Home Prices Increase for the Fourth Straight Month – HousingWire
But anyone expecting continued increases the rest of the year may be too optimistic.
China’s sizzling housing market is cooling off – Money & Company
China’s aggressive new regulations aimed at cooling off the nation’s real estate market have led to the first decline in housing prices in 16 months, government data released Monday showed.
Economy has Californians saving more, spending less – SacBee
Younger Californians, those ages 18 to 34, say they are more optimistic that economic conditions will improve in the next 12 months. However, just 44 percent of Californians ages 44 to 55 thought better times were ahead.
Vantage Point: 679 Units, no Sales – Voice of San Diego
Weighing in at 679 units, downtown’s biggest condo building, Vantage Pointe, has met with outsize trouble since 2004 when buyers first got in fistfights for the privilege of securing a unit.
The building’s trouble continues. The developers haven’t sold a single unit in the 14 months since returning deposits to the previous contracted buyers. About 40 buyers have signed contracts to buy there but can’t close the deals. More than 150 other units are being rented.
But that’s not enough to satisfy the project’s lenders behind its $210 million loan, the largest construction loan on a single residential building in San Diego history. Those lenders filed a notice of default in April, pushing the developers to the first stage of foreclosure.
Homeowners vs. Home-Loan Buyers – WSJ
Buying and selling unsecured debts has been a big business for years. Now the action is revving up in mortgages. Many banks have begun dumping bad home loans to make room on their balance sheet for new credit once the U.S. economy shows more signs of momentum.
Stagnation in the City of Angels – New Geography
Yet our recovery is dragging along in Los Angeles. The federal government’s own struggles and the dire straits faced by state officials surely complicate the job at the local level, but those don’t fully explain the malaise we’re living through right now.
It’s more likely that our city suffers from a dearth of ideas because our politicians became addicted to the red-hot real estate market. It’s looking more and more as though that became their one and only idea. They skimmed off the rising tide of real estate, used the money to buy political points, and stopped thinking about any new ideas.
It worked for 10 years or so. The values of homes and other properties went up, and so did the city’s revenue. Developers paid fees to build residential and commercial units, buyers paid higher property taxes in the rising market, homeowners borrowed against their houses and spent freely, paying sales taxes along the way.
Strategic Defaulters as the New Welfare Queens – Naked Capitalism
And most important, what happens if the public comes to understand the hypocrisy of the banks’ stance, that they are demonizing borrowers for failing to live up to contracts, when they couldn’t be bothered to comply with the terms of their own contracts, which set up procedures for conveying notes to the securitization entity, and in many cases foreclosure mills have forged documents to cover up that fact? Whoever is behind the “strategic defaulter” push may well wind up hoist on his own petard.
