The Housing Bubble Blog

A report from the Canadian Press. "The number of homes sold last month in the Greater Toronto Area plunged a whopping 37.3 per cent compared with a year ago, the city’s real estate board said Thursday after Ontario introduced measures aimed at cooling the housing market. The Toronto Real Estate...

A report from Bloomberg. "Wells Fargo & Co. surprised investors this week by withholding more than $90 million due to buyers of pre-crisis residential mortgage-backed securities. The bank said it invoked its right as trustee to hold back funds to cover legal costs. The 20 transactions had a...

A report from the Business News Network in Canada. "The average price of a Toronto home likely tumbled more than $100,000 in June from the frenzied peak prices of earlier this year, according to one Toronto realtor. The greater Toronto housing market took a sharp turn following Ontario’s 16 new...

What are your housing bubble predictions for the second half of 2017? From six months ago, "2019 will likely be closer to a bottom than a top. San Diego kicked off bubble 1.0 after 9/11/01 and Rancho Santa Fe peaked end of 2003 on a price per square foot basis. Then the cooling spread downwards,...

A report from the Kitsap Sun in Washington. "As CEO of New Standard Equities, a Los Angeles-area investment company, Eddie Ring is betting tens of millions of dollars that renters will be as enthusiastic about Kitsap County apartments as he is. Investors — including several large California firms —...

It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "Metro Denver home prices are about 18.3 percent higher than what income gains can explain and justify, according to a first quarter update from Arch MI. That’s on the high side among metro areas and above the excess appreciation rates seen a decade...

A report from the Village Voice on New York. "Next month, New York’s mega-priced apartment buyers will get a chance to bid on what’s probably the biggest the biggest luxury apartment foreclosure in the city as a Nigerian energy mogul’s $51 million dollar apartment goes on the block. Kolawol Aluko...

A report from the Atlanta Journal Constitution in Georgia. "Just as home prices are rising, demand is outpacing supply and experts are starting to wonder if there’s a housing bubble, lenders are looking to make it easier to buy. Lenders say they plan to ease standards to make it easier for buyers...

A report from D Magazine in Texas. "'Everyone’s talking about real estate right now,' says Brady Moore, the founder of Laguna Residential, a realty firm that represents buyers and sellers of high-end properties in central Dallas. 'This market has been so extraordinary that you can’t go to any kind...

A report from the Financial Post in Canada. "Internal mid-month statistics for June from the Toronto Real Estate Board show average prices in the Greater Toronto Area shed almost 6.4 per cent in just two weeks with sales down about 50 per cent from a year ago. The average home sold for $808,847...

A report from the Denver Post in Colorado. "Resort-style outdoor pools with cabanas. Yoga studios with on-demand classes. Bicycle repair stations and dog spas. Movie theaters and game rooms. Amenities like these have all but come to be expected when a new apartment building opens in Denver. Some...

A weekend topic starting with Bloomberg. "Robert Litan and Ian Hathaway, writing in Harvard Business Review, surmised that many American entrepreneurs are no longer looking for ways to produce more useful stuff, and are instead looking for new techniques for extracting money from each other and...

It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "A hedge fund proposal for freeing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from U.S. control is poised to face stiff opposition from investors who say it risks wrecking the mortgage-bond market. The Moelis & Co. blueprint calls for raising tens of billions of...

A report from the Charlotte Observer in North Carolina. "Tenants are signing leases for three new uptown apartment towers, the latest in a wave that’s flooding the market with luxury units commanding the highest rents in the city. The avalanche of apartments means developers need to find renters...

A report from Bloomberg on Brazil. "Brazilian banks are wrestling with a growing pile of assets they’d rather not own: at least 13.8 billion reais ($4.2 billion) of cars, real estate, equipment and other collateral seized when borrowers defaulted on their loans. The total surged 42 percent in the...

A report from Bizwest on Colorado. "In the Boulder Valley, we are beginning to see the two largest residential market segments (in terms of price) act as two different market with two different sets of rules. On one hand, we have what I’ll call the 'Upper Market,' which I’m defining as homes priced...

A report from the St Catharines Standard in Canada. "After more than a year of soaring real estate values in Niagara, 'the feeding frenzy is slowing down,' says St. Catharines realtor Randy Mulder. Although the region’s real estate market has yet to be hit as hard as the GTA, he said the impact of...

A report from the South Bend Tribune. "The sun beat down on a recent weekday as crews worked to level 29 acres of land for The Reserve, a new 390-unit luxury apartment complex. Watermark Residential, a developer out of Indianapolis, announced the project in September, when it filed to annex the...

A weekend topic starting with the Star Tribune. "Prices for houses are generally back to where they were during the housing bubble that preceded the financial crisis a decade ago. What’s worse, flipping is back. That is the speculative practice of buying houses hoping to quickly sell for a gain....

It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "A new report from RealtyAustin shows for the first time ever, the average price for single family homes in the Austin area is nearly $400,000, up 9.6 percent from May 2016. After a long search first time home buyer Caitlin Intrator remains...