The Housing Bubble Blog

Some housing bubble news from Wall Street and the Washington Post. "The chief executives for two of the nation's dominant mortgage-finance companies traveled to Wall Street yesterday. Richard F. Syron, Freddie Mac CEO and Fannie Mae CEO, Daniel H. Mudd, forecast continued declines in home prices....

Hoboken Now reports from New Jersey. "Hoboken-based Metro Homes has shut down a 224-unit high-rise project in Asbury Park, citing the impact of the subprime mortgage collapse and real estate slump, the Asbury Park Press reported. Dean Geibel, the company's president, told the newspaper it has...

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Inside Bay Area reports from California. "In Alameda County, 9,454 homeowners are in some stage of foreclosure this year. Either they have defaulted on their mortgages or received a notice of trustee sale of their home from the bank, according to statistics. Jose Vizcaino was lured by the American...

A report from the Edmonton Journal in Canada. "Edmonton home prices dropped an average of 6.5 per cent in November from October. Edmonton house prices now are down $50,000 from their May peak of $426,028. The volatile mixed category of duplexes and rowhouses plummeted 15.4 per cent to $311,193....

Some housing bubble news from Wall Street and Washington. Bloomberg, "Washington Mutual Inc., the biggest U.S. savings and loan, will write down the value of its home- lending unit by $1.6 billion in the fourth quarter and cut about 6 percent of its workforce as mortgage-market losses increase. It...

The Post & Courier reports from South Carolina. "Prospective home buyers awaiting a sign that prices are on the way down in Charleston could be in luck. Local home prices took their biggest monthly slide in recent memory in November, suggesting that more sellers are willing to offer discounts to...

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The Orange County Register reports from California. "John and Grayce Coffman could lose the Fullerton home they bought in 1977 because they can't keep up with their mortgage's rising costs. The Coffmans, who are unemployed and in their 60s, borrowed $552,300 from Countrywide Financial, the largest...

The Journal Star reports from Illinois. "We're not supposed to have much of a sub-prime crisis here. So an ad for a real estate auction caught my eye. 'In a buyer's market, YOU should be BUYING!!!' it said. If the stony-faced buyers gathered last Wednesday are any indicator, be glad that Peoria is...

Some housing bubble news from Wall Street and Washington. "The Pending Home Sales Index...remained 18.4 percent below the October 2006 index of 106.8 The PHSI in the Northeast is 11.1 percent below a year ago. In the West, the index is 16.9 percent lower than October 2006. The index in the Midwest...

The Orlando Sentinel reports from Florida. "The moderately upscale MetroWest residential development is a microcosm of the Central Florida market in many ways. But the real-estate glut and slump are more severe there, according to local Realtors. 'The condo and town-house market is very, very...

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The Rocky Mountain News from Colorado. "Home prices and sales dropped in November in the Denver area, with some geographic pockets still getting ravaged by foreclosures. The data show there are 27,127 unsold homes on the market. But that's a misleading number, said Maurice Giroux, the 2008...

Readers suggested the reaction of others as a weekend topic. "I would love to hear from you Californians if any of your family, friends, co-workers, etc. have given you the, 'you were right' speech yet. I’ve gotten it from a couple people here and we are nowhere near the meltdown stage that...

The Sun Herald reports from Florida. "As Will Rogers once said, 'In a real estate man's eye, the most expensive part of the city is where he has a house to sell.' The last couple of years have chastened even the most resolute espousers of that belief, however, as real estate prices have plummeted...

What do you see in your local housing market this weekend? Blame shifting? "Two officers with the Washington Association of Mortgage Brokers defended their roles at an Olympian editorial board meeting Wednesday and said their industry was largely not to blame for the nation's subprime mortgage...

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ABC 30 reports from California. "You can find homes on the market that have, in just one year, dropped $100,000 in price. But realtors say those properties were way over-priced to begin with. Some of these homes have been on the market forever it seems. A year ago a three-bedroom Visalia home in a...

Readers suggested a topic on the news of the week. "We might as well have a weekend discussion on the bush pseudo-bailout. (It will be spread over the all the posts otherwise…). The abbreviated summary of positions so far:" "1. 'Bailout will accomplish nothing and is just political positioning.' 2....