed’s voting members, or we will once again be doomed to another destructive and pointless cycle of boom and bust.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-19/is-the-federal-reserve-insane-.html - 121k -

Don’t buy a house now, buy later for 65 percent less (nominal).

This message sponsored by the RAL App, now optimized for all mobile devices, available on google play, the windows store, and coming soon to iTunes.

New Robert Chiller article from 2 days ago about housing and land bubbles, their history, and are we in another one now.

From NY Times. http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/business/before-housing-bubbles-there-was-land-fever.xml

New York Times - Happiness Inc.

“According to Sonja Lyubomirsky, you have a happiness set point. It’s partly encoded in your genes. If something good happens, your sense of happiness rises; if something bad happens, it falls.

Dr. Lyubomirsky’s findings can be provocative and, at times, counterintuitive. Renters are happier than homeowners, she says.”

Renters are happier than homeowners?

Buy a house today and your misery will be incalculable.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/fashion/happiness-inc.html?pagewanted=all

This AP article containing this quote was published on 4/15, just hours after the Boston bombings.

“Across the U.S., from Washington to Los Angeles, police stepped up security, monitoring landmarks, government buildings, transit hubs and sporting events. Security was especially tight in Boston, with bomb-sniffing dogs checking Amtrak passengers’ luggage at South Station and transit police patrolling with rifles.

“They can give me a cavity search right now and I’d be perfectly happy,” said Daniel Wood, a video producer from New York City who was waiting for a train.”

Why did the AP include this quote from Mr. Wood in the article?

What is the intended message to readers from this quote?

And what is the desired reaction from readers to this quote?

http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/wireStory/explosions-boston-marathon-finish-line-18960342

Selling city assets to pay insane public union promises.

Paid for by the last generation of taxpayers.

What is left for the next generation?

Nothing but DEBT.

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United States Decaying From Within! Stocks, Gold and Dollar Outlook
The Market Oracle | 4-21-2013 | Robert M Williams

No one seemed to notice or care that on June 28, 2012 the City of Stockton, California filed a petition for chapter 9 bankruptcy protection with the United States Bankruptcy Court, Eastern District of California, Sacramento, Case No. 2012-32118. On Monday, April 1, 2013, a federal judge ruled that Stockton was eligible for bankruptcy protection, over the objection of creditors who argued the city could come up with more money. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Klein said Stockton can move forward with a plan to reorganize debt. He twice stated that the creditors had acted in bad faith and had refused to pay their share of the costs for negotiations.

As a result Stockton became the nation’s largest city to fail financially. At that time, all eyes were on the port city of 300,000 as experts warned the action could set off a string of similar filings among cash-strapped municipalities. Since then half dozen cities have filed for Chapter 9 protection under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, including the city of San Bernardino. Of course the media never mentions this. During the 90-day mediation period, Stockton’s creditors refused to negotiate unless the city cut payments to the state pension plan known as CaLPERS. By law the negotiations were confidential, but that detail emerged during the three-day trial that concluded last week. Judge Klein said the creditors could not legally walk away from the table, but he left the door open for CaLPERS obligations to be part of negotiations in the coming phases of the bankruptcy. At issue will be whether U.S. bankruptcy law trumps California law, which says the pension plan must be funded.

The $900 million Stockton owes to the California Public Employees Retirement System (CaLPERS) to cover pensions is its biggest debt -– as is the case with many cities in California. Stockton slashed its police and fire departments, halted bond payments, cut employee benefits and adopted an emergency-spending plan that cut many city services. But the city continues to pay into the state pension. Stockton’s bankruptcy is expected to be closely watched for precedent, and could be appealed as high as the US Supreme Court.

Two of America’s larger cities and relics from the industrial age, Detroit and Philadelphia, are also in serious financial trouble. With respect to Detroit the Governor, Rick Snyder, declared a state of financial emergency two months ago. The Governor pointed to more than $14 billion in long-term liabilities, including underfunded pensions. The city is also poised to end the fiscal year more than $100 million in the red without an infusion of cash, this in a report published last week. The Governor then named Kevyn Orr as the city’s emergency manger giving him many of the same powers as a bankruptcy judge. He can throw out contracts with public employee unions and vendors that the city can’t afford, and he can make further cutbacks in already depleted city services if he decides the city can’t afford them.

Philadelphia isn’t much better off as it attempted to convince bond buyers to take on more of its debt in an effort to avoid bankruptcy. As it turned out Philadelphia’s closed-door two-day schmooze fest with 100 bond underwriters and other would-be lenders only served to generate unwelcome publicity for the nation’s most broke big (million plus residents) city.

Philadelphia was hoping to attract investors for the city, which is rated three steps above junk by Standard & Poor’s. The city and its authorities have $8.75 billion in outstanding debt as of September, according to bond documents, and these same documents also show Philadelphia has less than 50 cents set aside for every $1 it expects to pay current and future retirees.

The conference also includes tours of city assets for sale set for day two, including the Philadelphia Gas Works, the largest municipally owned natural-gas utility in the U.S. The city plans to hire a broker to steer the sale of the system, which may fetch as much as $496 million, according to Lazard Ltd., this according to Bloomberg.

I have been following the markets for more decades than I care to remember and I began to get a whiff of corruption back in the Reagan era. Now the markets have what I can only describe as the stench of death. Anyone who’s ever spent time on a battlefield, or around a natural disaster with a lot of fatalities, knows what I’m referring to. You never forget it! The sources of this stench are the rotting corpses of many failed policies and broken promises. Free markets are now being replaced by a welfare system that is attempting to do the impossible. The government wants to legislate the poor into prosperity and yet it forgets that it cannot give something to someone with out first taking something from someone else!

Back before we began to meddle with the markets and redistribute wealth, the US rose to be the richest creditor nation in the world. It did so with a comparatively small government, no income tax, no central bank and using gold and silver as money! Then came the 1907 crash that devastated Wall Street and Mr. Morgan got together with Mr. Rothschild and decided to make sure that wouldn’t happen again. Out of this was born the US Federal Reserve and the IRS, and both began to operate in 1913. Since then America’s wealth, your wealth, has declined to the point where the US is now the largest debtor nation on the planet. All of your wealth has affectively been transferred to a very select few, and you are left to pay off the debts.

Along the way there have been changes designed to circumvent the US Constitution, and without a doubt these changes limit your freedom. Americans can now be held indefinitely and even executed without due process. Now we’ll use the bombings in Boston as an excuse to do away with whatever obstacles might still be in the way. What happened most recently in Cyprus is a coming attraction to what will happen to your IRA’s and deposits in American banks once people realize what a house of cards they are. Meanwhile these select few are out there buying all the gold, silver, available farm land and any other tangible, useful asset they can get their hands on because they know what’s coming.

CAT and Copper.

Both used to be the “great” future indicators of an economy (before forced zero interest rates, before $7 Trillion in new deficit spending and before the government borrowed 46 cents of every dollar it spent).

FYI - Both are used heavily in housing too.

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Caterpillar Profit Falls Short; Slashes 2013 Sales Outlook
CNBC.com - 4/22/2013

Caterpillar (CAT) posted earnings and revenue that missed Wall Street expectations on Monday, and cut its full-year outlook for 2013 to reflect a drop in demand for heavy equipment from its mining customers.

Caterpillar posted quarterly earnings excluding items of $1.31 per share, down from $2.37 per share in the comparable year-ago period. Revenue sank to $13.21 billion from $15.98 billion a year ago.

NYT: Land Fever

SINCE 1997, we have lived through the biggest real estate bubble in United States history — followed by the most calamitous decline in housing prices that the country has ever seen.
The Housing Haze

Second of three columns.

Previous Column »

Fundamental factors like inflation and construction costs affect home prices, of course. But the radical shifts in housing prices in recent years were caused mainly by investor-induced speculation.

Anyone contemplating the purchase of a home wants an idea of where prices will be when it is eventually time to sell, perhaps many years later. For that kind of long-term forecasting, we need to understand the reasons for the recent, violent price cycle, and whether it is likely to repeat itself.

History has much to teach us about real estate bubbles, and some of it is reassuring. The land booms of New York State in the 1790s, Kansas in the 1850s, California in the 1880s and Florida in the 1920s all appear to have been relatively isolated events. And the cycle was not repeated in short order.

But those events were fundamentally different from the recent housing bubble. As relatively local phenomena, involving a fairly small number of adventurers, they did not consume most people’s attention. And a major cause can be easily identified: they developed from the promotion of supposedly valuable lots of land.

In fact, outside of New York City and a few urban centers, most speculators in past decades didn’t focus much on home prices. The term “housing bubble” was not even in their vocabulary. Land, not houses, was the object of their desires. They had “land mania” or “land fever.”

In a 1932 book, “The Great American Land Bubble,

As president in the 1790s, George Washington helped promote the sale of lots in his namesake capital city, and even bought some himself. Earlier in his life, he was a surveyor, and in 1763, he was a founder of the Mississippi Land Company, which was to acquire land, survey and subdivide it, and sell off individual farm and town plots to settlers. While his involvement in the development of Washington, D.C., was ultimately successful, his earlier company failed.

Land fevers tend to have a definite starting point and vector of contagion: they begin when a promoter subdivides land into lots small enough for many investors, and are usually accompanied by an advertising blitz with glowing descriptions of the future town and country, setting off a buzz and speculative excitement.

The Florida land bubble of the 1920s provided a turning point in public opinion, thanks to newspaper reporting around the country that made it clear that a mania was being artfully promoted. Anne O’Hare McCormick wrote in The New York Times in 1925: “What impressed me most was that every jungle and swamp and palmetto hummock from Lake City to Key West is staked out in city lots and offered for sale as building sites.” Such colorful writing can have a lasting impact. Many people now remember the image of the trusting Northerner unwittingly buying a lot in a Florida swamp. And the whole enterprise of subdivision, advertising and promotion of empty lots for sale, which made the manias possible, faded.

Shady operators were called purveyors of “premature subdivisions” and “defunct subdivisions.” Local regulators came to demand that development plans were at least intended to produce homes that people would actually live in, not sham operations to defraud ignorant investors.

The first widely documented, nationwide speculative fever attached to single-family homes, as opposed to lots, was in the housing boom of 1943 to 1950. But home prices remained relatively quiet for many years thereafter. Starting in the 1970s, home price bubbles became more frequent and severe. By the end of the 20th century, housing speculation became at least a pastime for many Americans.

California, behold thy destiny.

“With rates now relatively low, this could be an auspicious time to buy a house with a fixed-rate mortgage. That could make good sense for people who aren’t out to bet on the housing or mortgage markets but are instead focused on settling into a home for the long term. ”

- Robert Shiller, in the NY Times this weekend

*pops popcorn, waits for RAL to awaken*

Consumerist:

If life were a 1950s sitcom, college graduates would zoom out of school, get a job, buy a house, buy a car and get married. But these days, student loans are just one of many reason debtors under 30 are staying far away from the housing and auto markets. That, and life isn’t a sitcom. A new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows that this age group could be a drag on the economy by the very fact that they aren’t participating in it.

Because younger people aren’t able to join in the fun of buying homes and cars, and instead are stuck with low credit scores, reports the bank’s Liberty Street Economics blog. A third of borrowers are in repayment delinquency as of the end of 2012, making those people a lot less likely to spend big and boots the economy.

“Now, for the first time in at least 10 years, 30-year-olds with no history of student loans are more likely to have home-secured debt than those with a history of student loans,” wrote the authors of the data analysis.

This is surprising because in the past, it held true that the more educated a person was, the more likely it was for them to have higher incomes and thus, spend some of that income on buying a home. But now that student debt has taken off, and there aren’t perhaps as many jobs floating around out there with nice fat salaries, this isn’t the case anymore.

If things keep going this way, even more of the under 30 age group could be in debt: Back in 2003, 25% of 25-year-olds had student debt. That number has ballooned to 43% of the same age group, with the total debt balance growing by 91% in that time period, from $10,649 to $20,326.

Got shrinkage in your shorts?

Sell in May April and go away.

Gordon G. Chang, Contributor
Op/Ed
4/21/2013 @ 2:16PM |45,346 views
Global Banks Are ‘Divorcing’ China
Birds on Kowloon Mosque and HSBC sign

Could HSBC say “zaijian” to China? (Photo credit: Joybot)

HSBC Group is expected in the next few months to sell its 8.0% stake in the Bank of Shanghai. The financial services giant could receive as much as $800 million from its shares in the second-tier Chinese lender.

Why do analysts think HSBC will unload its holding soon? It looks like the Bank of Shanghai is set to raise $2 billion by selling newly issued stock, on the Shanghai and Hong Kong exchanges, with a value of up to 30% of its existing shares. The listing could occur before June, so HSBC will have to act now if it does not want to be trapped by a lock-up period, typically imposed on existing shareholders for periods of up to a year.

Two years ago, nobody thought HSBC would ever dispose of major Chinese assets. Now, there is talk it might get rid of all of them.

Analysts sense a change in sentiment because HSBC is already dumping Chinese assets. This year it completed the sale of its 15.6% interest in Ping An to Thai conglomerate Charoen Pokphand Group for $9.4 billion. Previously, the shares in China’s second-largest life insurance company had been described as “strategic.” Then, there are rumors that the institution, once known as the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, will also sell its half interest in HSBC Life Insurance, which laid off 130 sales staff recently.

The investment community is even talking about a once-unthinkable event, the disposal of HSBC’s 18.7% holding in Bank of Communications. John Bond, when he headed HSBC, wanted to increase the stake in Bocom, as China’s fifth-largest lender is known, and eventually control it. Today, however, HSBC looks like it will never achieve management control.

The dominant view is that HSBC will be content to continue holding its Bocom stake because, as one unnamed Shanghai analyst told the South China Morning Post, a sale would mean “HSBC’s China story will be over.” That analyst may think it is inconceivable that any major bank would ever exit China, but the country is no longer that important to the world’s financial community.

In fact, it looks as if HSBC will have to work hard to find another bank to take its Bank of Shanghai shares. The fact that it could not find a financial institution to buy its Ping An stake is a sign that, in general, foreign bankers are “divorcing” China, as South China Morning Post columnist Doug Young recently put it.

The reason for the unhappiness is clear. HSBC, for instance, sold Ping An because it was unable to get “strategic returns” from the insurance company.

HSBC is not the only institution to feel this way. Analysts think Bank of America (BAC +1.92%) sold the bulk of its remaining China Construction Bank holding in 2011 and Goldman Sachs unloaded another tranche of shares in the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China this January because, like HSBC, they were frustrated that their large stakes weren’t helping them further their China businesses. Chinese banks simply do not believe that they need enduring relations with foreign counterparts, which are now getting impatient.

This is a good time for foreign banks to pull the trigger. For one thing, foreign institutions have been bailing out of China with big profits. HSBC, for example, announced it would record an after-tax gain of $2.6 billion from its disposal of Ping An.

Furthermore, prospects for the Chinese banking sector are not especially bright. Profits at the big banks fell last year, and, as the International Business Times reports, profitability is on a long-term downward trend.

Most important, there are growing concerns that Chinese banks are perched at the edge of a cliff. They have been hiding substantial liabilities through various means, including moving unwanted assets off their books into “wealth management products”—high-yielding investments offered by technically unrelated pools—while nonetheless retaining risk of loss. The China Banking Regulatory Commission, to its credit, issued regulations at the end of last month to force banks to rein in the shadowy products, but as a practical matter the rules only begin to address systemic problems.
…

Looming sight of ‘ghost cities’
Cathy Wu
Thursday, April 18, 2013

The most famous mainland “ghost city” - Ordos in Inner Mongolia - is a typical example of excessive development often seen across the border. But Ordos is just the tip of the iceberg. New properties left vacant can easily be spotted even in commercial and industrial hubs, including Tianjin, Chongqing, Chengdu and Dongguan.

Mainland property prices are threatening to rise to record highs - but so are vacancy rates at Grade A office buildings.

Analysts say this proves the presence of bubbles in the mainland property market, as the high prices are supported not by demand, but rather by speculative activity.

Tianjin, the third-largest mainland city with a population of more than 14 million, is expected to see vacancy rates at Grade A office buildings go up to as much as 45 percent by next year, global real estate adviser DTZ said.

The east coast city reportedly had a vacancy rate at 16 percent by the end of last year. But that is seen to increase to 45 percent by 2014 - with an additional 300,000 square meters of gross floor area set to become available this year, DTZ estimates.

According to studies by the Centaline Property Research Center in Tianjin, the city recorded 109 office building transactions in February, with total GFA involved dropping 30 percent on-month to 39,800 sq m.

A report from CBRE, the world’s biggest commercial real estate services and investment firm by revenue, says that many Tianjin projects were delayed due to the uncertain economy. But those delayed projects will hit the market together this year, as many as eight of them in the downtown area and offering an estimated 490,000 sq m in additional GFA.

The office leasing market was rather lackluster last year, as some logistics companies either moved out of high-end premises or reduced their leasing areas on capital constraints. But the phenomenon did not set alarm bells ringing for developers.

Office-building supply in Tianjin expanded sharply last year, making stocks balloon.

Despite that, the city’s Binhai New Area, a district hoping to replicate the development seen in Shenzhen and Shanghai’s Pudong, has been turned into a huge construction site, with concrete dust obscuring the horizon.

Office buildings under construction can be seen every few blocks, some of them freshly launched.

But even some completed buildings are seeing very thin traffic flows, as lower-level shop areas are still under construction.

Yan Yi, deputy chair of Tianjin University of Finance and Economics, said the city’s office leasing market now is reaching an equilibrium and any new supply will very likely push up vacancy rates. CBRE said in its report that new projects in the pipeline will have a negative effect on the trend of rising rents, as some developers try to liquidate part of their stock to improve cash flow.

The consultancy forecasts that vacancy rates will keep rising in the next few seasons, while office rent, especially for premises in Binhai New Area, will be under pressure.

The malaise of high vacancy rates has also hit industrial property, with more than 10 factory buildings in the newly developed area left abandoned for more than six months.

A source said the property belongs to a well-known local company called Aiguozhe, which had to abandon the project due to shortage of capital.

Initial plans were to turn the 40,000 sq m Binhai site into a research and development facility with an annual production capacity worth more than 6 billion yuan (HK$7.5 billion). However, intense competition meant products that Aiguozhe planned to make in the facility were already outdated and could not get any market share. So the original plan did not work out, the source said.

Not far from the factory, an office building with the same Aiguozhe characters on its wall has also been vacant for more than a year.

Experts note that the slowing global economy has made many multinational corporations halt China expansion plans, while mainland firms are also slowing down business development for the same reason. This has triggered a drop in demand for office buildings in big cities, they say.
…

Remember the Saudi with the burns on his hands at the bombing site? While add this to the list why he should be a suspect: http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/saudi-national-questioned-in-boston-was-on-terror-watch-list.html

Since I didn’t get the data up until late last night, here is a REPOST from yesterday’s thread about the median home price being up 8% in CA:

The lack of inventory at the low end doesn’t help (COULD be a byproduct of less distress generally moving through the market…total distressed sales in February 2013 were at 33%, down from 53% the year earlier…don’t know if it went down from Feb to March).

However, seasonality is the big culprit. February is usually the annual low in median, so an increase in March is expected.

In fact, here’s some news you can use from analyzing the data from Zillow.

From 1997 to 2012 (16 full years of data that they share), the increase in median from February to March was:

The highest monthly increase 4 of 16 years;
2nd highest monthly increase 7 of 16 years;
3rd highest monthly increase 3 of 16 years;

That would be 14 of 16 years where the February to March change in median was either the highest, second highest, or third highest such monthly change for the year.

The worst showing for March was 6th highest.

And where do we go from here? All indications would point to a strong showing for April too.

April had:

The highest MoM median change in 8 of 16 years;
The 2nd highest in 2 of 16;
The 3rd highest in 2 of 16;
The 4th highest in 4 of 16;

May becomes less predictable, but usually still pretty strong…with 10 of 16 years in the top 4 monthly median changes.

If you measure a rolling 3 month change, you find that March-May is the strongest three month period in terms of changing median prices in 10 of 16 years, and second highest in 5 of 16 years.

In fact, the seasonality in median is so strong for these three months that it masked the collapse in home prices in 2008, where the median only fell by 0.1% during these three months that year.

Every other year (including 2009 and 2010), the median increased the three months ending May.

Yes, the change in median from March to May will look strong.

It does NOT mean that these three months are an indicator of what happens to the median for the whole year.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/22/news/economy/home-sales/

Home sales up 10% from a year ago!

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“Home sales slipped slightly in March, according to the latest reading from the National Association of Realtors, but were at much stronger levels than a year ago.
The Realtors’ report on the sale of previously owned homes Monday showed the annual sales rate in March came in at 492,000, down 0.6% from February, but up 10.3% from a year ago. “

Funny article about my ‘hood and generally what happens when a formerly sleepy area becomes gentrified. (Short version: more young people and more bars/pubs = conflict between oldsters and youngsters. The older people launched a website to post pictures of people they find pissing in alleys, for example.) A+ for the title of the article as well.

http://baltimoreguide.com/http:/baltimoreguide.com/cantonites-are-seeing-yellow/

“Cantonites are seeing yellowWritten by The Baltimore Guide on April 17, 2013 in Featured, Neighborhood News - 3 Comments Excessive imbibers, big drinkers with small bladders, and public urinators of all stripes be advised—somebody’s watching you, and it’s not a pretty sight.

Last month, a few Canton residents, fed up with people peeing in their flower pots, on their walls, and on their cars, launched Yougotcaughtpissing.com, a Web site devoted to shaming public urinators and drawing attention to the problem of peeing in public places.

The group members, who prefer to remain anonymous, characterize themselves as a grassroots movement that wants to take their community back from, well, the pee-ers.

The videos on Yougotcaughtpissing.com are recorded and posted by contributors from all over the city.

Recent videos from Opening Day show exhibistionic Os fans relieving themselves in front of a crowd at the ball park—and a young woman emptying her bladder in the stands.

Yougotcaughtpissing.com’s founders feel that public urination in Baltimore is a serious problem, and one not taken seriously by the city government.

“On May 6, a meeting is planned at Du Burns Arena titled ‘Addressing the trash problem in Canton,’ while the epidemic of public urination is largely ignored,” writes Yougotcaughtpissing.com’s spokesman.”

OT

RIP, Chrissy Amphlett. Class act, awesome tunes.

If you want to understand why the government and central bank have the real estate-related policies they do, simply take a quick glance at the following chart:

http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/

House prices skyrocketed due to bad lending. Then the government stepped in to maintain prices at bubble levels.

Government supported, bubble level house prices are nothing but transfer payments to the FIRE sector.

Washington State Housing Prices Headed Lower

http://picpaste.com/pics/17c52b168bba17c3c93eb46f5505ef39.1366424283.png

a home and some stocks will take you to riches never before seen.

On Meet The Press yesterday, Doris Kearns Goodwin made the point that despite the fact that 90 percent of Americans want expanded background checks, in addition to the president, it failed to pass even the Democrat-controlled Senate.

Of all the discussion on the subject, only Goodwin, and only in passing, made the observation of the power that special interests have in the federal government. It really does seem like they’re doing their best to avoid noticing the emperor’s new clothes.

Everything with a dollar-denominated price rallied like crazy today — even Bitcoin!

“What’s Going On Here?” indeed!

Bitcoins back above $120 as wild swings continue
April 22, 2013, 12:18 PM

Bitcoin prices have rebounded from a sharp downturn earlier this month, and are back above $120, notes Nicholas Colas at ConvergEx.

The electronic currency, which Colas calls “the Esperanto of money,” saw its prices surge as high as $260 earlier this month, before plunging to around $60 over a period of 6 days, he notes.

“Investing in bitcoin has been a white-knuckle ride so far, and nothing in its near future points to a different trajectory,” Colas said. However the currency is beginning to attract the attention of venture capitalists raising some interesting possibilities.

VCs will have three ways to profit, according to Colas: exchanges, service offerings for individuals, and service offerings for businesses.

In the end, the venture funds “must address the security issues of the system first, and then work on making bitcoin a relevant currency for global financial transactions.”

But the entire experiment, which can still end in disaster for investors continues to illustrate some startling truths including that “Trust in technology can trump belief in government institutions, even in notionally free societies.”

– Tom Bemis

If you haven’t checked out Oil City lately…

http://www.zillow.com/homes/Oil-City-PA_rb/2.0-_baths/3-_beds/

Martial Law looks like fun.

Americans Ordered Out Of Homes At Gunpoint By SWAT teams

Steve Watson
April 22, 2013

The video, shot by a resident from their own house across the street, shows police barking orders at men and women as they order them at gunpoint to identify themselves, put their hands on their heads, and get out of their own home. They are then ordered to run down the street to be further frisked by police as scores of armed militarized cops look on.

The story floated in the mainstream media that the door to door searches were conducted with the voluntary consent of the residents of Watertown is clearly false. 9000+ Police locked down an entire city and went in with full force, with armored vehicles and combat gear, all to search for an injured 19 year old kid who turned out to be cowering in someone’s back yard.

http://www.infowars.com/shocking-footage-americans-ordered-out-of-homes-at-gunpoint-by-swat-teams/ - -

Present-day Federal Reserve Notes are not backed by convertibility to any specific commodity, but only by the legal requirement that they are issued against collateral.

Sales of existing homes unexpectedly fell 0.6% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.92 million in March, the National Association of Realtors reported Monday. Analysts had been expecting an increase of 5.03 million homes. February existing home sales were revised down to 4.95 million from an original estimate of 4.98 million.

The numbers in March continue to point to a healthy housing recovery: existing home sales are up 10.3% compared to a year ago and the median home price in March ($184,300) is nearly 12% higher than it was in March 2012. Last month also marks the largest year-over-year price growth since November 2005.

Related: Toll Brothers CEO: ‘Housing Recovery Is the Real Deal This Time’

David Rosenberg, chief economist and strategist at Gluskin Sheff, says growth in the housing market could be slowing. He notes that first-time buyers are still hesitant about taking on mortgage debt and their absence from the market is the “missing link” in the recovery.

“Most of this recovery in the housing sector is probably behind us,” Rosenberg tells The Daily Ticker. Sales will “probably level off for the next several months” which is not “the worst thing in the world.”

[Click here to check home loan rates in your area.]

First-time buyers accounted for 30% of existing home sale purchases in March versus 33% just one year ago. Even with mortgage rates sitting at historical lows – the 30-year fixed rate was 3.57% in March – potential new buyers are choosing to sit on the sidelines as institutional investors and hedge funds briskly snap up available properties.

With apologies to Office Space:
And now, a word from the president!
Damn it feels good to be a banksta
Gettin voted into the white house
Everything lookin good to the people of the world
But the mafia family is my boss
So every now and then I owe a favor gettin’ down
Like lettin’ a big drug shipment through
And send ‘em to the poor community
So we can bust you know who
So voters of the world keep supportin’ me
And I promise to take you very far
Other leaders better not upset me
Or I’ll send a million troops to die at war
To all you republicans, that helped me win
I sincerely like to thank you
’cause now I got the world swingin’ from my nvts
And damn it feels good to be a banksta

Another day, another foiled attempted terrorist attack on North American soil…

Police: 2 Arrested in Al-Qaida Linked Canada Plot
VIDEO: Criminal investigation reveals plot targeting Toronto railway.
Canadian Officials Stop Terror Plot
By CHARMAINE NORONHA and ROB GILLIES Associated Press
TORONTO April 22, 2013 (AP)

Two men were arrested and charged with plotting a terrorist attack against a Canadian passenger train with support from al-Qaida elements in Iran, police said Monday. The case bolstered allegations by some governments and experts of a relationship of convenience between Shiite-led Iran and the predominantly Sunni Arab terrorist network.

Chiheb Esseghaier, 30, and Raed Jaser, 35, had “direction and guidance” from al-Qaida members in Iran, though there was no reason to think the planned attacks were state-sponsored, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Assistant Commissioner James Malizia said. Police said the men did not get financial support from al-Qaida, but declined to provide more details.

“This is the first known al-Qaida planned attack that we’ve experienced in Canada,” Superintendent Doug Best told a news conference. Officials in Washington and Toronto said it had no connections to last week’s bombings at the Boston Marathon finish line.

The arrests in Montreal and Toronto raised questions about Iran’s murky relationship with the terrorist network. Bruce Riedel, a CIA veteran who is now a Brookings Institution senior fellow, said al-Qaida has had a clandestine presence in Iran since at least 2001 and that neither the terror group nor Tehran speak openly about it.

“The Iranian regime kept some of these elements under house arrest,” he said in an email to The Associated Press. “Some probably operate covertly. AQ members often transit Iran traveling between hideouts in Pakistan and Iraq.”
…

Tomorrow should be another blowout rally day on Wall Street?

How do I know?

1. China’s growth is slowing.

2. Oil prices and other commodity prices are falling as a result.

3. Used home sales are falling in the U.S.

4. The Eurozone? Fuggetaboutit.

1. + 2. + 3. + 4. = OKRA!

Gold rally, we scarcely knew thee…