I don’t really want to rain on anyone’s parade here - especially because this parade helps pay my salary - but while it’s nice to see that local home sales have rebounded so well, here, as elsewhere, it’s due almost entirely to the $8,000 federal tax credit.
Which means that if we want home sales to […]

[Read more →]

The who?
See, we have bailed out the financial services industry to the tune of nearly $14 trillion in guarantees and support according to the U.S. bank regulator the FDIC.  Yet, time and again we see differential treatment elsewhere.  Chrysler and GM were forced into bankruptcy and, more recently, California was denied aid.  The preponderance of […]

[Read more →]

Hot off the wire:
About one in every eight U.S. households, a record share, ended 2008 behind on their mortgage payments or in the foreclosure process as job losses intensified a housing crisis spawned by lax lending practices, the Mortgage Bankers Association said on Thursday.
Buncha losers. Right, Santelli?

[Read more →]

Obama scheduled to talk today about helping homeowners, and what interests me about this is not what he wants to do for people who can’t afford their mortgage payments, but for those who can - but who are “underwater,” whose homes are worth less than what they owe.
That phenomenon could be going on in any neighborhood […]

[Read more →]

We are, actually, looking at houses. Though maybe we ought to wait a few more months:
National Association of Home Builders: Prices to Fall 29% in 2009
David Crowe of the National Association of Home Builders said he was quite negative in his housing and economic outlook last year, but not negative enough. …
<snip>
Crowe said he expects […]

[Read more →]

Atrios:
One of the enduring mysteries to me is how so much of our population voluntarily chooses to live in places where walking - or even taking a cab - home from a bar, any bar, really isn’t an option. While I believe there is a shortage of walkable communities in many parts of the country, […]

[Read more →]

National figures out today on something we wrote about locally last week, the continued plunge in new home construction:
Construction of new homes plunged 4.5 percent last month to the lowest level on government records dating back to 1959, as U.S. builders slashed production while Wall Street nosedived.
Building permits, a barometer of future activity, also plummeted […]

[Read more →]

Hm.
Economics teaches that scarcity or rationing leads to higher prices. Smart growth policies ration land for development through the use of urban growth boundaries and prohibitions or restrictions on building on vacant land. In such an environment, higher house prices can be expected. …
<snip>
Demand, in and of itself, does not increase price. But, when higher […]

[Read more →]

This sort of goes hand-in-hand with the economics discussion we’ve been having ’round these parts, the new housing/”mortgage relief bill” signed by The Decider this morning:
“We look forward to put in place new authorities to improve confidence and stability in markets,” White House spokesman Tony Fratto said. He said the Federal Housing Administration would begin […]

[Read more →]

Maybe this is me turning Republican, at least in part, but I read the story about the “housing rescue” and I’m given big pause when I run into sentences like this:
The plan gives the Treasury Department power to spend unlimited amounts to prop up Fannie and Freddie, should they need it, to calm investor fears […]

[Read more →]

Holy smoke.
Dunno if you’ve been following the market plunge today, and how it all related to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. As of right now, the government is not going to take over the two struggling agencies; but according to the NYT, there’s been discussion about doing just that:
Under a conservatorship, the shares of Fannie […]

[Read more →]

Via Matt Y., “The American Dream News” responds to Christopher Leinberger, an academic who (in The Atlantic, among other places) has predicted the death of the suburbs; AmDreamNews ridicules this as (might) be apropos, but goes a little bit too far, I think, in proclaiming that “we will get over the high prices of energy, […]

[Read more →]

She muttered derisively as she perused the Sunday paper. Amazingly, she wasn’t even reading my column.
Rather, she was looking through the 2008 Parade of Homes guidebook, in which the lowest-priced single-family home this year cost $281,076. The lowest-priced townhome, this year, was $169,900.
“Who’s buying these things?” she asked as she looked at the “middle of […]

[Read more →]

Hmmm. And how long is it before something like this happens here? People in Manheim Township in particular would just get the vapors:
But in North Brentwood and other small municipalities in northern Prince George’s County, mansionization comes with a twist: Some of the new homes, neighbors and town leaders say, are being used as boardinghouses […]

[Read more →]