The Housing Bubble Blog

The Denver Post reports from Colorado. "California has escalating foreclosures despite a respectable job market, following a trend that started in Colorado more than two years ago. The causes are familiar to Front Range residents, low home price appreciation, meager home equity and mortgages with...

Some housing bubble news from Wall Street and Washington. "D.R. Horton Inc. early Thursday said profit in its latest quarter fell 85% from a year earlier as the company booked land-related charges and said it continues to grapple with a challenging market for residential housing. Its results for...

TC Palm reports from Florida. "The number Treasure Coast residents falling behind on their monthly house payments has soared in the past year. According to Realestat.com, St. Lucie County had 151 property owners with late payments in March, up from 52 a year earlier. Martin County's late payments...

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The Press Democrat reports from California. "A spring home sales surge wasn't enough to keep Sonoma County prices from falling for the ninth consecutive month in March. The March median resale price was $565,000, down 1.7 percent from a year ago. The stretch of price declines is the longest in 14...

The Baltimore Sun reports from Maryland. "The recent rise in foreclosures isn't hitting only homeowners. An apartment complex just north of Baltimore that is in the midst of being converted to condominiums is in default and is to be auctioned off next month, the auctioneer said yesterday." "Daniel...

Bloomberg reports from New York. "Luxury home prices slid in New York's Long Island and Queens in the first quarter as more property came onto the market and took longer to sell, appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and broker Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate said. The median sales price fell 5.3...

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The LA Times reports from California. "Nearly 900 Californians a week are losing their homes because they can't afford to pay the mortgage, up from about 100 a week a year ago, providing fresh evidence that the housing market's troubles are nowhere near over. The 11,033 foreclosures in the first...

The Missoulian reports from Montana. "Some of my Missoula neighbors and I have been spending time out in the street lately, gathering to marvel, pontificate and puzzle over the small, vacant house on our block up for sale for the second time in less than six months." "The asking price for this...

Some housing bubble reports from Wall Street and Washington. "Builders broke ground on new homes at an annual rate of 1.518 million last month, an increase of 0.8 percent from February, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. Building permits, a sign of future construction, also rose 0.8...

The St Petersburg Times reports from Florida. "Inventories are bulging. Contracts are collapsing. A new vocabulary is emerging in the real estate market. Welcome to terms like 'short sale.' This time last year in Pasco, there were 5,011 homes waiting to move off the shelf. Today, there are 7,796,...

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Dataquick reports on California. "The number of default notices sent to California homeowners last quarter increased to its highest level in almost ten years. Lending institutions filed 46,760 Notices of Default (NoDs) during the January-to-March period. That was up by 23.1 percent from a revised...

The Journal Sentinel reports from Wisconsin. "Suspense marks home-selling these days. Would-be buyers delight at house layout and location, only to disappear at the first whiff of musty basement. Sellers cling stubbornly to dreams of yesteryear's heady prices, dooming their properties to long,...

Some housing bubble reports from Wall Street and Washington. The Atlanta Journal Constitution, "The environment clearly is getting a lot harsher for home building. Housing sales nationally have been dropping, while inventories of unsold houses have been climbing. As the housing slide accelerated,...

The York Dispatch reports from Pennsylvania. "The number of foreclosure notices in York County for the first quarter of 2007 increased 54 percent over the same period last year. If those notices amount to actual foreclosures, it could have an 'ugly effect on the overall community,' said Leigh...

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The Union Tribune reports from California. "Like other buyers who used risky financing to purchase their homes while banking on rapid real-estate appreciation, Maria and Oscar, who asked that their last names not be used, are facing ballooning monthly payments they know they cannot afford. Now...

Some readers suggested a topic about how a borrower might know they are overextended. "On a thread yesterday somebody made a: 'You know you’re a redneck when…' joke. It got me thinking about F*#@ded Borrowers’s. You know you’re a FB when after hearing on the news about the poisoned pet food, you...