Winners and Losers 2008

Here is a list of winners and losers for 2008.

As befits a year in which the economy collapsed and wars dragged on, the list of losers is longer than the list of winners.

Feel free to add or subtract names and to add commentary.

The year isn’t over, so the list may change.

Winners

Barack Obama
Michelle Obama
Hillary Clinton
Rachel Maddow
Pixar
Bankruptcy lawyers
Facebook
Robert Gates
Jonas Brothers
Bill Ayers
Heather Mills
Sarah Palin
Rick Warren
Democrats
Beyoncé
Harrison Ford
Joe Biden
Robert Downey, Jr.
The Taliban
Mexican drug cartels
Prisons
AIG
Lawrence Summers
David Axelrod
Rahm Emanuel
Paul Volker
Vladimir Putin
Tom Daschle
John Podesta
Britney Spears
Keith Olbermann
C.C. Sabbathia
Philadelphia Phillies
Brett Farve
will.i.am
Eli Manning
Bank of America
Christopher Buckley
Walmart
Mark Begich
Muntadhar al-Zaidi
Somali pirates
Guy Ritchie
Emo vampires
Carla Bruni
Google
Tom Udall
Mark Udall
John Kerry
Al Gore
Kay Hagan
Mickey Rourke
Mike Huckabee
Jeff Merkley
Michael Phelps
Jason Lezak
Heath Ledger
Rafael Nadal
Repo Men
Global warming
Handguns

Losers

OJ Simpson
Bernard L. Madoff
Anthony Pellicano
George W. Bush
John McCain
Republicans
Alan Greenspan
Realtors
Iraq
Paul McCartney
Newspapers
Local television
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
William J. Jefferson
Circuit City
Lehman Brothers
Detroit
John Edwards
Myspace
Steve Schmidt
Chinese milk
Star Wars
Yahoo
Wachovia Corp.
Washington Mutual
Karl Rove
Sam Zell
Richard H. Davis
U.S. Automakers
The South
Mortgage brokers
Ben Bernanke
Henry Paulson
Same Sex Marriage
Merrill Lynch
Book publishers
Airlines
Homeland Security
Rush Limbaugh
The Fed
Britney Spears
Rod Blagojevich
Scooter Libby
Bill Clinton
Jeremiah Wright
Mitt Romney
Jesse Jackson
Jesse Jackson, Jr.
Las Vegas
California
Arnold Schwartzeneggar
Eliot Spitzer
Gordon Smith
Raffaello Follieri
Workers
Ted Stevens
Washington Mutual
Yeshiva University
Africa
India
Bill O’Reilly
New York Mets
Plaxico Burress
Broadway
Phil Gramm
Museum of Modern Art (MOCA) Los Angeles
Mikheil Saakashvili
Christopher Cox
Joe Lieberman
Jewish charities
Public schools
Community colleges
John E. Sununu
Elizabeth Dole
Miley Cyrus
Countrywide
Angelo Mozilo
Max Mosley
Kwame Kilpatrick
Heath Ledger
Roger Clemens
Baytown, Texas
Galveston Island, Texas
Missouri
The Bill of Rights

“What You Get for…$1.00” — The Housing Crisis Gets Crazy

The New York Times has a weekly real estate feature called “Property Values” that shows “What You Get for…” a certain a mount of money. 

This week the Times shows you “What You Get for…$10 Million” and it pictures palatial estates in Newport, Rhode Island, Kauari, Hawaii, and Whitefish, Montana.

But this week’s most interesting — and relevant — “What You Get for…” story wasn’t published in the Times, and the property isn’t situated in an up-scale locale.

The story was published in the Detroit News.

And the property — a cozy two story — is located in the foreclosure-ravaged Motor City.

It recently sold for $1.00 — after being on the market for for 19 days.

After reading the story, we tried an experiment. 

We went to realtor.com and looked up houses in Detroit.  For the minimum amount would put $0 and for the maximum amount we put $1000. 

The result was four more houses for $1, eight more for $100 or less, and a total of 172 properties at or under $1000.

Then we tried Cleveland, Ohio. 

The result was 10 properties available for $1 and five more for $1000 or less.

You can try the same experiment with other cities.  We think you’ll find similar results.

We noticed, too, that this example of America’s housing misery was providing aid and comfort to an old — and perhaps renewed — enemy.

The online edition of Pravda — which used to be the official newspaper of the Soviet Union and is now the official newspaper of Russia’s new bosses — put the Detroit Press story on the front page of its English language edition, just below the news about its shooting war in Georgia and South Ossetia.

Home Prices Slip Again in Biggest Fall on Record

Home prices in 20 U.S. metropolitan areas fell in April 2008 by the most on record.

The Case-Shiller Index of 20 large cities for April 2008 shows housing price declines are accelerating, and are now falling at a rate of 15.3% from last year’s levels.

The report also showed that home prices fell 1.4 percent in April from a month earlier after a 2.2 percent decline in March.

There’s one bit of “good” news in the report: home price declines were less than expected.  According to economists surveyed by Bloomberg News, the index was forecast to fall 16 percent from a year earlier.

Not surprisingly, the housing bust continues to be most severe in previous boom areas in the West and Florida. 

Here are the markets where prices are falling fastest:

Las Vegas: -26.8%
Miami: -26.7%
Phoenix: -25.0%
Los Angeles: -23.1%
San Diego: -22.4%
San Francisco: -22.1%

Average of 20 large cities: -15.3%

The decline in home prices appears to be spreading.  Chicago showed a 9.3 percent decline and prices in New York City declined by 8.4 percent.  Charlotte, North Carolina, showed a decline for the first time.

According to Bloomberg.com, “One bright spot in the report was that more cities showed a gain in prices in April compared with the previous month. Houses in eight areas rose in value, compared with just two in March. Month-over-month gains were led by Cleveland and Dallas.”

 

Pending Home Sales Rise — But Don’t Expect the Housing Market to Recover Soon

There was some unexpected positive news on the housing front today: pending home sales rose in April 2008 to the highest level since October 2007, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR).

NAR complies a monthly “Pending Home Sales Index” (PHSI), which tracks housing contract activity based on signed real estate contracts for existing single-family homes, condos and co-ops. Modeling for the PHSI looks at the monthly relationship between existing-home sale contracts and transaction closings over the last four years. The PHSI gives figures for the nation and four regions, and includes seasonally adjusted as well as not seasonally adjusted figures.

A reading of 100 on the PSHI is equal to the average level of sales activity in 2001.

April’s PHSI figures show that the seasonally adjusted index of pending sales for existing homes across the nation rose to 88.2 percent from a March reading of 83.0 percent.

March’s figure of 83.0 percent was the lowest since the index was started in 2001.

Moreover, the April 2008 figure of 88.2 percent is still 13 percent below April 2007’s reading of 101.5 percent.

Some regions fared much better than others.

The region that did best was the West — with a seasonally adjusted figure of 98.8, its highest level since June 2007.  The West also showed an 8.3 percent increase from last month and a 4.0 percent increase from 95.0 percent a year ago. 

The Midwest — at a seasonally adjusted rate of 83.7 percent — posted a 13.0 percent increase from last month, but a 13.1 percent drop from last year’s figure of 96.4 percent.

The South — at a seasonally adjusted rate of 88.8 percent — showed a moderate 4.6 percent increase over last month, but that was still a stunning 22.5 percent decline from last year’s figure of 114.6 percent.

The worst region in regard to pending home sales was the Northeast — with a seasonally adjusted rate of 79.3 percent — which indicated both a monthly decline ( -1.9 percent) and a sharp decline (-12.2 percent) from 101.5 percent a year ago.

As usual, NAR strained to see these very modest national gains in the most positive light, claiming that they show that “the underlying fundamentals point to a pent-up demand.”

NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun again predicted that an upturn in the housing market is just around the corner.

“Home sales are at about the same level as they were 10 years ago, yet the population has grown by 25 million people and we have over 10 million more jobs,” Yun said. “The housing market has been underperforming by historical standards, partly because buyers were hampered by mortgage availability issues, but that’s improved and an upturn is more likely.”

Other analysts are not nearly as optimistic about the meaning of the PHSI figures. 

They point out that banks are dumping properties at fire-sale prices, and that inventories will continue to grow as foreclosures continue to rise.  NAR’s PHSI does not differentiate between full-market sales, short-sales, and foreclosures.

Even NAR’s economist Lawrence Yun acknowledges that much of the increase in pending home sales comes from “bargain hunters” who have “entered the market en mass.”

The New York Times reports that Mark Zandi, the chief economist for Moody’s economy.com, believes that April 2008 marks the bottom for home sales, but he also believes that home prices won’t bottom out for another year. ”It’s the beginning of the end of the housing downturn, but it will be a long painful ending,” he said.

We think that Zandi is being overly optimistic — when the housing downturn ends depends on many factors, including straightening out the mortgage and credit industries, that are still a very long way off.

 

Housing Meltdown Continues as Home Prices Fall 14.1 Percent

Despite a slight uptick in the sales of new homes, there is new evidence that the U.S. housing slump will not end anytime soon. 

Yesterday the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Index showed that national home prices fell 14.1 percent in the first quarter compared with a year earlier, the lowest since its inception in 1988.

And even though the sales of new homes were up slightly in April, they remained near their lowest levels since 1991.

New home sales were up 3.3 percent from March, but were down a stunning 42 percent from a year ago.

April’s new home sales were the second-lowest since October 1991, behind only March of this year.

The National Association of Realtors, in its typically disingenuous fashion, spins these bleak figures as an “easing” of home sales.

According to the New York Times, “Even markets that once seemed immune to the slump, like Seattle, are weakening. Prices nationwide might fall as much as 10 percent more before a recovery takes hold, economists said. As the home-buying season enters what is traditionally its busiest period, there are simply too many homes in many parts of the country, and too few people with the means to buy them. The situation is likely to get worse because a rising tide of foreclosures is flooding the market with even more homes, while a slack economy and tight mortgage market are reducing the pool of potential buyers.”

Those who can hold on to their properties are not selling at current prices and those who can buy are waiting for prices to fall still lower.

And they will get lower.

With more than 4.5 million homes on the market, and with a rising tide of foreclosures that continues to add dramatically to that figure, prices are certain to continue to fall even further.

There is plenty of money waiting for prices to stabilize, but that won’t happen for quite a while.

First, something must be done to stop the flood of foreclosures that are adding to the nation’s already overloaded housing supply.

Second, the banks and lenders must respond to the Federal Reserve’s lowering of interest rates by passing these lower rates on to more borrowers.

Our guess is that little or nothing will happen on these fronts until after the presidential election.

Meanwhile, the meltdown continues.

 

 

Realtors Settle Anti-Online Broker Lawsuit with Justice Department — NAR Agrees to Stop Blocking Access to Web Listings

Online realtors will now have the same access to Multiple Listing Service (MLS) data and other services as traditional real estate brokers, according to a proposed settlement reached on Tuesday between the U.S. Justice Department and the National Association of Realtors (NAR).

In September 2005, the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division filed an antitrust lawsuit against NAR charging that its obstruction of Internet based reatlors and its restrictive MLS policies were stifling competition and hurting consumers. The Justice Department said that these policies prevented consumers from receiving the full benefits of competition, discouraged discounting, and threatened to lock in outmoded business models. 

The case was scheduled to go to trial in federal court in Chicago in July 2008.

Under the terms of the settlement, brokers participating in a NAR-affiliated MLS will not be permitted to withhold their listings from brokers who serve their customers through virtual office websites (VOWs). 

In addition, brokers will be able to use VOWs to educate consumers, make referrals, and conduct brokerage services.  Such brokers will not be excluded from MLS membership based on their business model. 

NAR agreed to report to the Justice Department any allegations of noncompliance.  NAR also has agreed to adopt antitrust compliance training programs that will instruct local Associations of Realtors about the antitrust laws generally and about the requirements of the proposed settlement

You can read the proposed settlement here.

“Today’s settlement prevents traditional brokers from deliberately impeding competition.  When there is unfettered competition from brokers with innovative and efficient approaches to the residential real estate market, consumers are likely to receive better services and pay lower commission rates,” said Deborah A. Garza, Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the Antitrust Division.  “In addition, under this settlement, NAR will foster compliance with the antitrust laws by educating its members and its 800 affiliated MLSs.”

According to the Justice Department, “the first rule challenged by the Department required MLSs to permit traditional brokers to withhold their listings from VOWs by means of an ‘opt out’  NAR does not permit brokers to withhold their listings from traditional broker members of an MLS.  Many local MLSs adopted NAR’s policy before NAR suspended its policy during the Department’s investigation.  In one market in which the MLS adopted the policy, all brokers withheld their listings from the one VOW in the community, which was then forced to discontinue its popular website.”

“The second rule prevented a broker from educating customers about homes for sale through a VOW and then referring those customers (for a referral fee) to other brokers, who would help customers view homes in person and negotiate contracts for them.  Some of the VOWs that focused on referrals also passed along savings to consumers as a result of increased efficiencies.

“Collectively, NAR’s policies prevented consumers from receiving the full benefits of competition in the residential real estate industry.”

NAR called the settlement a “favorable” conclusion to the Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit.  “This is clearly a win-win for the real estate industry and the consumers we serve,” said NAR President Richard F. Gaylord.

NAR points out that the final order expressly provides that NAR does not admit any liability or wrongdoing and NAR will make no payments in connection with the settlement.

The proposed settlement between NAR and the Justice Department still needs to be approved by a federal judge.

 

 

Home Sales Set Record Low (Again) — Prices Decline and Inventory Sets Another Record

Existing home sales fell again to another record low in April.

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) reports that “Existing-home sales – including single-family, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops – declined 1.0 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.89 million units in April from an upwardly revised pace of 4.94 million in March, and are 17.5 percent below the 5.93 million-unit level in April 2007.”

The figures represent another record low since NAR has began keeping records in 1999.

The biggest decline was in sales of apartments and condominiums, which plunged 5.2 percent after two months of rising sales.

Demand for single-family homes dropped 0.5 percent in April.

NAR also reported that the national median existing-home price for all housing types was $202,300 in April, an 8.0 percent fall from April 2007 when the median price was $219,900.

Perhaps the worst news is that the inventory of homes for sale has continued to rise and is now at its highest level in more than 20 years. 

Inventory rose 10.5 percent to 4.55 million existing homes available for sale, an 11.2-month supply.  With so many homes on the market, it is likely that prices will continue to decline.  And with foreclosures continuing to flood the real estate market, it is expected that price declines will continue for at least several more months.

In addition, continued home price declines are keeping homebuyers, as well as investors, out of the market, as they expect even cheaper home prices in the near future. 

In other words, despite (and, to a large extent, because of) sharply declining prices, supply continues to rise while demand continues to fall.

Not a pretty picture for real estate.

As is usually the case, some regions fared better than others:

April sales dropped 6 percent in the Midwest and 4.4 percent in the Northeast, but rose 6.4 percent in the West (see our post on rising home sales in Orange County, California). 

Sales stayed steady in the South. 

Median prices fell across all regions.

In the West, the median price was $285,700, 16.7 percent lower than April 2007.  In the South, the median price was $170,800, down 5.1 percent from a year ago.  The median price in the Northeast was $262,000, 7.7 percent below April 2007.  The median price in the Midwest was $159,100, down 2.9 percent from April 2007.

NAR points the finger at the mortgage industry, blaming “restrictive lending practices” for the decline in sales, the lower home prices and the increasing inventory.

Always the optimist, NAR chief economist Lawrance Yun said that recent changes in lending would help homebuyers. “I would encourage buyers who were disappointed by poor mortgage options to take another look at the market because the lending changes are significant,” he said. “Also, a recent notable drop in interest rates on conforming jumbo loans will help consumers in high-cost markets like California and New York.”

We’re not holding our breath.

 

Disgraced Congressman Vito Fossella Comes Out of Hiding to Meet with Realtors

Realtors in Staten Island, New York, must have a lot of political clout — enough political clout to get disgraced Congressman Vito J. Fossella (R-Staten Island/Brooklyn) to come out of hiding.

As the Staten Island Advance explained: “The married congressman has been in a virtual media lockdown since his arrest May 1 for drunken driving in Alexandria, Va., and his subsequent revelation that he fathered a child with the woman who fetched him from jail.”

Fossella was a no-show Wednesday at a scheduled meeting with the Staten Island Chamber of Commerce.

Yet Fossella met on Thursday with several representatives of the Staten Island Board of Realtors in what was apparently his first official face-to-face meeting with Staten Island constituents since his DUI arrest and subsequent infidelity scandal.

Staten Island Board of Realtors’ president Dawn Carpenter reported that Fossella “appeared to be in good spirits and we had some community laughs with him.”

We’re not sure what either Fossella or the realtors had to laugh about. 

Staten Island has been severely hit by the housing meltdown and foreclosure crisis.  Single family home sales in Staten Island fell by 36 percent, and prices fell 6 percent from February 2007 to February 2008.  In the past seven months, home sales in Staten Island have dropped 40 percent.

Foreclosures in Staten Island continue to rise.  There has been a 400 percent spike in Staten Island foreclosures in the first quarter of this year.  Houses are also taking longer to sell, and much of this growing inventory is coming from owners selling before they have to face foreclosure or a short sale.

We’re also not sure why realtors, who have their own extreme PR problems — realtors and agents have come in dead last in the Harris Poll survey of the prestige of various occupations every year since they were first included in 2003 — would want to be the first to publicly embrace the hypocritical Congressman.

Perhaps it’s because Fossella pushed for a $10,000 tax break for home buyers.

Or perhaps the realtors believe that Vito Fossella is a positive role model for the homeowner of the future.

If everyone did what Fossella has done — have two separate families at the same time — it would double the demand for housing.  

That may be bad for wives and children, but it would certainly be good for realtors.

UPDATE:

Fossella announced on May 19 that he would not be running for reelection. 

Staten Island Republicans then selected retired Wall Street investment executive Francis H. Powers to run for Fossella’s seat in New York City’s only Republican Congessional district. 

Powers, 67, died on June 23.

Republicans may not be able to field another candidate, since the process of collecting the signatures required to allow candidates to qualify for a place on the ballot ends in roughly two weeks.

Democrats Michael E. McMahon and Stephen A. Harrison have already announced their intention to run for the seat.

Don’t be surprised when Fossella puts his hat back in the ring.

Here is the New York Times report on the story.

 

Seasonal Boost in Southern California’s Home Sales Lowest in 20 Years — Median Home Prices Continue to Fall as Foreclosures Rise

According to DataQuick, “The onset of spring did little to thaw Southern California’s semi-frozen housing market: The seasonal boost in sales between February and March was less than half its normal level and a record low.”

The data shows that 12,808 new and resale homes and condos sold in Southern California Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Riverside, Ventura, and San Bernardino Counties in March. 

Although that figure was 18.8 percent higher than the 10,777 sales reported in February, it was down 41.4 percent from March 2007.

In addition, while DataQick’s statistics show an average seasonal increase of 38 percent in sales between February and March for the last 20 years, the 18.8 percent increase for March 2008 was the lowest seasonal sales boost in DataQuick’s records, which go back to 1988.

As expected, the data showed a continued increase in foreclosure resales and a decline in median sale prices.

More than one out of three Southern California homes that resold last month, nearly 38 percent, had been foreclosed on at some point in the prior year.  Last year such sales were only 8 percent of the market.  At the county level, foreclosure resales ranged from 28.8 percent in Los Angeles County to 56.4 percent in Riverside County.

The median price for a Southland home last month was $385,000, the lowest since $380,000 in April 2004. Last month’s median was down 5.6 percent from February’s $408,000, and down a record 23.8 percent from $505,000 in February 2007.

Significantly, the psychology of the current real estate market is creating its own downward drag on prices, as potential sellers are waiting for the market to hit bottom and potential buyers are waiting for prices to fall further. 

DataQuick president Marshall Prentice explained: “We continue to believe a lot of people who could be buying or selling right now are opting to sit tight until they sense we’ve hit bottom. Often what we’re left with, especially in inland areas, are sales driven by foreclosure or the threat of it.”

Here’s what we know:

Those who can hold on to their property are holding.

Those who can buy are waiting.

Like scene before the climax in an old Hollywood Western, the California real estate stand-off continues…

Or as Commander Bart Mancuso says in The Hunt for Red October: “The hard part about playing ‘chicken’ is knowing when to flinch.”

What is Your Ideal Real Estate Website?

Like most people in the real estate industry, we belong to or regularly visit several online real estate communities and networks – for example, activerain, trulia, loopnet, realtown, realtytrac, zillow, and foreclosures.com.

Each of these websites has it’s pluses and minuses. 

Each website has great features, and each website is missing features that we’d like to see and use.

We’re very interested in what online communities you belong to or regularly visit.  What do you like about them?  What don’t you like?  How could they be better?

We also regularly visit several news and information websites, from The New York Times to The Wall Street Journal to The Economist to GlobeSt.

We also visit several specialized news and information sites dealing with narrower aspects of the real estate industry. 

What news and information sites do you visit?

If you were going to create the ideal website and online community for real estate professionals and investors, what would it be? 

What features would it have? 

What problems should it avoid?