The Housing Bubble Blog

Bloomberg reports on California. "California mortgage defaults rose to the highest level in a decade in the second quarter as falling home sales and higher interest rates battered the housing market. Homeowners received 53,943 default notices, more than double the 20,909 filed a year ago, DataQuick...

USA Today reports on Arizona. "Some sellers on Scottsdale's tony north side who have homes priced over $1 million are having to shave several hundred thousand dollars off their asking prices...says agent Karina Magana. There's a record 45,175 single-family homes for sale in this bedroom community...

Some housing bubble news from Wall Street and Washington. MarketWatch, "Countrywide Financial Corp. reported a 33% drop in second-quarter net income on Tuesday and signaled that problems in the subprime mortgage market have spread to the highest-quality home loans. 'The company incurred increased...

Newsday reports from New York. "Housing sales for spring, usually the busiest buying season, didn't bloom quite as well this year for Long Island and Queens market, according to a report from Miller Samuel. The biggest drop in prices came from North Shore's luxury market, an 11.3 percent fall over...

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The Las Vegas Sun reports from Nevada. "The upscale San Niccolo neighborhood, in one of the Las Vegas Valley's newest master-planned communities, would seem a homeowner's dream, its quiet streets lined with expansive homes starting at a half-million dollars. But anyone who drives past the broken...

The Chicago Tribune reports from Illinois. "Lower- and more moderate-income areas continue to be hit by foreclosures, but pricier communities in Cook and Lake Counties are hardly immune, according to an analysis done for the Tribune. Record Information Services looked at foreclosures involving...

The Boston Globe reports from Massachusetts. "Massachusetts single-family homes and condominium sales continued to fall in June, a month that is typically one of the busiest of the year for closing real estate transactions, according to industry reports out today. 'June was a tough month for...

The Post & Courier reports from South Carolina. "Weeks before Dorothy O'Mara put her Mount Pleasant condominium up for sale, the unit next door found a buyer in a mere four days. More than a year later, O'Mara's unit is still on the market. In the Montclair condo and townhouse development...one in...

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The Orange County Register reports from California. "In the first three months of the year, lenders handled $89 billion in subprime loans, down 41 percent from the end of last year and 47 percent from the same period in 2006, according to National Mortgage News. That follows an 18 percent drop for...

Readers suggested a topic surrounding hedge funds and the housing bubble. "In light of Bear Stearns’ and other subprime investing hedge fund failures, did we fail to recognize the benevolent Robin Hood like qualties of the subprime lending industry?" "From one vantage point, it looks like the...

The News Press reports from Florida. "Real estate inventory in Southwest Florida remains high. So does the grass at some residential listings. Upkeep of unoccupied new and old construction is fading. Once pristine properties are now unkempt, deprived of necessary attention because of absentee or...

What do you see in your housing market this weekend? Regulation changes? "On Tuesday, a group of banking regulators agreed to extend new guidelines for federal mortgage brokers to ones charted on the state level, where many experts say the riskiest loans come from. In Passaic County, foreclosures...

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The Orange County Register reports from California. "Homes in Capistrano Beach and Irvine's Northwood areas may have been hit hardest this year by speculators buying properties, only to bail out when the housing slump hit. Median prices there fell about 15 percent, DataQuick reported. Overall,...

Readers suggested a topic on areas immune from the housing bubble. "Let’s discuss and prove/debunk 'bubble-proof' areas. My hometown of Rochester, NY, for example, never historically appreciated more than 4% since the 80’s. The local news media has been saying Rochester is undervalued, prices will...

A report from the Arizona Republic. "Mainstream home builders are under growing pressure to go green...which could be risky at a time when revenue is down and sales are stalled. 'These guys are fighting for their lives at the moment,' said RL Brown, a Valley housing analyst. 'They're trying to...

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It's desk clearing time for this blogger. "Real-estate developer Tony Porter and others at his company described his vision for a 2,000-lot residential and retail development called the Village of Penland. But the developer said he needed investors to launch the project in time to catch the...