The Housing Bubble Blog

It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "A Lake Tahoe housing shortage is leaving more residents in dire straits. Ironically, though, Tahoe has plenty of houses. They just sit vacant most of the year. More than half of Tahoe homes are vacation residences owned by people who live elsewhere....

A report from the Globe and Mail in Canada. "A sharp drop in the number of luxury sales in the Greater Toronto Area pulled down housing prices nationally last month as the country’s largest real estate market cools off and braces for higher interest rates. The slowdown marked the fourth consecutive...

A report from MarketWatch. "Housing starts ran at a 1.16 million seasonally adjusted annual rate, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. That’s 4.8% below June’s pace, and 5.6% lower compared to a year ago. It also missed the MarketWatch consensus forecast of a 1.23 million rate. 'The economics of...

A report from the News Tribune in Washington. "What goes up will — eventually — come down, bubble or no bubble. A recent national survey by ValueInsured, which sells policies to guard against falling home values, put the spotlight on our red-hot housing market and the question, 'Are we approaching...

A report from KTNV in Nevada. "Rob Maes recently moved to Las Vegas to pursue a new career. On Sunday, the 23-year-old purchased his very first home. 'Definitely excited,' he said, 'it still kind of really hasn't sunk in.' Maes's new home, in a gated community near Elkhorn Road and Durango Drive,...

A report from Bloomberg on New York. "For Manhattan landlords, Christmas usually comes in July, a month when demand for apartments surges and rents go up. Not this year. Leasing costs in the borough dropped 1.9 percent from July 2016, the first decline for the month in at least five years,...

A weekend topic on public perceptions, media coverage, and ramifications of a housing bubble. From Mortgage Professional America, "Americans are becoming increasingly concerned about the housing market with many expecting a price correction. The Modern Homebuyer Survey from ValueInsured reveals...

It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "Changes in the mortgage industry are afoot, with the goal of loosening some of the strict standards established after the subprime crisis — rules some blame for impeding sales. Government-controlled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are...

A report from the Denver Post in Colorado. "The Denver area’s apartment building frenzy will slow next year as demand for new high-end developments wanes and financing for new projects gets tighter, say economists and industry leaders. Those in the industry agree that Denver’s high-end apartment...

A report from the Illawarra Mercury in Australia. "Unaffordable housing has surged to the top of the list of undecided voters' concerns in western Sydney, according to new focus group research. And while the problem angered younger voters unable to buy a home, it also troubled an older generation...

A report from Outside Online. "In the Mountain West—'God’s country, renter’s hell,' as one alt-weekly tagged it—where towns are already chronically beset by housing shortages, traffic problems, and the invariable ambivalence about sharing one’s slice of heaven with the tourists who help sustain it,...

A weekend topic starting with Mortgage News Daily. "Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Melvin L. Watt focused much of his speech to the National Association of Real Estate Brokers on its five-year goal of creating two million new Black homeowners. There were 'The unsavory practices that set...

A weekend topic starting with Eurasian Review By Doug French. "Sin City’s projected 5,000 new apartment units for this year makes no noise nationally in the latest real estate craze. I’ve written before about the high-rise crane craze in Seattle, but that’s nothing compared to New York and Dallas,...

It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "North Texas home prices have seen some of the biggest gains in the nation during the last few years. And homeowners who are sitting on top of billions of dollars of new equity are pulling some of it out of the house. 'This past month, cash out...

A report from Habitat Magazine on New York. "Since 2013, developers have poured thousands of new Manhattan condo units onto the market. In 2017’s second quarter, condo inventory in the borough stood at around 5,900 – up 35 percent year over year, according to Halstead Property Development...

A report from Reuters on South Korea. "South Korea will raise capital gains taxes on owners of multiple homes and impose fresh mortgage curbs to rein in speculators who policymakers blame for stoking a housing bubble in main regions across the nation. The latest measures — the third set of steps in...

A report from Mortgage News Daily. "On July 10th of this year, Vanguard Funding, LLC had their NY Mortgage Bankers license purportedly suspended - not good when your headquarters are in that state. This is on the NMLS Consumer Access page. If you go to the website, management has this message: 'WE...

A report from CBC News in Canada. "Canada's addiction to real estate goes far beyond our obsession with talking about it. Our economy actually relies more on the fees associated with buying and selling houses than it does on agriculture, fishing, forestry and hunting combined. In Canada, upcoming...

A report from the New York Post. "Is the private sector allowed to do anything anymore? For nearly 80 years, Washington has subsidized homeownership — creating massive distortions both in house prices and in what neighborhoods look like. Now the feds will subsidize rental homes as well — expanding...

A report from Mansion Global. "Canadians have bought significantly more expensive homes in the United States over the past year, as they look to their southern neighbor for sunny, high-end vacation spots in places like Florida, Arizona and California, according to the National Association of...