The Housing Bubble Blog

What do you see in your local housing market this weekend? For sale signs? "The number of homes for sale in central Ohio continued to skyrocket in August, the Columbus Board of Realtors said yesterday. More than 4,500 houses were added last month to the inventory of homes for sale in the board's...

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ABC 30.com reports from California. "For some, what's happening with the housing market is a bargain. 'I guess it's a buyers market,' said new homeowner Sheldon Kahoonei. The Kahoonei family just moved from San Jose to Mountain House, near Tracy, because they got a great deal on their new home....

Readers suggested a topic on media viewpoints and the housing bubble. "My weekend topic suggestion would be examining what other bass-ackwards terms the media is using that clearly favor The Plight Of The Poor FB." "The media shouldn’t assume that FB’s voices are the only ones that count and that a...

The Herald Online reports from South Carolina. "HSBC Holdings PLC on Friday said it was closing a Fort Mill-based unit that made subprime mortgage loans through independent brokers, eliminating 369 jobs in the Charlotte area. 'It's no longer sustainable and not the right place to allocate capital...

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It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger! "There's a large inventory of unsold condominiums in the Miami market. There are at least 50 buildings under construction or nearly completed in the downtown Miami area alone, consisting of about 20,000 units. To move inventories along, developers...

The Record Searchlight reports from California. "August home sales in Shasta County were down 8.8 percent from a year ago. The number of homes sold in August was the fewest since August 1997, when 185 sales were recorded, DataQuick reported. Meanwhile, there continues to be a glut of home listings....

Some housing bubble news from Wall Street and Washington. Fortune, "Barney Frank and Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke want everyone to know this: They are not engaging in morally hazardous behavior. 'Nothing being contemplated rises to the level,' said Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services...

The Miami Herald reports from Florida. "Newly built Miami condominiums were auctioned Thursday night, an event that many observers expect to see repeated as more under-construction condo buildings are completed amid the struggling housing market. CNBC covered the event, which came with echoes of...

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

Inman News reports on California. "New-home sales dropped 27.8 percent in July compared to July 2006, the California Building Industry Association reported today, and new single-family sales fell 20.3 percent, with median new-home prices dropping 4.8 percent and median new single-family home prices...

The Rocky Mountain News reports from Colorado. "Vacancy rates for rental homes are the lowest in recent memory, thanks to record foreclosures in the Denver area, officials said Wednesday. In many cases, however, people are renting houses they can't sell for a profit for less than their mortgage...

The Times Community reports on Virginia. "Fauquier County Supervisor Bill Downey all but stuck a fork in the 298-home Arrington Knolls proposal and declared it dead. Downey doesn't believe the troubled project will survive Centex's corporate 'bean counters,' whom he said want to minimize the...

Bloomberg reports on Florida. "Listings in the Orlando, Florida, area show 26,300 homes for sale, a 20-month supply, said Gary Balanoff, a real estate broker in Oviedo, Florida. 'I've been in business 23 years, and I've never seen some of the price reductions we have here,' Balanoff said. 'It's...

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The Press Enterprise reports from California. "The numbers of Inland families who lost their homes to foreclosure surged dramatically last month, as risky subprime mortgages strained the budgets of more households. An especially telling statistic is the comparison of bank repossessions from last...

10 TV reports from Ohio. "An excess of high-priced condominiums is forcing developers to get creative. A slowdown in the downtown condominium market is forcing developers to either drop prices or put them up for auction, 10TV's Kevin Landers reported. 'I think we're going to sell them for less than...

Some housing bubble news from Wall Street and Washington. Bloomberg, "Builders in the U.S. began work on the fewest homes in 12 years in August. Building permits dropped 5.9 percent to a 1.307 million pace, also the lowest since 1995. The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo index of...