The Housing Bubble

Is now a good time for dips to buy?

Rising gas prices and the effect on the economy ?

Oil futures hit multi-month highs Friday over concerns that escalating tensions in Iraq will spiral into civil war. The White House signaled that it would consider airstrikes to stop Sunni militants from seizing Iraq’s oil fields and other major Iraqi cities. Sunni fighters took control of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, earlier this week and may pose a threat to Baghdad. Iraq produces about 3.5 million barrels of oil per day, making it the eighth-largest oil producer in the world.

Dan Dicker, author of Oil’s Endless Bid, says long-term concerns over Iraq’s oil producing capabilities and instability are pushing prices to ten-month highs.

“We’ve waited quite a long time for Iraq to get to this production level,” he says in the video above. “The demand profile continues to increase and there’s no question that prices will rise in the long term.”

Dicker predicts oil will hit $130 a barrel by 2015. The fighting and turmoil in Iraq will also cause U.S. gasoline prices to jump, just as the nation enters peak driving season. The average price of gasoline is $3.64 a gallon, according to GasBuddy.com.

Dicker notes that demand for oil has picked up in Africa, Brazil, India and other emerging countries as demand drops off in the West. Oil-producing nations have been under pressure to deliver more crude to the market. Chaos in Libya has forced production to decrease by 10% and Syria’s civil war has severely curtailed its producing ability. Analysts were hoping that Iraq’s oil output would rise to 6 million barrels per day from current levels.

West Texas Intermediate was up 0.2% to $106.76 a barrel in recent trading.

“‘No wonder a CBS News/New York Times poll showed that 69 percent of Americans believe the economy is in bad shape, and 66 percent believe it isn’t getting any better. We often say that the recovery is fake, and it is.”

This should be the weekend discussion. We see most of the trucking companies coming to our docks almost empty. The drivers say the economy has picked up a bit. Another one remarked that he lost 12K in salary last year as the company requested he should take time off. It’s hit or miss a common expression among drivers. Week to week or day by day is another expression used regularly. Trucking is usually a leading indicator of the state of the economy.

What do other HBB’s see in their work, businesses or towns?

Can the PTB clarify what exactly is meant by “affordable” when it comes to housing?

I was recently trying to parse the new head of HUD’s statements on the housing market. He crowed about government policies which have boosted house prices (”added trillions in equity”) yet said affordable housing was a goal as well. Contradictory goals it would seem.

Just trying to move away from the Alice In Wonderland nature of government real estate agency pronouncements:

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’ ” Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’ ”
“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument’,” Alice objected.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

– Through The Looking Glass

So, you can generally borrow again from GSEs 7 years after a foreclosure, and 3 years after a short sale.

Foreclosures really ramped up in late 2007/early 2008 (6.5-7 years ago).
Short sales really started ramping up in 2012 (2.5 years ago).

http://www.realtytrac.com/content/foreclosure-market-report/short-sale-surge-in-2012–report-from-realtytrac-on-cdpe-live-broadcast-7135

My topic for discussion…will there be an effect from this in 2015?