Commercial Property Owners Choose to Default – WSJ
Banking-industry officials and others have argued that homeowners have a moral obligation to pay their debts even when it seems to make good business sense to default. Individuals who walk away from their homes also face blemishes to their credit ratings and, in some states, creditors can sue them for the losses they suffer.
But in the business world, there is less of a stigma even though lenders, including individual investors, get stuck holding a depressed property in a down market. Indeed, investors are rewarding public companies for ditching profit-draining investments.
Maybe the Recession Never Really Ended – The Atlantic
But if the housing market was never allowed to hit bottom — and all those tactics to prop it up certainly point to that possibility — it’s possible that any economic stimulus the temporarily improving real estate market provided was just a blip, and not a trend. Without that bump from these efforts, the recession might have lingered on longer. If the U.S. returns to economic contraction now that the housing is racing to the bottom again, then it’s plausible that we never would have exited recession in the first place.
How Low Can We Fall This Fall? – The Automatic Earth
It won’t surprise you when I say that I think Doug Short’s preliminary conclusion, that a double-dip recession “remains a possibility”, is way too cautious, to say the least.
Client to Broker: Clean My Windows! – NYT
“They treat us like we’re starving and we need to do them all kinds of favors to possibly make some money,” said Michele Conte, a Corcoran Group broker who was recently asked by one former client to help her sell her apartment without a commission. She agreed to help, in hopes that the former client might eventually hire her.
No Buyers For US McMansions – Modernica
(not that the article is interesting, but it is interesting that Modernica has taken up the cause…)
China Traffic Jam Could Last Weeks – WSJ
Traffic has been snarled along the outskirts of Beijing and is stretching toward the border of Inner Mongolia ever since roadwork on the Beijing-Tibet Highway started Aug. 13. The following week, parts of a major road circling Beijing were closed, further tightening overburdened roadways.
As the jam on the highway, also known as National Highway 110, passed the 10-day mark Tuesday, local authorities dispatched hundreds of police to keep order and to reroute cars and trucks carrying essential supplies, such as food or flammables, around the main bottleneck. There, vehicles were inching along little more than a third of a mile a day. Zhang Minghai, director of Zhangjiakou city’s Traffic Management Bureau general office, said in a telephone interview he didn’t expect the situation to return to normal until around Sept. 17 when road construction is scheduled to be finished and traffic lanes will open up.
July Durable Goods Orders Come In WAY Below Expectations – TBI
Excluding autos, durable goods orders actually SHRANK 3.8%, while analysts were looking for small growth. That’s a horrible.
A Brief History of the Mortgage Interest Deduction – The Big Picture
The deduction on interest was never intended to be a salve to the middle class. It was not designed to encourage home ownership. Indeed, when the interest rate deduction was first considered, home financing was non-existent, and home ownership was not thought of as a public policy. It is not part of a grand scheme.
Plunge in Home Sales Stokes Economy Fears – WSJ
Price declines could lead to more delinquencies and foreclosures, and additional subsequent price drops. “You end up in a home-price-depreciation death spiral,” said Laurie Goodman, a senior managing director at mortgage-bond trader Amherst Securities Group LP in New York. “It’s not clear there’s enough demand to handle this overhang without another round of price declines.”
