Video Update: Market Movers this week: Case Shiller Index-still declining but off lows, monthly jobs report Friday…
Update 2: More on that shadow inventory courtesy of Smart Money:
(…)the outlook for housing by Amherst Securities Group, whose stuff we’ve quoted before and whose analysis is invariably first-rate. The report, dated last Wednesday, festooned with gory detail, focuses on the swollen overhang, the so-called shadow inventory, that has grown inexorably in the wake of the tsunami of default and foreclosure.
Amherst estimates this massive overhang at seven million units. That’s the equivalent of 135% of a full year’s existing-home sales and chillingly greater than the 1.27 million units that made up the overhang in early 2005, when the housing bubble had just begun its dizzying and more than a little lunatic ascent.
…Three factors are cited by Amherst as the chief culprits in this sorry narrative. The first is the rapidity with which what it describes as the nonperforming bucket (where the mortgages are at least 60 days delinquent) is filling. The second is the strikingly low “cure rate” on delinquent loans. In 2005, homeowners retrieved 66% of their loans delinquent 60 days or longer. That percentage shriveled to a paltry 5% in the second quarter of ’09.
And, finally, bloating the inventory overhang is the lengthening time between delinquency and liquidation. Of the loans in the delinquent pipeline in August 2009, 9% have not made a payment in over 24 months, compared with 4% in 2008. The reasons cited by Amherst for this stretching out include moratoriums on foreclosures and the slow pace of the judicial process in states where a judge’s O.K. is required for foreclosure...GO READ THE WHOLE EXCELLENT PIECE!
UPDATE: More on the Case Shiller Home Price Index:
- 10 & 20 city composites are up 3.6% from their lows.
These guys are hyping minimal improvement here, AGAIN. SHOCKAH! They are looking at month-to-month which is not the way to gauge, you need y/y in RE!
Here comes David Blitzer to break it out- he sees ‘clear signs it is turning up’, it ‘will be slow’ still ‘clear risk there may be backsliding at some point but it definitely looks encouraging’ Erin Burnette is ‘clinging’ to the ALMOST FLAT Y/Y for Dallas and Denver HA! Blitzer notes they include foreclosure sales and anecdotal data is foreclosures are out there, and he acknowledges the resets in 2010 are coming, and HA he finally notes the tax credit is ending in November, ya!
Here is the REAL DATA YEAR OVER YEAR from the same report – 1 YEAR CHANGE:
Dallas down 1.6%
Denver down 2.9%
Detroit down 24.6%
Las Vegas down 31.4%
L.A. down 14.9%
Miami down 21.2%
Minneapolis down 17.3%
New York down 10.3%
Phoenix down 28.5% (ouch!)
Portland down 13.9%
San Diego down 12.3%
San Francisco down 17.9%
Seattle down 15.3%
Tampa down 18.4%
Washington down 9.8%
THESE ARE NOT GOOD NUMBERS FOLKS!!!!
Here are the ridiculous tiny blips they are getting excited about, recall these are the 30 day change from June to July in %:
Atlanta up 2.3%
Boston up 1.2%
Charlotte up 0.6% (wow let’s take out some equity and restart the economy! uhm NOT!)
Continues after the break:
Housing Update: Median Home Price drops 16.8% y/y….MBA makes 700B downward revision to ’09 originations forecast…
Ouch: National Median Home Price at $173,000 for May, a drop of 16.8% year over year….May existing home sales up 2.4%, same as April….much lower than needed for this inventory, especially since roughly 45% of the sales are foreclosure sales to investors….dollar is extending its losses and markets are down, DOW off 40 now to 8298….10 yr yield 3.63%….Gold 918….Oil down to 67…
So taking a closer look at the incredible revisions by MBA yesterday, it appears as though the Making Home Affordable Program has been a failure to date. Not the EPIC FAIL of Hank Paulson’s original plan, but a FAIL nonetheless….
MBA dropped the hammer on the outlook yesterday:
…The Mortgage Bankers Association cut its forecast of home-mortgage lending this year by 27% amid deflating hopes for a boom in refinancing. The trade group said Monday that it now expects $2.034 trillion of originations of mortgages for one- to four-family homes in 2009, down from a forecast of $2.780 trillion in March, when falling interest rates spurred expectations for huge volumes of refinancing….
Here are the numbers, of the millions of homeowners facing foreclosure, a grand total of 13,000 loans have been modified/refi’d. Yep.
…Meanwhile, the MBA said, the volume of refinancing under the Obama administration’s Home Affordable Refinance Program so far has been “very low.” This program is designed to help borrowers whose loans are backed by government-owned investors Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the biggest providers of funding for U.S. mortgages.
“While the number of loans completed under this program is likely to increase, it is difficult to craft a scenario under which origination volumes would come anywhere close to reaching the numbers originally envisioned for the program, particularly under our higher rate environment,” the trade group said.
So how low is it? Let’s check in on the housing beat with Diana Olick of CNBC who has the real scoop:
…Today the Mortgage Bankers Association put out a revision in its 2009 originations forecast. A big revision. A $700 billion revision. “$84 billion of the drop is due to lower purchase originations and the rest is due to lower rate/term refinances and very low volumes in the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP).”
…The MBA had raised its forecast by over $800 billion in March following the drop in interest rates associated with the Fed’s announcement on the Treasury bond and mortgage-backed securities purchases programs as well as the implementation of the HARP….
……The refi’s dropped off for two reasons, one being the interest rate rise, and the second being the poor results on the HARP….While generally accepted estimates were that around 1.5 to 2 million borrowers might avail themselves of this program, with many more potentially eligible, to date only about 13,000 loans have been completed,” notes the MBA’s chief economist, Jay Brinkmann. …
Did anyone else catch Larry Kudlow get curt and rather harsh with Diana on The Call last week? Diana makes it clear in this blog report her position and reporting on the housing market is based on the facts, not the ‘Goldilocks wannabe green shoots’ scenario we all know Larry wants to find…..the harsh reality of our housing market, and it is pretty damned harsh here in AZ lemme tell ya:
…A lot of folks out there contend that I am overly bearish on the beat I cover. Some go so far as to call me “miserable,” while others claim I choose to see the glass half empty. I am and do neither. I’m not a bear; I’m a realist. It’s your right to have an opinion, but it’s not my job. My job is to gather for you and funnel to you the facts: The numbers, the trends, the industry forecasts and the experts’ analyses. I have no agenda and frankly gain nothing from being either a bull or a bear. If anything, I’d be better off personally as a housing bull. CNBC doesn’t allow me to own stock, but I can own a house, and I do. If you think housing has bottomed, that’s your opinion, but that’s just what it is: Opinion.
Housing and the Federal Reserve….
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Bill Gross at Pimco is saying the Fed needs to let the 10 yr float above 4% to attract private investors like himself, while Mark Zandee notes the Fed needs to increase MBS purchases to drive the 10 yr back down and keep boosting refis….dueling economists baby
Bond Vigilantes Ride Again – CNBC.com
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The 30 yr mortgage rate is rising above 5% again..Rickster lays down the case that quantitative easing is only effective very short term…
How about we make some use of Fannie and Freddie now that we own them and all, and have 3% mortgages bought by FAN/FRED…..HOLC HOLC Baby….
Moderate in the Middle 