The Housing Bubble Blog

Bloomberg reports on New Jersey. "Robert Murray of Middletown, New Jersey, said he didn't pay enough attention when he took out a five-year adjustable-rate mortgage in 2002. This month, his payments ballooned to $1,800 from $1,300. Because he makes about $90,000 a year, and hasn't missed a payment,...

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The Modesto Bee reports from California. "The housing market news just keeps getting worse for the Northern San Joaquin Valley. Stanislaus, San Joaquin and Merced counties had the highest foreclosure rates in the country during August. And home values have plunged. August statistics show home...

A report from the Arizona Daily Star. "Selling a house at auction might sound like an act of desperation. But one casual investor thinks it's the only way out of a tough spot in a slow market. Alison Torba put a two-bedroom house and a duplex near North Swan Road and East Pima Street on the market...

Some housing bubble news from Wall Street and Washington. The Street.com, "Hovnanian Enterprises' three-day fire sale over the weekend was billed as the 'deal of the century,' but it may just spark a pricing war among all homebuilders. Imagine having bought a home a month ago and now seeing these...

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The Bay Area Newsgroup reports from California. "Many home sellers, bogged down in a housing downturn, are now doing the only thing they can to sell, dropping prices. Only this time, the sagging market often means taking a loss if the home was bought in 2005 or 2006. Christopher Thornberg, the...

The News Review reports from Oregon. "To make the jump to a larger house, Eric Pickle and his wife have to sell their current home first. And attracting buyers has proven a difficult challenge these past six months amid a stagnant real estate market. 'Unfortunately, I missed the boom,' Pickle...

Some housing bubble news from Wall Street and Washington. Financial Times, "US house prices are likely to fall significantly from their present levels, Alan Greenspan has told the Financial Times, admitting that there was a bubble in the US housing market. The former chairman of the Federal Reserve...

The Boston Globe reports from Massachusetts. "When Paul Rappoli Jr. put his four-bedroom Colonial on the market for $449,900 in June 2006, he felt good about its chances of selling. Eight months later, the house finally sold for nearly $75,000 less than the initial asking price. 'It was a long,...

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The Press Democrat reports from California. "Sonoma County's housing slide hit the two-year mark in August as prices fell yet again, and the market may not hit bottom for another year, industry analysts say. The county's typical home sold for $549,990 in August, the 14th consecutive month the price...

The Brownville Herald reports from Texas. "Don Currie used to see no more than two people a month walk through his doors, seeking advice on how to handle the pending foreclosure of their home. Last month, Currie, who is the executive director of the Community Development Corporation of Brownsville,...

The News Press reports from Florida. "Last year, Jonathan Kline decided to take a risk and build two houses in Lehigh Acres. Kline, a Maryland resident and financial consultant, discovered Southwest Florida’s sliding housing market after they were completed in April. Like thousands of other houses...

What do you see in your local housing market this weekend? Lower prices? "Need evidence that the high-end housing market is in turnaround? Well, the news that Lorraine Bracco has dropped the price of her 2-acre Sneden’s Landing estate to $2.9 million pretty well proves the point. The home, you...

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The Recordnet reports from California. "August was a very cold month, at least in the home-sales market. The last time the median sales price of an existing Stockton home crossed the $300,000 mark, in November 2004, it was a major landmark in a long-running boom market. Last month, the sales price...

Readers looked at a topic on next weeks Fed meeting and the former chairmans interview on 60 minutes this weekend. "I think the Greenspan article is veerrry interesting. It will relieve some of the rate-cutting pressure on Bernanke, as more people realize that he shouldn’t cut as low as AG did....

A report from the New York Times. "For more than a year, home buyers who have been looking in the suburbs of Manhattan have struggled to reconcile market rhetoric with metro-area reality. Sellers were clinging tightly to the past, and many scoffed at price reductions of more than a few percentage...

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