The Housing Bubble Blog

The Post Dispatch reports from Missouri. "Residential sales have slowed nationwide, and the downtown market is no exception. At the same time, an unprecedented number of downtown residential units are in the development pipeline. Those factors probably played a role in Cordish Co. asking the city...

Some housing bubble news from Wall Street and Washington. "Accredited Home Lenders Holding Co. reported a quarterly loss three times larger than Wall Street expected as more homeowners defaulted on mortgages. CEO James Konrath called Accredited's results 'dissatisfying,' citing a 'difficult credit...

The Herald Tribune reports from Florida. "Barbara Simons is furious with Murray Sherry, the outgoing board president of the south Sarasota complex, and with everybody else keeping her from holding an open house to get out from under the condominium she inherited from her mother, to her a...

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The LA Times reports from California. "There's a lot of speculation about where the housing market is headed. Dave Hennigan and the company he works for, Home Center Realty, don't have the luxury of waiting to see how the story will play out. They need to make a living now, and they're betting that...

The January sales numbers are out for Arizona. "As the new year began, the local resale housing market continued to slip with 4,520 sales recorded in January. This is down from the 4,620 sales of December 2006 and the 5,260 recordings of a year ago. This is the lowest monthly level for January...

Some housing bubble news from Wall Street. "KB Home posted a net loss of $49.6 million for the fiscal fourth quarter on Tuesday, as it took $343.3 million of pretax charges for abandoning land option contracts and writing down the value of inventory, a consequence of the U.S. housing market...

The Herald Tribune reports from Florida. "It is no surprise that Michael Tringali is being forced to sell homes, home sites and land at public auction. When the market turned, he was unable to generate enough income from his home building and real estate investment activities to cover his nearly...

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The Voice of San Diego reports from California. "Every weekend for nine months, Marti Ummel has been making trips to real estate offices in North County. Ummel makes the trips in protest, asserting with printed signs that she and her husband were defrauded by a Re/Max associate in 2005." "She says...

The Journal Sentinel reprots from Wisconsin. "One good month doesn't spell recovery, industry representatives said. But so far, February is looking good. The big draw: better deals this year than in 2006. 'A property might be going at 98% of asking price, but that's 98% of the last list price, not...

Some housing bubble news from Wall Street and Bloomberg. "It was bound to happen sooner or later, an out-of-the-blue reminder that the froth or the boom or the disconnect between prices and fundamentals in the housing market would have a financial after-shock. HSBC Holdings dropped a small bomb...

The Record reports from New Jersey. "John and Susan Scerbo put their five-bedroom Ramsey house on the market more than a year ago, expecting to sell within a few months. But the house is still for sale, even after the couple cut the asking price from $695,000 to $649,000." "'We got caught in a...

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The Auburn Journal reports from California. "There you are, living in the house of your dreams. It cost you $500,000, but you're only paying $1,100 a month after you 100-percent financed your home with an interest-only pay-option adjustable rate mortgage, known as an ARM. Then the market changes."...

A report from the Arizona Republic. "Downtown Tempe is in flux. Construction has torn up streets. Building plans are coming in every month. High-rises are popping up where once there was nothing. Construction projects are continually coming in. City estimates project an estimated 5,000 home units,...

What do you see in your housing market this weekend? A letter to the editor? "In her recent front-page article 'A popular place for house seekers' (Feb. 1 Advocate), Jennifer Mann really missed the mark relative to reporting on recent trends in the housing market." "Of the 32 homes that priced...

MyFox Tampa Bay reports from Florida. "In the 18 years Roz Fenton's worked at the Pasco Clerk of Courts Office, she's never seen this. 'At least 60 foreclosure sales a week,' she said. The files and files just seem to keep growing. 'We've had more overtime in the office. We've had to pull in...

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The Santa Cruz Sentinel. "Patricia Beckwith couldn't help whooping with joy when she heard the median price of single-family homes in Santa Cruz County dropped again. The median price in January was $702,250, the lowest for any month since December 2004 and down from a peak of $775,000 in July." "A...