Silver lining in foreclosure cloud [SFGate: Top News Stories] People who thought they could never afford a home here are buying foreclosed houses at huge discounts, sometimes more than half off the stratospheric heights they reached just a couple of years ago.
The median price of a home in California plunged 30 percent to $339,000 in May, opening doors for some first-time buyers to afford homes in the state's most depressed areas, a real estate research firm said Wednesday.
Southern California housing market still under siege [Los Angeles Times - Top News] Outlying areas like the Antelope Valley and the Inland Empire have long appealed to people who were willing to accept a burdensome commute for the chance to own a better house. But buyers are increasingly factoring gasoline costs into their purchase decisions, said Dan Griffith, a Rancho Cucamonga-based real estate agent.
Just days after being burned by LandSource Communities Development LLC's Chapter 11 filing, the California Public Employees Retirement System is reportedly mulling selling part of its $2 billion in residential land holdings.
A cold market for jumbo loans shows signs of a thaw [L.A. Times - Business] Despite the government's effort to address one of the repercussions of the sub-prime meltdown, jumbo mortgages -- those exceeding $417,000 -- have remained difficult to obtain and relatively expensive. But there are signs of normalcy returning to the jumbo market.
Land Prices Plunge The value of undeveloped parcels of residential land dropped 40.1% in Riverside County and 40% in San Bernardino County since December, according to data released by The Hoffman Co., a land brokerage firm in Irvine.
[Washington Post]
A Three-Part Series on the U.S. Housing Bust
Boom Forces converge to fuel the biggest American housing boom since the 1950s: plunging interest rates, exotic new Wall Street securities that flood the mortgage industry with cash, and easier loan packages for immigrants and others with less-than-stellar credit.
Bust Banks and other mortgage lenders notice weakness in the housing market. New houses sit unsold and foreclosures rise as people who bought homes with adjustable-rate mortgages see sharp spikes in their monthly payments. Central bankers and other watchdogs are caught by surprise.
Aftermath When subprime lenders implode, the contagion spreads quickly to Wall Street, which had packaged risky mortgage loans and sold the securities around the world. Investors panic that the housing collapse will reverberate through the rest of the economy.
In a wide-ranging report on U.S. housing released Tuesday evening, Fitch Ratings said that its “forecast for the housing sector in 2008 has become more bearish,” pointing to a soft economy, very depressed consumer sentiment, and an unaccommodating mortgage market as key factors behind the latest bearish turn at the credit rating agency.
Real estate investors watch ... and wait [Pensions & Investments - Real Estate] Residential property deals are extremely volatile and can turn bad quickly, Mr. Koster said. One example is a $1 billion land deal struck by the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, Sacramento, with San Francisco-based MacFarlane Partners in February 2007. That investment is teetering between bankruptcy filing and a cash bailout by the $248.2 billion system. “CalPERS might have to take massive write-offs,” he said. “It just shows how volatile residential is.”
1. Nevada
2. California
3. Arizona
4. Florida
5. Michigan
6. Georgia
7. Colorado
8. Massachusetts
9. Ohio
10. New Jersey
Housing Wire: LIBOR Mess Promises to Squeeze ARM Borrowers An international uproar over allegations that some banks intentionally manipulated LIBOR, a key interest rate used to determine rate adjustments for many adjustable-rate mortgage holders, is likely to have a real-world impact for many adjustable-rate mortgage borrowers, sources told Housing Wire Thursday.
Housing Wire: States Struggle to Come to Terms with Mortgage Mess As trouble in the nation’s housing markets has roiled onward, state legislators have been moving in varied attempts to address a burgeoning crisis affecting key constituents — and with varied success, as well.
