The Housing Bubble Blog

What do you see in your local housing market? Construction trends? "With house prices softening, there is less of an incentive to remodel, said Kermit Baker of the Remodeling Futures Program at Harvard's Joint Center for Housing. The return on remodeling dollar spent has dropped from 80 percent to...

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Readers suggested a topic comparing bubble markets versus so-called non-bubble markets. "I would like articles and discussion of house price drops in states other than FL, CA, NY, NV. Try Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, Georgia, Carolinas, Virgina, etc. We need more news on those states!" A...

The News Press reports from Florida. "A Fort Myers-based real estate agent is calling on his colleagues to stop doing business with Countrywide Home Loans, saying the company is cutting off home equity credit to solid residents of Lee County because of falling housing prices. 'I have used...

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It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "The wealth-sapping downturn in home prices continued during the fourth quarter of 2007, the Florida Association of Realtors said Thursday. And county clerks in Palm Beach and St. Lucie counties report foreclosure filings tripled from January 2006 to...

The County Sun reports from California. "Real estate agent Richard Kegley negotiates home sales all over San Bernardino County, but lately he's in the business of persuasion. Not persuading would-be homeowners to buy, but convincing sellers their homes are severely overpriced. '(Sellers) ask me...

The News Leader reports from Missouri. "After several years of construction boom, the brakes hit the local home building industry in 2007. Builders in Greene County took out a little more than 1,000 single-family home building permits — down from nearly 2,000 in 2006. 'Basically, we built too...

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And send in your housing bubble pics to: hbbphotos@gmail.com

The San Francisco Chronicle reports from California. "Bay Area home sales nosedived to a 20-year low and median prices dropped nearly 10 percent last month. A total of 3,586 new and resale houses and condos traded hands in the nine-county Bay Area in January, down 41.9 percent from a year ago and...

Some housing bubble news from Wall Street and Washington. CNN Money, "Home prices continued their plunge during the last three months of 2007, setting a real estate trade group's record for the biggest-ever quarterly drop. The national median price drop of 5.8%, to $206,200 from $219,300, was the...

The Hartford Courant reports from Connecticut. "More than 1,000 homeowners have flooded the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority with calls as they sought to qualify for the new loans, which were announced in November and funded by $50 million in state bond money. The loans are intended to help...

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The LA Times reports from California. "Southern California home sales last month fell to their lowest level in more than 20 years. The $415,000 median price paid for a Southern California home was the lowest since January 2005 and about 18% below the peak median sale price reached last year,...

Some housing bubble news from Wall Street and Washington. Associated Press, "Mortgage insurer MGIC Investment Corp. said Wednesday it lost almost $1.5 billion for the last three months of 2007 on higher home delinquencies and payouts. It also said it is looking for ways to boost its capital. CEO...

The News Press reports from Florida. "Homeowners threatened with foreclosure could get a 30-day reprieve under a Bush administration initiative announced Tuesday. But people in Lee County, where the number of foreclosures jumped to a record 1,833 in January as prices have plunged over the past two...

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The Union Tribune reports from California. "San Diego County median home prices dipped $1,000 from December to January to a four-year-low of $429,000, DataQuick reported Tuesday. Sales activity of 1,826 transactions was the second lowest for any month on record. The overall median was down 17.1...

Some housing bubble news from Wall Street and Washington. Associated Press, "IndyMac Bancorp Inc. reported the first annual loss in company history Tuesday and scrapped its dividend to shore up capital. The holding company for IndyMac swung to a fourth- quarter loss as weakness in the housing...