The Wall Street Journal contrasts high-end homeowners, some of which refuse to reduce their listing prices (and the property lingers) and some that cut their asking price and actually sold the property. The Case-Shiller Index shows a 28 percent decline in all housing since the… Read more

Record low interest rates and a volatile and uncertain stock market are spurring underwater homeowners to bring cash to sell their home and then go right back out and buy bigger-better homes at significantly reduced prices.  Doubling Down on Housing- WSJ

Great Read and Perspective The housing-market recession is not over- MarketWatch

Wall Street Journal Conjectures That Housing Will Continue it’s Long Slow Melt Rather Than a Double Dip Housing will not recover until job growth recovers—and there is little good news out there on the job front.  While the US did add 431,000 jobs in May,… Read more

Experts see underlying weakness in housing Despite a surprising surge in home sales reported this week experts say the housing market’s spring fling has been fueled by now-expired tax credits and is unlikely to last.

Economists Forecasting Home Prices to Rise 12 Percent in the Next Five Years (But In My Opinion, That Would Not Even Cover Inflation)   Wall Street Journal Article Economists in this survey are forecasting a 12 percent price recovery in the next five years.  If that is… Read more

It’s not just the house loan that is taking a toll on borrowers, but the car loans, credit card balances and college loans.  Typical homeowners getting loan relief under the President’s initiatives spent 44.8 percent of their pretax income on housing prior to loan modification,… Read more

We spend 10 hours looking for a new car (which depreciates), four hours searching and shopping for a new computer and just five hours for a new mortgage according to a Zillow Survey.  http://zillow.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=159&item=201

http://www.costar.com/news/Article.aspx?id=CB58F9797974B3A09990193DBF51EC19 In the article accessible via the link above, the CoStar Group reports that Q1 2010 Bank results are better than somewhat expected in regards to continued deterioration of commercial real estate.  The question becomes, however, if we are using the logic “a rolling loan… Read more

NAR summarizes NY Times article on homebuyer tax credits – expensive but they worked.  The linked article estimates that more than $8 billion of payments (through February 2010) went to people that would have purchased the home regardless. http://www.realtor.org/RMODaily.nsf/pages/News2010042801?OpenDocument