The Housing Bubble Blog

The Naples News reports from Florida. "Some local real estate professionals are livid. It’s bad enough that sales of single-family houses in the Naples area has dipped nearly 50 percent. An auction scheduled for Oct. 21 has some Realtors seeing red, as in the bookkeeping term for financial loss."...

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From the Voice of San Diego. "Sales in September for detached resale homes were down 16.2 percent from August and 33 percent from last September throughout the county, according to Robert Brown, an economist at the University of California, San Marcos. For attached homes, such as condos and...

The Arizona Republic reports on the September numbers. "The Valley's resale housing market continued to slow in September as the market struggled to find a bottom. The number of houses sold fell and, for the first time in a decade, the median price was down from the same time last year, according...

The Connection reports from Virginia. "Stephen Good, a financial planner, just bought a three-level townhouse in Fairfax last month. The end-unit, which includes a garage, sold for $460,000 in April of 2005. Good paid $430,000. After studying the market and working with his Realtor, Good felt...

The Palm Beach Post from Florida. "CB Richard Ellis' big-picture report on the U.S. office and industrial space markets pegs West Palm Beach as a national player in both sectors. There are problems: Fuel prices and 'the bursting of the speculative bubble in residential real estate' are cited as...

The Journal News reports from New York. "If there is a housing bubble, fresh data suggest that in parts of the Lower Hudson Valley, at least, it may not so much be bursting as perhaps slowly deflating. The data showed fewer homes sold in the quarter, with 459 deals closed, down 20.3 percent from...

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Jon Lansner reports from California. "One measure of O.C. home inventory rose significantly this month, says the math of (realtor) Steve Thomas in Aliso Viejo. Thomas calculates how many months it theoretically takes to sell all the inventory in the local MLS for-sale listings at the current pace...

Inman News reports on Washington. "Home sales in western Washington fell for the seventh straight month in September, as rising inventory slowed price appreciation, according to the latest report from the Northwest MLS. Brokers reported 7,906 sales last month, down 15.7 percent from a year earlier...

Arizona State University has the September numbers out for the Phoenia area. "In September 2005, the local resale home market began to slow down with 9,815 recorded sales leading to 4,875 recorded sales in September 2006. This is the lowest monthly level since 4,090 sales were reported in February...

Some housing reports from Wall Street. " The nation's largest home builder, Ft. Worth, Tex.-based D.R. Horton said fourth-quarter net sales orders for new homes dropped 25% from a year earlier on sluggish demand for housing. 'The current selling conditions in the home-building industry continue to...

The Orlando Sentinel reports from Florida. "Rising land costs have some developers of vacation homes in the Walt Disney World area focusing more on condos and town homes to entice buyers with lower prices. The market clearly has cooled, but single-family vacation home prices are still high enough...

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From Bloomberg. "Kara Homes Inc., the New Jersey builder known for so-called McMansions, filed for bankruptcy after $250,000 discounts failed to lure buyers. The closely held East Brunswick, New Jersey-based company sought Chapter 11 protection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, saying it owes $296.84...

The Review Journal reports from Las Vegas. "Loan officer Bob Charles has worked eight months trying to find construction financing for a luxury condo project in Las Vegas that may be 'caught in the same mud' as Club Renaissance, a 60-story downtown tower that was announced in January 2005 but has...

From the LA Times. "Federal regulators are casting a disapproving eye on mortgages that give borrowers low introductory rates but let them pile up more debt over the long run, a loan feature favored by hundreds of thousands of Californians." "Starting this month, federally chartered lenders are...

The Staten Island Advance reports from New York. "Need more proof it's a buyer's market? How about getting a new car, money to pay closing costs or free home furnishings to go with your new house. They are not prizes in a game show, but the perks some new home builders are offering in the...

The Orlando Sentinel reports from Florida. "The cooling of the region's red-hot housing market has turned the supply-and-demand equation on its head. Buyers, once frantic to find homes in the face of skyrocketing prices, now can shop at a leisurely pace, picking through thousands of homes while...

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