The Housing Bubble

Foreclosure hotline, Tequisha speaking.

Tequisha, I bought my house in 1999 for $110,000, I took my equity out 4 times as my housing investment increased to a value of $450,000, I haven’t made a mortgage payment since January 2007, I have defaulted on 2 loan modifications, my Hardest Hit money has just run out and Blackstone just bought the same house as I have across the street for $75,000. Can you tell me where my check is from the $25 billion National Mortgage Settlement?

New county foreclosure hotline with cash increase for legal aid

by Kim Miller

Palm Beach County’s Legal Aid Society got an infusion of $364,000 last month from the National Mortgage Settlement, allowing it to hire additional attorneys and establish a new foreclosure hotline.

The hotline number is 561-655-8944, ext. 326.

Tequisha Myles, supervising attorney for the Fair Housing Project and Elder Law Project with legal aid, said the increase in funds allowed her to hire four additional foreclosure attorneys to the former team of just two. Legal aid is also now offering help with homeowners association foreclosures, something they didn’t do before when staff time was limited.

“We are just trying to encourage as many people as we can to take advantage of what we have,” Myles said.

The money from the settlement was designated for legal aid by Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, but if it isn’t spent by June 30, it will go back to the state, Myles said.

The $25 billion settlement, finalized last year, is between the nation’s attorneys general and its five largest banks to atone for foreclosure-related wrongdoing.
Legal aid lawyers will give clients advice about the foreclosure process, prepare responses to foreclosure lawsuits, represent clients in court, assist in obtaining loan modifications and help with bankruptcy preparation.

They will also counsel clients who believe they are victims of foreclosure-rescue scams.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 26th, 2013 at 8:05 am and is filed under Florida economy, Foreclosures, Mortgage fraud, Mortgages, Real estate bust. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Lotsa nice tidbits here; Romney may as well be flipping burgers. Where do these guys get the time and energy to run from country to country for the sole purpose of hiding wealth? I don’t have the time or energy to do my laundry. Can’t they just pay their damn taxes once and be done with it, and go live quietly somewhere without causing trouble? Like they can’t get by on $6 billion instead of $8 billion?

Billionaires Flee Havens as Trillions Pursued Offshore

By David de Jong & Robert LaFranco - Apr 29, 2013 (bloomibergi)

“Billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, Russia’s 14th-richest person, and his wife, Elena Rybolovleva, have been brawling for almost five years in at least seven countries over his $9.5 billion fortune…

According to Tax Justice Network, a U.K.-based organization that campaigns for transparency in the financial system, wealthy individuals were hiding as much as $32 trillion offshore at the end of 2010. Fewer than 100,000 people own $9.8 trillion of offshore assets, according to research compiled by former McKinsey & Co. economist James Henry.

Delaware is the legal home to more than half of the corporate entities in the U.S. The state’s favorable tax laws cuts companies’ tax burdens by an average of 40 percent, according to a 2011 study by Jacob Thornock at the University of Washington Foster School of Business. ”

——————

The headline on the current issue of Washingtonian Magazine: “SOLD! Housing is back! Where Prices are Climbing and Homes are Selling Fast… Local Home-Buying Success Stories… Your House is Worth More Than You Think… Best Places to Live.. 100 Golden Zip codes”

Image of the cover is here (big PDF):
http://primland.com/images/media/pdf/201304_washingtonian.pdf

It’s a brand new issue, so there is very little online. I can’t find any text. Not that it matters — I’m sure it’s as puke-inducing as it was in 2005. I’m on the home-owning side of the equation now, but even I’m skeptical. There isn’t enough fuel to keep this bubble going.

Comment by goon squad
2013-04-27 07:01:07

the kool-aid drinkers have convinced themselves that it tastes just fine, even as they climb over piles of bodies to get to the kool-aid punchbowl

Good luck to U.S. consumer product companies who depend on sales to depressed Europe to boost their bottom lines.

EARNINGS
April 28, 2013, 8:24 p.m. ET
Companies Feel Pinch on Sales in Europe
By KATE LINEBAUGH, SAM SCHECHNER and JAMES R. HAGERTY

Hiding behind the profit gains of America’s biggest companies is a worrying slowdown in sales growth.

U.S. companies ranging from International Business Machines Corp. (IBM +0.19%) to United Technologies Corp. (UTX -1.05%) to 3M Co. (MMM -1.05%) to Xerox Corp. (XRX -1.53%) have missed revenue forecasts, hurt by a combination of Europe’s malaise, a stronger dollar and sluggish consumer spending.

With earnings reports in from more than half the companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, first-quarter revenue for the group is expected to shrink 0.3% from a year earlier, according to Thomson Reuters. That would cut short the sales improvement reported at the end of last year and mark the third quarter out of the past four in which revenues have failed to grow by 1% or more.

The sales figures are a troubling sign that business and consumer demand remain weak nearly four years after the recession. They are also evidence that a soft patch is developing in the U.S. economy, as optimism earlier in the year gives way to more sobering data on growth in gross domestic product, retail sales and manufacturing. In response, many companies are cutting jobs and curbing investments in an effort to prop up profits, moves that could make it harder for demand to recover.

One big problem for U.S. companies is Europe. Executives weren’t expecting much from the region last quarter. But many found conditions tougher than anticipated. And some of them are increasingly worried that while Southern Europe’s hardest-hit countries may be bottoming out, there is room left for the bigger economies like France and Germany to deteriorate.

“Demand is not recovering so far” in Europe, Whirlpool Corp. (WHR -1.00%) Chief Executive Jeff Fettig said in an interview.
…

Winnipeg Free Press - ONLINE EDITION
Southern Europe’s economic depression deepens
By: Staff Writer
Posted: 04/28/2013 6:02 PM | Comments: 0

Southern Europe’s economic depression deepens. In Spain, 6.2 million people — a record 27 per cent of the labour force — can’t find a job. Greece’s unemployment rate is even higher, 27.2 per cent; in Italy, it’s 11.6 per cent. For young people, the jobless rates are double or, in the case of Italy, triple that. Clearly, economic growth is urgently needed, lest a generation of Europeans be forced either to emigrate or to waste their prime earning years — to say nothing of a prolonged slump’s implications for democracy and political stability.

Yet in a recent visit to Washington, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, whose government pretty much calls the shots in Europe, defended the current policy — which he described as “force member states, oblige member states, to stick to European rules, to reduce deficits in a, of course, balanced way, to enhance their competitiveness by structural reforms,” until “European mechanisms” buy enough time for them to regain access to financial markets. Schaeuble added, in words that must chill the heart of every young job-seeker from Bilbao to the Balkans, “No one should expect that Europe will deliver high growth rates in the coming years.”

This is a recipe for trouble. No doubt Schaeuble meant to state a grim fact, not to celebrate it. And his government is right to insist that Europe’s less-competitive economies reform their tax codes, labour markets and regulations in exchange for (mostly) German financial support.

But with such unemployment, it’s counterproductive to press for dramatic deficit reduction in the short run. This is especially true given that Germany and other wealthy Northern European economies are themselves cutting deficits, which tends to curtail their demand for goods — including products from the south.

Schaeuble argued, “If you promise to deliver immediately growth, you will only create the next bubble. That’s what we are decided not to do. Therefore, we need time.” Easy for him to say: Germany’s unemployment rate is only a fifth that of Spain. It is achieving this by out-competing its European neighbours for export markets. Germany’s trade surplus in 2012 was more than six per cent of its gross domestic product — a far higher ratio than that of any other major economy, including Asian export powerhouses like China.

In short, Europe’s predicament is not simply due to Mediterranean profligacy. It results from a profound imbalance between uncompetitive Italy, Spain and Greece on the one hand and hyper-competitive Germany on the other — within a currency union that denies the less competitive the traditional remedy of devaluation.
…

10% of Greeks live in extreme poverty: UN expert
A protester holds a Greek flag outside the ministry of administrative reform in Athens on April 26, 2013.
Fri Apr 26, 2013 5:26PM

A senior UN investigator says axed benefits has left a growing number of Greeks without health insurance and about 10% of the population living in “extreme poverty”.

Earlier on Friday, senior United Nations investigator Cephas Lumina strongly criticized the “excessively rigid” demands of the bailout program, saying Greece is trailing on its human rights responsibilities as a tenth of its population live in “extreme poverty.”
…

Europe
Cohousing Tempts Italians During Real Estate Crisis
By Marco Tistarelli, Epoch Times | April 26, 2013
Last Updated: April 26, 2013 1:07 am

Number Zero facade in Turin, Italy. The doors opened on the March 4, 2013, after over five years of work. (Matteo Nobili / cohousingnumerozero.org)

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* No Party Wins Majority in Italy, Markets Dive
* Italy’s Grillo says Country “de Facto out of the Euro”

Italian Premier-designate Enrico Letta speaks during a press conference at the Quirinale Presidential Palace in Rome, Saturday, April 27, 2013. Italy has finally has a new government, a coalition of Berlusconi’s forces and center-left rivals who forged an unusual alliance to break a two-month stalemate following inconclusive elections. Enrico Letta, a center-left leader, will be premier in the government, which marks the latest political comeback by Silvio Berlusconi. (AP Photo/Domenico Stinellis)

With the Italian real estate market in free fall, increasing numbers of people are tumbling through the gaps. Too rich to claim social housing and too poor to afford a traditional house, some are turning to a new approach—cohousing.

“The concept of cohousing originated in northern Europe in the ’60s,” says Nadia Simionato, spokeswoman for the Italian network Cohousing.it “Then it spread to other countries and reached Italy in 2006.”

The basic idea is to combine in a condominium the autonomy of a private house with the benefits that come from sharing space and resources such as a garden, gymnasium, laundry, gardens, and children’s day care. The whole project is collectively designed and chosen by those who will live in those spaces.

“There’s a ‘gray zone’ of the Italian population who cannot afford a traditional house but that is too rich to access the rankings for the social housing,” says Simionato. “Through the cohousing we think we can solve this critical point.”
…

If we measure home prices by monthly payment where are we in the game?

americans want to lever up as much of their future income as possible. The problem becomes apparent when there is no income in the future or the income does not go up nearly as fast as inflation. When it all catches up to them they realize all their paycheck is going to the banks.

Europe
Iceland Returns Center-right Parties To Power
By Associated Press | April 28, 2013
Last Updated: April 28, 2013 8:15 am

REYKJAVIK, Iceland (AP) — In a dramatic about-face, Icelandic voters have returned to power the center-right parties that led the national economy to collapse five years ago.

With most votes counted early Sunday, the Independence and Progressive Parties — who governed Iceland for decades before the 2008 crash — each had 19 seats in Iceland’s 63-seat parliament, the Althingi.

The parties, who promise to ease Icelanders’ economic pain with tax cuts and debt relief, are likely to form a coalition government.

Voters shunned the Social Democrat-led coalition that has spent four years trying to turn the country around with painful austerity measures. The Social Democrats took nine seats and coalition partners the Left-Greens seven.

Independence Party leader Bjarni Benediktsson says voters opted for “a plan that would bring us quicker out of the crisis.”

Profit, Protection, Despite Cartel Intervention – April, 2013 Update
– Posted Friday, 26 April 2013

“Then, when the Fed’s fire hoses started spraying an elephant soup of liquidity injections in every direction and its balance sheet grew by $1.3 trillion in just thirteen weeks compared to $850 billion during its first ninety-four years, I became convinced that the Fed was flying by the seat of its pants, making it up as it went along. It was evident that its aim was to stop the hissy fit on Wall Street and that the threat of a Great Depression 2.0 was just a cover story for a panicked spree of money printing that exceeded any other episode in recorded human history….

The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America, 2013

The private-for-profit Fed’s Intervention in the Markets on behalf of their owners/shareholders, the Mega-Banks, is an old and ongoing story. Unfortunately, it is having several ongoing and worsening Negative Consequences including those Stockman points out, on Investors and Main Street in general.
…

When is the Fed scheduled to raise interest rates: Is it 2015, 2025, or some later point?

Nouriel Roubini | The trapdoors at the Fed’s exit
Fed’s liquidity injections are not creating credit, but rather boosting leverage and risk-taking in financial markets
First Published: Mon, Apr 29 2013. 06 24 PM IST

The ongoing weakness of America’s economy—where deleveraging in the private and public sectors continues apace—has led to stubbornly high unemployment and sub-par growth. The effects of fiscal austerity—a sharp rise in taxes and a sharp fall in government spending since the beginning of the year—are undermining economic performance even more.

Indeed, recent data has effectively silenced hints by some Federal Reserve officials that the Fed should begin exiting from its current third (and indefinite) round of quantitative easing (QE3). Given slow growth, high unemployment (which has fallen only because discouraged workers are leaving the labour force), and inflation well below the Fed’s target, this is no time to start constraining liquidity.
The problem is that the Fed’s liquidity injections are not creating credit for the real economy, but rather boosting leverage and risk-taking in financial markets. The issuance of risky junk bonds under loose covenants and with excessively low interest rates is increasing; the stock market is reaching new highs, despite the growth slowdown; and money is flowing to high-yielding emerging markets.
Even the periphery of the euro zone is benefiting from the wall of liquidity unleashed by the Fed, the Bank of Japan, and other major central banks. With interest rates on government bonds in the US, Japan, the UK, Germany, and Switzerland at ridiculously low levels, investors are on a global quest for yield.

It may be too soon to say that many risky assets have reached bubble levels, and that leverage and risk-taking in financial markets is becoming excessive. But the reality is that credit and asset/equity bubbles are likely to form in the next two years, owing to loose US monetary policy. The Fed has signalled that QE3 will continue until the labour market has improved sufficiently (likely in early 2014), with the interest rate at 0% until unemployment has fallen at least to 6.5% (most likely no earlier than the beginning of 2015).

Even when the Fed starts to raise interest rates (some time in 2015), it will proceed slowly. In the previous tightening cycle, which began in 2004, it took the Fed two years to normalize the policy rate. This time, the unemployment rate and household and government debt are much higher. Rapid normalization—like that undertaken in the space of a year in 1994—would crash asset markets and risk leading to a hard economic landing.
…

Suddenly the commodities crash has morphed into a dollar crash! Get ready to pay higher prices at the pump again, America.

And kudos to the gold bugs who kept the faith.

April 29, 2013, 4:33 a.m. EDT
Gold futures rebound over 1% as dollar weakens
By V. Phani Kumar and Barbara Kollmeyer, MarketWatch

MADRID (MarketWatch) — Gold futures rebounded on Monday to recover more than what they had lost Friday as the U.S. dollar’s weakness spurred buying in the precious metal.

Adding to gains seen in Asia, gold futures for delivery in June (GCM3 +0.91%) climbed $19.90, or 1.5%, to $1,473.50 an ounce.

The bounce comes after prices retreated $8.40 in a regular session on the Comex division of New York Mercantile Exchange Friday. The metal recorded gains of more than 4.2% last week, for its first advance in five.

Spot prices of gold rose $6 to $1,468.90 an ounce.

The Hong Kong traded units of SPDR Gold Trust (HK:2840 +0.73%) exchange-traded fund rose 0.5%.

The advance came as the dollar extended its fall on Monday, with the ICE dollar index DXY -0.33% — a measure of the greenback’s performance against six major global currencies — sliding to 82.154 by early European trading, compared with 82.484 in North America late on Friday.

A weaker dollar often helps support prices of commodities by making them cheaper for holders of other currencies.
…

Spanish house prices need to fall further, Goldman warns
Spanish house prices need to fall another 10pc, posing fresh problems for the country’s troubled banking sector, Goldman Sachs has warned.
By Philip Aldrick, Economics Editor
1:39PM BST 27 Apr 2013

House prices have already collapsed 30pc from their high but are still over-valued, the investment bank claimed as it called for a fundamental restructuring of the country’s lenders.

The warning that Spain’s banks are holding the country back followed the government’s decision last week to tear up its deficit reduction plan in the face of collapsing growth.

In a deal agreed with the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund – two of the architects of the original round of austerity – Madrid will have two more years to bring its deficit down below 3pc. Spain took €41bn of European bail-out money to fix its broken banking sector.

The decision was taken to relieve pressure on the economy, which is now forecast to decline 1.3pc this year rather than the 0.5pc previously predicted, and help provide jobs. More than 55pc of the youth are unemployed.

The problems in the eurozone’s periphery have led to calls for European Central Bank president Mario Draghi to cut interest rates from 0.75pc next week. The IMF has said the ECB has room to ease conditions.
…

Business / Personal Finance
Why Canadians are stuck in a low interest rate trap
It started with dotcom bust in 2000. Ever since cheap money has been a blessing and curse.

Former Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney, left, and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty have struggled with the problem of low interest rates.
By: Adam Mayers Personal Finance Editor, Published on Sat Apr 27 2013

Western economies are caught in a low interest rate trap that is proving a difficult problem to fix.

Rates have been so low for so long, that the trick is how to wean the patient off the cheap-money drug without causing an economic collapse. Nobody knows how to do it safely, which is why rates are bound to stay low for a while yet.

My first mortgage in the early 90s was a one-year term at 14.25 per cent. It kept me awake at night, wondering how I’d cope if rates kept rising. This week you can get a five-year, fixed term under 3 per cent.

Back then, there wasn’t much borrowing slack either. A home-secured line of credit was a decade away. Businesses had credit lines, but everyone else had loans with fixed terms which meant you had to pay them off.

Now you can get a line of credit with a 3.5 per cent rate, secured against your house, with an option to pay only the interest every month. The banks use that as a selling feature. You can spend $10,000 on a holiday, or a renovation, or new furniture, anything you want and only pay $29.16 a month. Of course, you still owe the $10,000.

Savers, meanwhile, are being punished by pitiful rates of return that are less than inflation. It takes one dollar 37 years to double at a rate of 1.9 per cent, which is the best rate I could find for a one-year Guaranteed Investment Certificate (GIC) last week.

These artificially low rates have created the situation where, as of mid-March, according to Statistics Canada, we owed $165 for every $100 of disposable income. This isn’t far off where Americans were just as their housing market collapsed.

This great borrowing spree has deep roots, which is why it’s such an intractable problem. Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty go on about it, but they’ve caused it, moving in lockstep with central bankers elsewhere.

This all began on March 11, 2000 when the U.S. Nasdaq technology stock index peaked and the ‘dotcom’ bust began. Two years later, the Nasdaq had lost nearly 80 per cent of its value as internet stocks with high hopes, but no businesses disappeared. In the middle of that, on Sept. 11, 2001, came the attacks on the twin towers in New York

The George Bush administration wanted to cushion the economic impact, so the U.S. Federal Reserve pushed rates down to keep consumers borrowing. The policy worked so well it created a super-heated housing boom. This disaster in the making galloped along until 2008, when at its last gasp, mortgages were being offered to people without jobs.

The housing collapse threatened to create a new Depression. The Fed pushed rates down again, as low as they could go. Not much more than a year later, in 2009 ,came the European debt crisis. Countries, rather than people, had been living beyond their means for decades. With banking systems teetering, the answer was to lower rates. Even so, Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Greece and more recently Cyprus are on life support.

The big surprise is that all the cheap money hasn’t fixed a thing. It can’t because consumers everywhere are tapped out. If not, we should have long since seen a wave of inflation leading to rising rates. That expectation saw gold, an inflation hedge, gradually rise to $1,900 (U.S.) an ounce by September, 2012. With no inflation in sight, gold is down 23 per cent from its peak.
…

The czech people are bad. They bombed Boston and now Praguistan.

Explosion shakes central Prague, as many as 40 injured

First openly gay major sport athlete is Jason Collins of the Celtics. A good spokesman for the cause, super smart, class act.

His roommate at Stanford was Joe Kennedy (now a congressman from Mass.).

I watched Obama’s White House Correspondent’s Dinner remarks. They struck a good tone, very amusing at first, smoothly transitioning into solemnity for the tragedies in Boston and Texas, then ending on an uplifting note.

One thing he said bothered me. He said there was an increasing cynicism in the American public. I don’t think it’s cynicism. It’s a better understanding of human motivation, across the spectrum of human endeavor. From railroad worker to federal judge to to retail clerk to federal politician.

Politicians want us to believe what they say and ignore what they do. A greater public understanding of human motivation means that people are paying more attention to what politicians do and believing less of what they say.

The Founders didn’t create a system of checks and balances because they were cynical. They created a system of checks and balances because they were realistic and understood human nature.

“Get what you can get for your house today because it’s going to be much less tomorrow for many years to come.”

http://www.realestateeconomywatch.com/2013/04/investors-no-longer-in-the-driver%E2%80%99s-seat/

Let’s hope this is a trend, 21.8% of transactions are investors, down from 25.3% in May 2012.

If investors are indeed cash flow focused, they should have a lesser and lesser appetite the higher prices go, and you would expect this number to continue to fall, which would be good.

If investors are “momentum players” as they were during the run-up in 2004-2006, then you would expect this number to stay flat if not increase as prices rise more quickly.

How much less affordable will be housing after the full weight of obama care hits next year?

—————————

Panic: Democrats Fear Another Obamacare Backlash
Town Hall | Apr. 29, 2013 | Guy Benson

Within months of Democrats ramming through Obamacare without a single Republican vote, the American people responded, pummeling the president’s party at the polls. Republicans gained 63 seats in the House, six United States Senators, six governorships, and nearly 700 seats in state legislatures nationwide. Conservatives had their temporary political revenge, we were told, but Democrats would get the last laugh because Obamacare was sure to become more popular once Republicans’ scurrilous smears against the law were shown to be false. How’s that working out?

Democrats in both houses of Congress said some members of their party were getting nervous that they could pay a political price if the rollout of the law was messy or if premiums went up significantly.

“We are hearing from a lot of small businesses in New Hampshire that do not know how to comply with the law.” In addition, Mrs. Shaheen said, “restaurants that employ people for about 30 hours a week are trying to figure out whether it would be in their interest to reduce the hours” of those workers, so the restaurants could avoid the law’s requirement to offer health coverage to full-time employees. The White House officials “acknowledged that these are real concerns, and that we’ve got to do more to address them,” Mrs. Shaheen said. Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa and chairman of the appropriations subcommittee on health care, said he was extremely upset with Mr. Obama’s decision to take money from public health prevention programs and use it to publicize the new law, which creates insurance marketplaces in every state.

Obamacare is impossibly complicated to comply with, is impeding hiring, and is causing businesses to lay off workers and cut back on other employees’ hours? Why, who could have possibly seen that coming? Oh, that’s right — every single critic of Obamacare could. And did. Back to the grumbling Democrats:

Obamacare is hiking up people’s premiums? Why, who could have possibly… Katie noted last week that other Hill Democrats are nervously conceding that the, ahem, “Affordable Care Act” doesn’t actually contain costs either. Shocking, I know. The Left is spooked because the law they force-fed the American people is shaping up to be a “train wreck” and a “third world experience,” to quote the law’s chief author and administrator, respectively.

Shortage of pizza makers in Italy

KEEEEEEEEEEEEEYRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASH!!!

What was that?!

You know that house you made the mistake of buying? Well the value of it just fell through the floor leaving a smoldering moon-crater.

Beware reading public. Beware.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/capitalism-is-killing-our-morals-our-future-2013-04-27?pagenumber=1

I’d say he doesn’t spend enough time on the take over/manipulation of markets and regulation by the elites, markets are not free anymore. Not to mention the take over of the MSM, and gov. His summary is spot on though. Things are going to get worse and theres not much anyone can do about it until the tipping point is reached.

So long as stocks, housing and gold keep going up, the U.S. economy will do just fine.

BREAKING NEWS U.S. Treasury Says It Will Pay Down $35 Billion in Debt April-June

Consumer Demand Cools Even as U.S. Home Market Holds Up: Economy
By Shobhana Chandra - Apr 29, 2013 9:49 AM PT

Spending by U.S. consumers cooled in March after the strongest gain in five months, showing the biggest part of the economy lost momentum as the first quarter drew to a close.

Purchases advanced 0.2 percent, more than projected and reflecting a surge in outlays for utilities and other services that is unlikely to be repeated, after a 0.7 percent increase the prior month, Commerce Department figures showed. Another report showed more Americans than forecast signed contracts to purchase previously owned homes in March.

Higher payroll taxes that took effect in January may be starting to take a bigger toll on the American worker, chipping away at the consumer spending that accounts for about 70 percent of the economy. With growth projected to ease this quarter and inflation subdued, Federal Reserve policy makers meeting this week will probably keep pursuing the record monetary stimulus that’s helped breathe life into the housing recovery.

“Consumers won’t be able to sustain the current pace if income growth continues to disappoint,” said Millan Mulraine, an economist for TD Securities USA LLC in New York, who accurately projected the gain in spending. “The weak inflation backdrop is likely to cause the Fed to at least keep purchasing” securities.

The National Association of Realtors today said its index of pending existing-home sales increased 1.5 percent in March after a revised 1 percent decline that was larger than first reported.

Mortgage Rates

Historically low mortgage rates and improvement in the labor market are helping power the housing market. A pickup in property values may prompt more Americans to put their homes on the market and help alleviate a limited supply of available dwellings as the spring selling season begins.
…
El-Erian Says Economy Not as Good as Markets Imply 5:53

Survey: 87% of Americans ‘Not Confident’ About Their Retirement (And What You Can Do About It!)
Wednesday, 27 Mar 2013 10:46 AM
By Newsmax Wires

Despite the Dow recently hitting all-time highs, millions of Americans still have a dismal outlook when it comes to their own ability to retire, a new survey reveals.

Conducted by the Employment Benefit Research Institute, the survey reveals a startling fact: A mere 13% of workers are “very confident” when it comes to having enough money to retire.

More than twice that number, 28% of respondents, said that they were “not at all confident” about their ability to retire comfortably (triple the number from three years ago).

More than a fifth of respondents — 21% — said they were “not too confident” and 38% said they were “somewhat confident.”
…

NE Ohio: Cuyahoga Land Bank offering low interest renovation loans up to $10K for buyers of certain vacant Euclid homes

EUCLID, Ohio - The Cuyahoga Land Bank is now working with the city of Euclid to make it even easier for individuals and families to own and renovate vacant homes listed in the land bank inventory.

The land bank has launched the Advantage Plus Loan Program in the city of Euclid, which builds upon the Cuyahoga Land Bank’s Owner Occupant Buyer Advantage Program.

The city of Euclid and Neighborhood Housing Services of Greater Cleveland have signed on as partners for this new “loan” program.

The new Advantage Plus Loan Program is geared specifically toward prospective owner-occupiers, and people that want to rehabilitate a property in order to make it their home.

The Cuyahoga Land Bank encourages anyone to bid on properties in its inventory, but also understands many properties need extensive work, which requires the purchaser to have either renovation expertise or the ability to pay contractors to make the necessary repairs.

Participants are required to provide proof of funds to cover the acquisition, renovation costs, and a 10 percent renovation cost reserve of the property they purchase; the Advantage Plus Loan Program helps address this financial challenge.

“Renovating one of our properties can be a wonderful opportunity to get a great home for a great price,” said Cuyahoga Land Bank President, Gus Frangos. “But it can also be daunting to someone that is not a professional rehabber.”

“We designed the Owner Occupant Advantage Program to make it easier for the average person to be able to make rehabbing an old property the path to their dream home. Advantage Plus Loan takes it one step further by assisting with the expense of repairs.”

I don’t see $10000 as going very far at all for this type of house. Cleveland Habitat for Humanity is also shifting its attention to rehabbing houses like this in the same general, as opposed to simply building new. Is this just a rehab housing bubble?

“Falling housing prices to dramatically lower and more affordable levels is bullish optimism.”

Foreclosures surge in 32 states

http://www.dimespring.com/articles/2-smart-steps-to-buying-a-home-in-foreclosure

https://beaconecon.com/archive/presentations/CSAThornberg.pdf

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/apr/26/business/la-fi-himi-thornberg-20130428

How about spending some of the Mortgage Settlement winnings on pizza training. Didn’t I see there was a pizza maker shortage.

“agreeing to spend some of the state’s $200 million National Mortgage Settlement winnings on college dorm fees, Habitat for Humanity and domestic violence centers.”

Posted: 3:02 p.m. Monday, April 29, 2013

Fast-track foreclosure bill approved by House lawmakers

By Kimberly Miller

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Florida lawmakers moved forward on two closely watched housing bills Monday, passing a plan to fast-track foreclosures, and agreeing to spend some of the state’s $200 million National Mortgage Settlement winnings on college dorm fees, Habitat for Humanity and domestic violence centers.

The House passed its plan to hasten the state’s foreclosure process in an 87 to 26 vote that sent it to the Senate for review. The bill, HB 87, has been debated in various forms during four consecutive legislative sessions.