| Bad news for the homebuyers |
| 10/06/24 | | Real Estate |
"Imagine laying out the following scenario a few years ago: Inflation will hit its highest level in four decades. That will force the Fed to raise rates from 0% to 5%+ in a hurry. Inflation will eventually fall back to target but a recession isn't the reason why. By the time the Fed is ready to start cutting rates the stock market will be back to all-time highs. Gold too. And housing prices."
|
| The bull case for housing |
| 08/10/24 | | Real Estate |
"Housing prices in Canada went crazy a number of years ago. Instead of mean-reverting, they turned it up to ludicrous speed and got even crazier."
|
| Why Haven't Home Prices Dropped? |
| 06/15/24 | | Real Estate |
"if you want lower housing prices, I completely understand. But, be careful what you wish for. You just might get it."
|
| The forever renter |
| 05/09/24 | | Real Estate |
"Last month Zillow reported that there are now a record 550 'Million-Dollar' cities in the United States. These are cities where the typical home price is greater than $1 million. While nearly half of these Million-Dollar cities are in California, the New York metropolitan area has the most with 106"
|
| Rent or buy |
| 03/30/24 | | Real Estate |
"Putting the non-monetary issues aside, the most eye-opening thing I learned from this analysis was that you cannot know with certainty whether buying or renting is the right choice until far into the future. Why? Because of future inflation"
|
| Could you afford it? |
| 12/15/23 | | Real Estate |
"How many homeowners could afford the monthly payment on their house at current levels of mortgage rates and home prices? Take the current value of your home, subtract 20% for a down payment and slap a 7% mortgage rate on it. Could you afford it?"
|
| 7 per cent mortgage rates |
| 08/07/23 | | Real Estate |
"The recent surge in rates started in June, and if there is an impact on sales from higher mortgage rates, it will likely impact closed sales in the August through October timeframe."
|
| Housing affordability |
| 06/04/23 | | Real Estate |
"Even when adjusting for inflation to even things out a bit, housing prices are precarious at the moment for anyone taking on a new mortgage payment"
|
| Rent deceleration |
| 06/03/23 | | Real Estate |
"My suspicion is year-over-year rent increases will slow further over the coming months with slow household formation, and as more supply comes on the market."
|
| Extend and pretend |
| 05/28/23 | | Real Estate |
"Most of those are mortgages with amortizations 35 years or longer, as reported by the banks. The share of the Canadian mortgage portfolio with amortizations 35 years or longer was 25% at CIBC, RBC, and TD, respectively."
|
| The ugly truth behind the ugly |
| 05/21/23 | | Real Estate |
"Now it's David's turn to refuse to walk away: He's using proceeds from the sale to continue his elder abuse lawsuit against Patriot Holdings. A trial date is set for June."
|
| Your house is a terrible investment |
| 03/12/23 | | Real Estate |
"Hey I've got an idea. We're always talking about good investments. What if we came up with the worst possible investment we can construct? What might that look like?"
|
| Starter homes gone |
| 02/19/23 | | Real Estate |
"If you're in the market for a new home I'm sure you've been waiting for years for prices to come down. Maybe higher mortgage rates will help. But unless there is some government action at the federal and local levels to make it easier to build more, the days of new homes going for $300k or less might be a thing of the past."
|
| The Fed screwed up the housing market |
| 09/11/22 | | Real Estate |
"if you are someone that's considering buying your first place you've been screwed in two different ways. Not only is it now more costly than ever to buy a home because of higher housing prices and mortgage rates, but rents are screaming higher as well"
|
| Housing shortage |
| 07/10/22 | | Real Estate |
"While there are numerous factors driving the rise in house prices, the increasing scarcity of housing units has risen to the top. This problem has been building (or not, as the case maybe) for decades."
|
| Home sweet whatever |
| 07/03/22 | | Real Estate |
"When I sold the house in 2017 and paid off the mortgage, I pocketed roughly $86,000. When I consider the total cash outflow during the time I owned the place, I calculate an internal rate of return of -5.08% - and the return would have been even worse if I adjusted it for inflation. That isn't the sort of performance anyone would want on an investment."
|
| 30-year's soar |
| 06/17/22 | | Real Estate |
"The 30-year fixed rate for top tier scenarios was 6.13% today, up from 5.55% last Thursday."
|
| A normal housing market |
| 06/12/22 | | Real Estate |
"While the Fed is slowly raising the Fed Funds Rate, mortgage rates didn't want to wait around for Jerome Powell. Rates went from 3% in January to more than 5% by April. And the move higher was basically uninterrupted. The only period in history that comes even close to matching the speed and magnitude of this move was in the early 1980s."
|
| The 6% mortgage |
| 06/12/22 | | Real Estate |
"Current 30-year mortgage rates are around 5.85%. Mortgage rates are probably close to the peak for this cycle (depending on inflation) but might rise to the low 6% range. Mortgage payments - for buying the same home - are up over 50% year-over-year."
|
| The start of a real estate bust |
| 05/15/22 | | Real Estate |
"During the market peak, sellers were receiving so many offers they weren't even considering conditional ones. That pushed some buyers to make high, firm offers just ahead of the market softening. Now, as they near their closing date, appraisals are coming back tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars short, leaving people scrambling to pay the difference or risk losing their deposit - or worse."
|
| Housing and demographics |
| 05/01/22 | | Real Estate |
"The current demographics are now very favorable for home buying - and will remain somewhat positive for most of the decade, although most of the increase is now behind us."
|
| Why homeowners aren't selling |
| 04/24/22 | | Real Estate |
"Nine out of ten mortgages in America carry an interest rate of less than 5%, which is the official level at which most new 30-year fixed-rate mortgages are now being written."
|
| Talk about hot |
| 04/03/22 | | Real Estate |
"I was presented with an all-cash offer of $125,000 over the asking price. All contingencies and inspections would be waived."
|
| Financially independent and renting |
| 04/03/22 | | Real Estate |
"I am often struck by people's obsession with owning a home. We owned a home for 15 years, and it was a wonderful experience for that time in our lives. But owning a home should not be universally equivalent with financial success. Here are seven reasons renting can be much better than owning."
|
| Higher mortgage rates |
| 02/13/22 | | Real Estate |
"With 4% 30-year mortgage rates, we will likely see a slowdown in both new and existing home sales (based on previous periods of rising rates). It also seems likely house price growth will slow."
|
| Investing in banks |
| 12/19/21 | | Real Estate |
"Local real estate prices have not just acted as a predictor over the full period, but they have also been a very consistent predictor. The spread between the top decile and bottom decile of stocks ranked by this factor has persisted through multiple market environments."
|
| The days of cheaper rentals are over |
| 10/07/21 | | Real Estate |
"Rents are up 9.6% nationwide in 2021, to an average of $1,649 a month, according to Dwellsy, which calls itself the largest rental housing platform in the country."
|
| Future housing returns are stark |
| 09/05/21 | | Real Estate |
"I wouldn't have the success of my financial plan be wholly dependent on further prices increases on residential real estate. Speculating on prices increases in real estate is fine - so long as if the amount at stake isn't material to the success of your financial plan."
|
| Death of the starter home |
| 09/05/21 | | Real Estate |
"If we take this to the extreme - the monthly payment for a $1,000,000 home is now $520 lower than the monthly payment for a $750,000 home in 2002. Add in fewer homes being built, a touch of inflation, scarred homebuilders, HGTV messing with our expectations and it's no wonder new home sales prices have risen over the past 20 years."
|
| Hyper zip code inflation |
| 07/04/21 | | Real Estate |
"In its effort to control asset prices, we believe the Federal Reserve has lost control of the real estate market. While they have succeeded in building a floor under home prices, they forgot about the ceiling! Assuming zip code hyperinflation spreads, we expect wealth inequality and housing affordability to become an increasingly hot topic in upcoming elections. In the meantime, the Federal Reserve's balance sheet continues to inflate as millions of potential homeowners are being squeezed out of the market. How much longer will the inequalities created from ultra-easy monetary policy be tolerated and left unchecked? We're not sure, but given the growing extremes, we believe it is the Fed's ability to QE without consequence that has become transitory, not inflation."
|
| Canadian home prices a deal vs US bubble |
| 06/06/21 | | Real Estate |
"Canadian real estate is receiving a big warning sign from an indicator that was an alarm for the US in 2006. The house price-to-rent ratio shows Canadian real estate is overvalued. When contrasted to the US is when you really get a feel for how much Canada went all-in on real estate. It makes 2006 America look like a sleepy backwater market of value investors."
|
| A bad time to be a homebuyer |
| 05/30/21 | | Real Estate |
"Because houses are selling so quickly, buyers are having to make all kinds of concessions to get the place they want. People are waiving inspections, paying in all cash and offering well over asking price in many cases."
|
| Canadian property bubbles |
| 05/23/21 | | Real Estate |
"They found Canada's hottest real estate markets are now less affordable than globally influential US cities. Heck, Canada's property bubble even pushed the tiny steel city of Hamilton to become less affordable than Los Angeles or New York City."
|
| Affordable cities in Ontario |
| 05/09/21 | | Real Estate |
Hello Deep River, Smooth Rock Falls, Rainy River, Marathon, and Englehart.
|
| Canadian systemic risk |
| 03/28/21 | | Real Estate |
"In Vancouver, you currently need to earn at least $147,600 to make the payments on a typical home in February 2020. Over in Fraser Valley, you can get away with $143,700 per year. That's 44% and 40% higher than the current median household income, respectively. Greater Toronto real estate also requires much bigger salaries to carry the mortgages. The payments on a typical GTA home needs a minimum salary of $148,570. In Hamilton, it's estimated at $128,100 at minimum. The minimum income is 45% and 25% higher than the current estimated household income, respectively."
|
| Homes in a bubble |
| 11/14/20 | | Real Estate |
"The bad news is all previous history came at higher mortgage rates. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate fell below 3% for the first time in August 2020, and rates are close to the lowest possible levels given the credit risk and costs of writing mortgages. It's one thing to be a peak valuation, it's another to be at peak valuation with no discernable upside."
|
| Workers cannot afford rent |
| 07/18/20 | | Real Estate |
"Full-time minimum wage workers cannot afford a two-bedroom rental anywhere in the U.S. and cannot afford a one-bedroom rental in 95% of U.S. counties, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition's annual 'Out of Reach' report."
|
| Property ladders |
| 11/03/19 | | Real Estate |
"A few years back, I could do a little experiment with audiences in the UK and the US. I would ask them to raise their hands if they thought stocks are riskier than real estate. Most hands went up. Then, I asked them to raise their hands if they thought stock returns were higher than real estate returns. Less than half raised their hands. In effect, people were telling me that stocks were riskier than real estate and provided less return. I cannot do that exercise anymore today, because after a 10-year bull market in stocks, perceptions have shifted - until the next bear market, when they will change once more."
|
| Real estate vs stocks |
| 04/03/19 | | Real Estate |
"Comparing real estate to the stock market or bonds or any traditional asset class is difficult because there are so many other variables involved in real estate. There are taxes and costs involved just like there are in the stock market, but then you have to consider the leverage involved, the cost of borrowing, the length of time in the home, the imputed rent, the psychic income from home ownership and the fact that you have to live somewhere."
|
| Rental market nightmare |
| 11/26/18 | | Real Estate |
"The result has been skyrocketing prices. Condo rents soared 7.6 percent to an average C$2,385 in the third quarter over the same period a year ago and were up 17 percent for newly available purpose-built units, according to data from Urbanation. Meanwhile, the apartment vacancy rate sits at about 0.5 percent."
|
| Rich ghost towns |
| 10/15/18 | | Real Estate |
"These days, walking through parts of Manhattan feels like occupying two worlds at the same time. In a theoretical universe, you are standing in the nation's capital of business, commerce, and culture. In the physical universe, the stores are closed, the lights are off, and the windows are plastered with for-lease signs."
|
| Geoarbitrage |
| 08/28/18 | | Real Estate |
"So the meat of the matter is, how much is the gap between the actual median income for each state, and the income it takes to buy the median priced home in each state?"
|
| The rate of return on everything |
| 01/01/18 | | Real Estate |
"This paper answers fundamental questions that have preoccupied modern economic thought since the 18th century. What is the aggregate real rate of return in the economy? Is it higher than the growth rate of the economy and, if so, by how much? Is there a tendency for returns to fall in the long-run? Which particular assets have the highest long-run returns? We answer these questions on the basis of a new and comprehensive dataset covering total returns for all important assets classes - equity, housing, bonds, and bills - across 16 advanced economies from 1870 to 2015"
|
| Shadow lending growing in Canada |
| 12/18/17 | | Real Estate |
"They opted for a third route: adding a second mortgage with an interest rate of 10.5 percent to pay off their debt. Their salvation came from a private unregulated lender, a move many other Canadians are making as the government tries to rein in a home-price surge that's driven household debt to a record. But like a giant game of Whac-A-Mole, the risk to the financial system from tapped out borrowers is merely shifting -- this time to a market where there's no oversight from the country's national bank regulator and new stress-test rules don't apply."
|
| Insane Canadian housing numbers |
| 08/20/17 | | Real Estate |
"While leverage can help boost performance on the way up, it becomes very dangerous on the way down. Leverage can turn even the best investments into poor ones when things go wrong, as losses are amplified. Equity can get wiped out pretty quickly on an overleveraged asset."
|
| Addiction to real estate |
| 08/07/17 | | Real Estate |
"Canada's addiction to real estate goes far beyond our obsession with talking about it. Our economy actually relies more on the fees associated with buying and selling houses than it does on agriculture, fishing, forestry and hunting combined."
|
| Low delinquency rates |
| 07/23/17 | | Real Estate |
"The problem arises when house prices stop rising and creating new equity against which stretched homeowners can borrow. People who are tight for cash rob Peter to pay Paul. And shifting debt from one lender to another has just been far too easy to do lately. Even a slowdown in house price appreciation, let alone a correction, would bring an end to that."
|
| The new normal |
| 06/04/17 | | Real Estate |
"These days, the average home price is between seven and eight times income. To return to the ratio of the 1980s, the average household income has to jump to $160,000, or home prices have to fall back to $460,000."
|
| Too much housing |
| 05/14/17 | | Real Estate |
"Don't let the mushrooming condos downtown fool you. There is no housing shortage in Toronto, says new planning research out of Ryerson University."
|
| Fortress fails to silence critic |
| 01/22/17 | | Real Estate |
"In 2011 the Ontario Securities Commission accused the pair, along with a third man, of engaging 'in conduct contrary to the public interest' by selling clients of their debt-management business shares of companies caught up in a B.C. stock scam. Petrozza and Rathore agreed to pay close to $3 million and were slapped with a 15-year ban on trading securities."
|
| Corruption in Canada |
| 09/11/16 | | Real Estate |
"Kathy Tomlinson reveals how loopholes and lax oversight are making it easy for a network of local and foreign speculators to play the system, and, in the process, fuel the steep rise in Vancouver home prices"
|
| Lethargic Canadian economy |
| 08/06/16 | | Real Estate |
"Real estate and financial services now account for 20 percent of the economy, levels not seen in the data since the early 1960s. That could be a problem, with household debt at a record and policy makers scrambling to slow price gains that are making homes unaffordable for all but the wealthiest buyers."
|
| Homes disappointing |
| 07/17/16 | | Real Estate |
"Buy land: They're not making it anymore. That often repeated adage sounds like good financial advice. But over the long run, it hasn't been. Despite solid price increases over the last few years, land and homes have actually been disappointing investments. It's worth considering why."
|
| Housing bubble |
| 06/11/16 | | Real Estate |
"Know a bad deal when you see one. Overextending yourself just to get a piece of the real estate action in Vancouver or Toronto is not just a bad deal, it could spell your financial doom."
|
| Canada's real estate problem |
| 01/31/16 | | Real Estate |
"As a result of its gains in 2015, the real estate industry accounts for 12 percent of Canada's gross domestic product through November."
|
| Housing market still not rational |
| 07/25/15 | | Real Estate |
"The housing market is another matter. It is far less rational than even the often irrational stock market, for a couple of important reasons. First, most investors find it difficult to understand how housing supply responds to changes in demand. Only a small minority of people think carefully about such things. Second, it is very hard for the minority of smart-money investors who do understand such matters to bet against bubble-level prices in real estate markets. In housing, the smart money has relatively little voice."
|
| What's scary about mortgages in Canada |
| 04/21/15 | | Real Estate |
"if real estate disappoints and/or interest rates swell, just when it comes time to renew your mortgage in three to five years, well, I guess these 1.8 million Canadian families will learn what it's like to run their house like a hedge fund."
|
| Sell Oakville, buy Windsor |
| 08/10/14 | | Real Estate |
"Investing strategist Dan Hallett has been saying this to friends of his lately: With an eye on retirement, sell your home in Oakville, about an hour's drive west of Toronto, and head another three hours west on Highway 401 to his own city of Windsor."
|
| Why Canada isn't immune |
| 07/12/14 | | Real Estate |
"History has shown, time and again, that 'this time' is not different. We believe the same is true for the future of Canadian residential real estate."
|
| How much did your house cost? |
| 03/22/14 | | Real Estate |
"In the case of the Irish property market, it would appear that mortgaged households have considerable difficulty in accurately recalling the actual house price paid for their property."
|
| Canada's mixed blessing |
| 06/09/13 | | Real Estate |
"This is a mixed blessing to say the least, since there was already plenty of concern that the Canadian job market had been artificially pumped up in recent years by the building boom - well, double down on those concerns, as construction payrolls now account for a record high of overall jobs at 7.6%."
|
| Why home prices change |
| 04/14/13 | | Real Estate |
"In an ideal world, steady and uniform inflation would have no effect on rational decision-making because it affects incomes as well as prices. But in the real world, inflation does affect our psychology. People feel more optimistic when their nominal pay rises or when a neighbor's house sold for more than they paid for theirs. But in thinking about investments for the long term, we should focus on fundamentals - on real, inflation-corrected values and on the economics behind them."
|
| Shiller on housing |
| 02/09/13 | | Real Estate |
"Robert Shiller, a professor at Yale University and co-creator of the S&P/Case-Shiller index of property values, talks about the outlook for the U.S. housing market."
|
| A new housing boom? |
| 01/27/13 | | Real Estate |
"After the traumatic collapse of the last price bubble, Americans seem less sanguine about owning versus renting. According to the Census Bureau, the homeownership rate has been falling, from 69.0 percent in the third quarter of 2006 to 65.5 percent in the third quarter last year."
|
| We're number 1 |
| 01/26/13 | | Real Estate |
"Canada has a new worthwhile initiative. After years of booming prices, that bastion of politeness north of the border is looking to avoid a catastrophic housing bust for something more, well, boring. Initiatives don't get more worthwhile, and perhaps not more difficult considering Canada just might have the biggest housing bubble in the world right now."
|
| Housing affordability crisis |
| 12/29/12 | | Real Estate |
"For just the second time in the past century, the country's housing market is pushing the limits of affordability, according to key statistical measures, shutting many potential buyers out of the market, and making it harder for those who have already taken the plunge to pay off their mortgages."
|
| Shaky foundations |
| 12/22/12 | | Real Estate |
"When Dennis Gilmore gathered financial analysts and investors on a conference call last summer, the head of California-based First American Financial Corp. had some troubling news. It was what he referred to bluntly as 'the situation' up in Canada. The Los Angeles-area insurance company was losing tens of millions of dollars due to hidden problems in the Canadian housing market, and there were no assurances that the bleeding was going to stop."
|
| Vancouver crash |
| 08/04/12 | | Real Estate |
"The bottom line is that I'm confident that there are many households now reliant on home equity extraction to maintain their current lifestyle and likely to continue making timely payments on debt obligations. I suspect that when the tide goes out, we'll be shocked at how many Vancouver households have been swimming naked:"
|
| Mawer Q1 |
| 04/28/12 | | Real Estate |
"In Fairfax Financial's Annual Letter to Shareholders, Prem Watsa observes, "there are more condos in construction in Toronto than in the 12 major cities in the U.S. combined, including New York and Los Angeles." According to the Toronto Real Estate Board, the average condominium in the City of Toronto went for $361,488 in the fourth quarter of 2011, up 7% year-over-year. Condo sales were up 10.5% year-over-year. The average sales price to list price registered 98%, which is well above the historical long-term average. The Toronto condo market is hot. Looking at the situation from a national perspective, the Canadian Real Estate Association reported that the average house price in Canada was $372,763 in February 2012. This compares to the $203,100 average price reported by the National Association of Realtors in the United States. Our question is simple: why should the average house in Canada sell for 84% more than the average house in the United States over the long run?"
|
| Real house prices |
| 04/28/12 | | Real Estate |
"The Shiller graph has suggested to many observers that house prices track inflation (i.e. that house prices adjusted for inflation are stable - except for bubbles). Last year I pointed out the slope depends on the data series used, and that if Professor Shiller had used either Corelogic or the Freddie Mac house prices series, before Case-Shiller was available, there would a greater upward slope to his graph."
|
| Owning too much real estate |
| 04/21/12 | | Real Estate |
"In the past, young families first purchased a starter home, lived in it for a few years and then sold it and upgraded to a bigger home to accommodate a growing family. These days, many families appear to opt to rent out their starter home when upgrading to a larger property."
|
| Pity about your retirement |
| 03/08/12 | | Real Estate |
"Buying a house can wreck your retirement. Did your real estate agent or bank not tell you that? Of course not. All they worry about is whether you're making enough money to carry your debts. The question of whether there's enough money left over to save for retirement is of zero interest to them."
|
| Time to panic |
| 03/01/12 | | Real Estate |
"More worrisome is where consumers have been getting their spending money. As wages stagnate and credit card use levels off, Canadian consumers have increasingly turned to their homes as a source of cash. As of last year, Canadians had pulled roughly $220 billion from their houses in revolving home equity lines of credit, a per capita amount three times larger than the U.S. at its peak."
|
| Toronto condo bubble |
| 02/13/12 | | Real Estate |
"A record 27,504 condo units in the City of Toronto were under construction at the end of last year, according to Canadian Mortgage and Housing annual data, adding to the city's total of 199,000 units. "If builders stopped building today, there's five years worth of supply that is about to be delivered, relative to what normal population growth is," Bank of America's King said."
|
| Look out below |
| 02/03/12 | | Real Estate |
"When the United States saw a vast housing bubble inflate and burst during the 2000s, many Canadians felt smug about the purported prudence of their financial and property markets. During the crash, Canadian house prices fell by just 8%, compared with more than 30% in America. They hit new record highs by 2010. "Canada was not a part of the problem," Stephen Harper, the prime minister, boasted in 2010. Today the consensus is growing on Bay Street, Toronto's answer to Wall Street, that Mr Harper may have to eat his words."
|
| China housing set for hard landing |
| 01/23/12 | | Real Estate |
"The numbers are grim: China's property bubble is heading for a spectacular burst, and its effect on the country's economy will be widespread."
|
| House of horrors |
| 11/26/11 | | Real Estate |
"Based on the average of the two measures, home prices are overvalued by about 25% or more in Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, New Zealand, Britain, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden (see table). Indeed, in the first four of those countries housing looks more overvalued than it was in America at the peak of its bubble."
|
| Rising from the ruins |
| 11/07/11 | | Real Estate |
"The economic landscape is unquestionably littered with the wreckage of the crash. Home prices languish near post-bubble lows, over 30% below peak. The plunge in prices has left nearly a quarter of all mortgage borrowers owing more than the value of their homes nearly 10m are seriously delinquent on their loans or in foreclosure. The hardest-hit markets are ghost neighbourhoods, filled with dilapidated properties. Housing markets are far from healthy. Yet current pessimism seems overdone. A turnaround in sales, prices and construction may be closer than many imagine."
|
| Real estate never goes down ... |
| 10/29/11 | | Real Estate |
"In real terms, the National index is back to Q3 1999 levels, the Composite 20 index is back to July 2000, and the CoreLogic index back to June 2000. In real terms, all appreciation in the last decade is gone." [Or to some time in 1988 by my eye.]
|
| Too hefty to handle |
| 08/26/11 | | Real Estate |
"Three years ago, just one out of every nine mortgage-holders borrowed more than 80% of the value of their homes. Today, it's one in six. These are verifiable facts whether they add up to a bubble, I can't say. But given the data and the terrible consequences of real estate bubbles, the Harper government could - at the very least - stop pumping air into the property market. And that means reining in the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., the vehicle through which you, dear taxpayer, have assumed the risks for these urban bidding wars and the jumbo mortgages they create."
|
| How long can home prices keep rising? |
| 08/20/11 | | Real Estate |
"I can't tell you when the housing correction will come. But I can tell you that when it arrives it will be correlated with other bad news. And it's the second correlation that worries me."
|
| Rental complex |
| 07/26/11 | | Real Estate |
"The belief that we're not responsible adults until we own our home, whether or not we can afford it, has distorted and stigmatized the cheaper and safer alternative: renting."
|
| Misvalued Chinese land |
| 07/16/11 | | Real Estate |
"In the little-known Chinese city of Loudi - which is home to 4m people - there is a 1.2bn yuan ($185m) leisure project currently being developed, money for which was raised through bonds guaranteed by land valued at $1.5m an acre. Those prices, says Bloomberg, are comparable to acreage values in one of Chicago's plushest suburban neighbourhoods."
|
| Double Dip |
| 05/06/11 | | Real Estate |
"National home prices are officially on the hunt for a new bottom. After beginning to decline again this summer, once the home buyer credit expired, home prices hit a new post-bubble low in April, according to housing industry consulting firm Clear Capital. It reports that national home prices now sit 0.7% below their March 2009 low. Over the past nine months, they're down 11.5%."
|
| T.O.'s unquenchable thirst for condos |
| 05/04/11 | | Real Estate |
"The still-buoyant real estate market hasn't just kept house and condo prices high it's held rents aloft as well. Developers in Toronto and other major Canadian cities stopped building large new rental high-rises in the 1970s. That was partly due to rent controls in Ontario and other provinces, but also because condominiums offered a faster, more certain payoff to a developer - once the building is completed and you've sold the units, you're out. You don't have to manage and maintain it for years, even decades. As for owners, they could either occupy the units or make a pretty penny renting them out. "Condos have become the de facto new rental supply," says consultant Barry Lyon. That supply is much more expensive than old rental high-rises. Lyon and other analysts say that renters typically pay 50% more for a new condo unit than they would on rent for a comparable apartment in an aged building."
|
| Owning Loses Appeal |
| 04/21/11 | | Real Estate |
"The median U.S. home price tumbled 32 percent from a 2006 peak to a nine-year low in February, data from the Realtors show. The retreat surpassed the 27 percent drop seen in the first five years of the Great Depression, according to Stan Humphries, chief economist of Zillow Inc., a Seattle-based real estate information company."
|
| Home Prices Since 1890 |
| 03/26/11 | | Real Estate |
"Are you one of those people who still thinks buying a home is a good investment? Perhaps some historical perspective will help. VisualizingEconomics provides a fascinating chart showing how nominal and real home prices have changed since 1890"
|
| A Red Flag On Reverse Mortgages |
| 03/13/11 | | Real Estate |
"It is the saddest of paradoxes: a government-backed financial maneuver intended to free up extra money for struggling older people turns out to have left some widows and widowers on the brink of foreclosure."
|
| Google Map Foreclosure Tricks |
| 12/09/10 | | Real Estate |
"I wanted to demonstrate the full extent of Foreclosures in the US, so after setting GMaps on foreclosure listings, I slowly zoomed out of the map. Voila! Most foreclosures that are for sale in the USA are now showing on your screen."
|
| The 25-Year Foreclosure |
| 12/05/10 | | Real Estate |
"Patsy Campbell could tell you a thing or two about fighting foreclosure. She's been fighting hers for 25 years. The 71-year-old retired insurance saleswoman has been living in her house, a two-story on a half acre in a tidy middle-class neighborhood here in central Florida, since 1978. The last time she made a mortgage payment was October 1985."
|
| Why the housing bulls are wrong |
| 11/22/10 | | Real Estate |
"Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman is the latest prominent investor to jump on the housing bandwagon. But here are four reasons by housing is still not a good investment."
|
| The two key housing problems |
| 09/16/10 | | Real Estate |
"It is important to note that falling house prices helps clear the excess supply, although more jobs and more households is the preferred solution. However falling prices makes the negative equity problem worse."
|
| The lost half decade |
| 08/25/10 | | Real Estate |
"While it has been a 'lost decade' for equities, housing isn't too far behind. The sector is now in the midst of a lost half decade and counting. Following up on yesterday's downright awful release of existing home sales, today's new home sales report for July came in at a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of just 276K, which is a record low dating back to 1963. Since peaking in July 2005, new home sales have now declined by more than 80% in five years."
|
| Credit score is the tyrant |
| 07/25/10 | | Real Estate |
"A FICO score, he patiently explained, is merely a tool that lenders use to help manage their risk; criticizing it is akin to criticizing 'a saw because the construction job turned out badly.' With big banks making thousands of credit decisions every day, they couldn't possible do it without some standardized benchmark; a credit score provided that benchmark. Over the years, he added, the algorithm had gotten very good at predicting the odds of a borrower defaulting. In fact, FICO scores are not the best predictor. The amount of equity a person has in his home, his debt-to-income ratio, his job stability and his cash reserves are all better predictors than credit scores, according to Dave Zitting, the chief executive of Primary Residential Mortgage, a leading mortgage lender. And yet, he said, 'The credit score has become the line in the sand for the banks.'"
|
| Vancouver's bubble trouble |
| 06/27/10 | | Real Estate |
"In Vancouver, new developments are pre-sold via "assignment letters," or commitments to buy. Throughout 2009, say Connell and others, assignment letters were being flipped. "The minute I actually heard a taxi driver talking about flipping assignments," says Connell, "I knew something had to give.""
|
| The homeownership gap |
| 06/04/10 | | Real Estate |
"Recent years have seen a sharp rise in the number of negative equity homeowners - those who owe more on their mortgages than their houses are worth. These homeowners are included in the offi cial homeownership rate computed by the Census Bureau, but the savings they must amass to retain their home or purchase a new home are daunting. Recognizing that these homeowners are likely to convert to renters over time, the authors of this analysis calculate an 'effective' rate of homeownership that excludes negative equity households. They argue that the effective rate - 5.6 percentage points below the official rate - may be a useful guide to the future path of the official rate."
|
| The return of housing |
| 04/27/10 | | Real Estate |
"That brought a dramatic change in the first quarter of 2010. "All of a sudden," says Castleman, "demand stabilized at around 60,000 units a quarter, and stayed there." To be sure, that's an extremely low number. Castleman estimates that in a normal economy, around twice that many units should be selling. But housing starts, by the end of 2009, had dropped to an astounding 30,000 a quarter, an extraordinary one-fourth of what the market normally requires. "Now builders are seeing, for the first time in years, that they don't have enough houses either finished or under construction to meet demand," says Castleman. Result: In Metrostudy's markets, housing starts spiked by 44% in the first quarter of 2010, versus the same period last year."
|
| Don't bet the farm on the housing |
| 04/11/10 | | Real Estate |
"The question now is whether a strong case has been built for a new bull market since the home-price turning point in May 2009. Though there is no way to be precise, I don.t believe it has."
|
| Why house value won't rise |
| 04/08/10 | | Real Estate |
"Like any other well-functioning industry, the construction industry experiences technological improvements and increased efficiency. In the computer industry, technology has meant that affordable laptops have computing power that would have been exorbitantly expensive in 1980. As a result, no one ever buys a computer thinking that it will rise in value. The real cost of building a home declined by about 3 percent in both the 1980s and the 1990s. In principle, declining construction costs could also lead homes to become more affordable year after year."
|
| How Texas escaped the real estate crisis |
| 04/04/10 | | Real Estate |
| Flaherty's mortgage changes |
| 02/16/10 | | Real Estate |
| Foreclosures seen still hitting prices |
| 02/16/10 | | Real Estate |
| U.S. housing aid winds down |
| 02/16/10 | | Real Estate |
| Global household leverage |
| 02/09/10 | | Real Estate |
| A new bubble |
| 02/08/10 | | Real Estate |
| All those little Stuyvesant Towns |
| 02/01/10 | | Real Estate |
| A bust with precedent |
| 01/31/10 | | Real Estate |
| Unlock the housing market |
| 01/30/10 | | Real Estate |
| Why Canada's housing bubble will burst |
| 01/27/10 | | Real Estate |
| International housing affordability |
| 01/25/10 | | Real Estate |
| Underwater, but will they leave the pool? |
| 01/24/10 | | Real Estate |
| Walk away from your mortgage! |
| 01/09/10 | | Real Estate |
| Are homes now "cheap"? |
| 12/30/09 | | Real Estate |
| Put option: default, then rent |
| 12/11/09 | | Real Estate |
| Why didn't Canada's housing market go bust? |
| 12/03/09 | | Real Estate |
| Why loan modifications fail |
| 12/03/09 | | Real Estate |
| What are these home owners thinking? |
| 11/19/09 | | Real Estate |
| Acorn and the housing bubble |
| 11/13/09 | | Real Estate |
| CMHC needs to review policies |
| 11/06/09 | | Real Estate |
| The dog ate your mortgage |
| 10/25/09 | | Real Estate |
| Homebuyers' handout |
| 10/22/09 | | Real Estate |
| A Bounce? Indeed. A Boom? Not Yet. |
| 10/11/09 | | Real Estate |
| Mortgages made simpler |
| 07/05/09 | | Real Estate |
| Tax appeals take rising toll on governments |
| 07/04/09 | | Real Estate |
| New evidence on the foreclosure crisis |
| 07/03/09 | | Real Estate |
| U.S. home prices down 18% |
| 06/30/09 | | Real Estate |
| A recession measured by new-home sales |
| 06/27/09 | | Real Estate |
| Return to 0% down |
| 06/03/09 | | Real Estate |
| A 3rd wave of foreclosures |
| 06/03/09 | | Real Estate |
| Problems with housing data |
| 06/03/09 | | Real Estate |
| Home prices began 2009 with record declines |
| 05/26/09 | | Real Estate |
| Job losses push mortgages to foreclosure |
| 05/25/09 | | Real Estate |
| U.S. homeownership by age group |
| 04/27/09 | | Real Estate |
| Fannie Mae creates housing mirage |
| 04/24/09 | | Real Estate |
| Down and out |
| 04/24/09 | | Real Estate |
| Housing is not coming back |
| 04/24/09 | | Real Estate |
| Spat over historical trends |
| 04/24/09 | | Real Estate |
| The housing crisis isn't a crisis |
| 04/10/09 | | Real Estate |
| New home sales fell 41% |
| 03/26/09 | | Real Estate |
| Curse you, Zillow! |
| 03/21/09 | | Real Estate |
| Attack of the condo craters |
| 03/04/09 | | Real Estate |
| Mortgage delinquencies rise to record |
| 03/04/09 | | Real Estate |
| 1 in 5 mortgages underwater |
| 03/04/09 | | Real Estate |
| Home prices fall 18.5% |
| 02/24/09 | | Real Estate |
| Housing starts at another record low |
| 02/18/09 | | Real Estate |
| 19 million U.S. homes vacant in 2008 |
| 02/04/09 | | Real Estate |
| Rents are falling fast |
| 02/01/09 | | Real Estate |
| The growing foreclosure crisis |
| 01/18/09 | | Real Estate |
| Home prices post record 18% drop |
| 12/30/08 | | Real Estate |
| Former WaMu employees tell of the push to lend |
| 12/29/08 | | Real Estate |
| U.S. home prices drop by record 13.2% |
| 12/23/08 | | Real Estate |
| How high-risk mortgages crept north |
| 12/13/08 | | Real Estate |
| The American Dream? |
| 12/13/08 | | Real Estate |
| Foreclosures soar 76% |
| 12/05/08 | | Real Estate |
| Home prices in record decline |
| 11/25/08 | | Real Estate |
| Housing market gets even weaker |
| 11/24/08 | | Real Estate |
| Home prices in 20 U.S. cities fall 16.6% |
| 10/28/08 | | Real Estate |
| Home prices seem far from bottom |
| 10/19/08 | | Real Estate |
| Canada may face housing bust: Shiller |
| 10/01/08 | | Real Estate |
| U.S. home prices declined 16.3% in July |
| 09/30/08 | | Real Estate |
| Housing costs: Half your income? |
| 09/25/08 | | Real Estate |
| The mortgages of the future |
| 09/21/08 | | Real Estate |
| Steeper drop in Canada's existing home prices |
| 09/15/08 | | Real Estate |
| Real national prices decline to Q4 2002 levels |
| 08/27/08 | | Real Estate |
| Foreclosure fallout: Houses go for a $1 |
| 08/14/08 | | Real Estate |
| One third owe more than house is worth |
| 08/12/08 | | Real Estate |
| 'Stealth' housing bailout |
| 08/06/08 | | Real Estate |
| British house prices fall |
| 07/01/08 | | Real Estate |
| The housing abyss |
| 06/27/08 | | Real Estate |
| SP/Case-Shiller home prices fell 15.3% in April |
| 06/24/08 | | Real Estate |
| Mistaking consumption for investment |
| 06/24/08 | | Real Estate |
| Downsizing the American home |
| 06/10/08 | | Real Estate |
| About 1 in 11 mortgageholders face loan problems |
| 06/06/08 | | Real Estate |
| Lipstick On A pig |
| 06/06/08 | | Real Estate |
| Housing bubbles collapse inward |
| 05/30/08 | | Real Estate |
| Through the floor |
| 05/30/08 | | Real Estate |
| Home prices take record drop |
| 05/22/08 | | Real Estate |
| Subprime in sheep's clothing |
| 05/08/08 | | Real Estate |
| Doubts raised on big backers of mortgages |
| 05/06/08 | | Real Estate |
| Subprime outcomes |
| 05/06/08 | | Real Estate |
| House prices decline |
| 04/29/08 | | Real Estate |
| You can't pay them enough to leave |
| 04/24/08 | | Real Estate |
| New-home sales in the U.S. plunge |
| 04/24/08 | | Real Estate |
| Here comes the next mortgage crisis |
| 04/17/08 | | Real Estate |
| Lenders swamped by foreclosures |
| 04/04/08 | | Real Estate |
| Buyers' revenge |
| 03/28/08 | | Real Estate |
| Grim realty |
| 03/26/08 | | Real Estate |
| The next shoe to drop in housing |
| 03/15/08 | | Real Estate |
| Morgan Stanley, Lone Star stick taxpayers on defaults |
| 03/09/08 | | Real Estate |
| Preparing for a 'real estate apocalypse' |
| 03/09/08 | | Real Estate |
| Home economics |
| 03/04/08 | | Real Estate |
| Subprime loans defaulting even before resets |
| 02/20/08 | | Real Estate |
| Can't pay? Just walk away |
| 02/06/08 | | Real Estate |
| Getting Knocked Down by Prime ARMs |
| 02/05/08 | | Real Estate |
| Housing meltdown |
| 02/01/08 | | Real Estate |
| Generational housing bubble |
| 01/23/08 | | Real Estate |
| Homebuilding: Sharpest drop in 27 years |
| 01/18/08 | | Real Estate |
| Appraiser exposes toxic debt tie to inflated values |
| 01/18/08 | | Real Estate |
| Lennar's new homes fetch 60% less |
| 01/10/08 | | Real Estate |
| Dirty deeds |
| 01/05/08 | | Real Estate |
| Home prices post record decline |
| 12/26/07 | | Real Estate |
| Pain Street USA: '08 housing outlook |
| 12/21/07 | | Real Estate |
| Lining up to invest? I'm inclined to look the other way |
| 11/17/07 | | Real Estate |
| For sale: 2 million empty homes |
| 10/26/07 | | Real Estate |
| Housing: that sinking feeling |
| 10/19/07 | | Real Estate |
| Housing woes hit high end |
| 08/20/07 | | Real Estate |
| Why rent? To get richer |
| 07/22/07 | | Real Estate |
| Florida foreclosure future shock |
| 07/07/07 | | Real Estate |
| Don't buy that house |
| 07/01/07 | | Real Estate |
| Houses cheaper than cars in Detroit |
| 03/24/07 | | Real Estate |
| Foreclosures force suburbs to fight blight |
| 03/24/07 | | Real Estate |
| Mortgage liquidity du jour |
| 03/24/07 | | Real Estate |
| Is your apartment like a dot-com stock? |
| 03/16/07 | | Real Estate |
| Not in your backyard? |
| 03/15/07 | | Real Estate |
| Real estate can only fall 10% to 20%, right? Right? |
| 03/15/07 | | Real Estate |
| Renters gloat over the housing slump |
| 12/30/06 | | Real Estate |
| The 400-square-foot dream home |
| 11/20/06 | | Real Estate |
| Ouch! Your house payment just doubled |
| 10/03/06 | | Real Estate |
| Read between all those for-sale signs |
| 08/29/06 | | Real Estate |
| Getting real about the real estate bubble |
| 08/27/06 | | Real Estate |
| Be greedy when others are fearful |
| 08/24/06 | | Real Estate |
| When homeowners are desperate to sell |
| 08/22/06 | | Real Estate |
| The housing bust is here |
| 08/21/06 | | Real Estate |
| Housing crash puts sellers in debt crisis |
| 08/21/06 | | Real Estate |
| CMHC's risky mortgage moves a bad bet for taxpayers |
| 07/07/06 | | Real Estate |
| Foreclosures may jump as ARMs reset |
| 06/19/06 | | Real Estate |
| Real estate is risky business |
| 06/18/06 | | Real Estate |
| Welcome to the dead zone |
| 05/07/06 | | Real Estate |
| New home sales soar |
| 04/30/06 | | Real Estate |
| At long last, a new home sale slump |
| 03/25/06 | | Real Estate |
| More Americans are losing their homes |
| 03/12/06 | | Real Estate |
| Perils in online real estate |
| 03/11/06 | | Real Estate |
| From Dutch history, an exuberant lesson |
| 03/03/06 | | Real Estate |
| Foreclosures: Bargain hunters beware! |
| 02/16/06 | | Real Estate |
| Most overvalued housing markets |
| 01/01/06 | | Real Estate |
| Hear that hissing sound? |
| 12/08/05 | | Real Estate |
| Spur growth -- dump mortgage deduction |
| 11/19/05 | | Real Estate |
| Piggy bank -- or house of cards? |
| 10/08/05 | | Real Estate |
| Empty houses, falling prices: A boom dies |
| 10/03/05 | | Real Estate |
| When booms go bust... |
| 09/19/05 | | Real Estate |
| The three myths of condo investing |
| 08/21/05 | | Real Estate |
| Is housing too expensive? Blame the government |
| 08/07/05 | | Real Estate |
| Mortgage insurance: homebuyer beware |
| 08/07/05 | | Real Estate |
| Housing markets pricing out middle class |
| 07/10/05 | | Real Estate |
| The hidden costs of moving |
| 07/10/05 | | Real Estate |
| The danger of a global house-price collapse |
| 06/17/05 | | Real Estate |
| The global housing boom |
| 06/17/05 | | Real Estate |
| Appraisal fraud: your home at risk |
| 05/23/05 | | Real Estate |
| Boomtown USA |
| 05/20/05 | | Real Estate |
| Renting is the real bargain |
| 03/27/05 | | Real Estate |
| Gurus want your money |
| 10/04/04 | | Real Estate |
| Homeowners should not think they're bubbleproof |
| 09/19/04 | | Real Estate |
| Bubble trouble |
| 09/19/04 | | Real Estate |
| Real estate: What could go wrong? |
| 08/09/04 | | Real Estate |
| For rent, cheap |
| 02/11/04 | | Real Estate |
| Home buying with no money down |
| 12/24/03 | | Real Estate |
| The child molester next door |
| 12/07/03 | | Real Estate |
| The seven deadly sins |
| 11/29/03 | | Real Estate |
| Your home: Worst-case scenario |
| 11/10/03 | | Real Estate |
| The case of the double agent |
| 09/09/03 | | Real Estate |
| Refinancing choke jolts homeowners |
| 08/27/03 | | Real Estate |
| Your home: Worst-case scenario |
| 08/09/03 | | Real Estate |
| Malls: Death of an American icon |
| 07/04/03 | | Real Estate |
| Landlordship has its privileges |
| 04/08/03 | | Real Estate |
| Hot property |
| 06/23/02 | | Real Estate |
| Going through the roof |
| 03/27/02 | | Real Estate |
