I think before any meaningful recovery in real estate prices can take root, we need to overcome three major obstacles…
“Rebound Obstacle #1: Inventory Glut. Nearly 10% of all homes built this decade are sitting vacant, compared to a historical average of 2.2%. In total, we’re sitting on almost 10 months worth of inventory versus a historical average of four months.
Rebound Obstacle #2: Loan Resets. Forget subprime. We’ve already worked through 80% of those resets and written down $1.47 trillion in the process. Now we’re facing a $2.5 trillion mountain of Alt-A loan resets. The first big wave hits mid-2011, with the peak expected to come in early 2013.
Rebound Obstacle #3: Foreclosures. One in four homeowners are now underwater. If we break it out by loan type the picture gets worse – 25% of prime loans, 45% of Alt-A loans, 50% of subprime loans are severely underwater. Add in the 6.5 million Americans out of work since the recession began and it doesn’t take an Einstein to predict where foreclosures are heading.”
Asian currencies continue to sell off vs the $ on the heels of the news yesterday that South Korea said they will look into hot money inflows stemming from the $ carry trade and the Bank of Indonesia said they are looking into the foreign buying of bills. This follows the news a few weeks ago that Taiwan was limiting foreign deposit holdings and Brazil was taxing foreign inflow transactions. As I mentioned yesterday, we may have reached a short term pain threshold in terms of $ weakness and foreign countries are fighting back as they certainly won't wait for...
November 3rd, 2009 at 5:35 pm
I think before any meaningful recovery in real estate prices can take root, we need to overcome three major obstacles…
“Rebound Obstacle #1: Inventory Glut. Nearly 10% of all homes built this decade are sitting vacant, compared to a historical average of 2.2%. In total, we’re sitting on almost 10 months worth of inventory versus a historical average of four months.
Rebound Obstacle #2: Loan Resets. Forget subprime. We’ve already worked through 80% of those resets and written down $1.47 trillion in the process. Now we’re facing a $2.5 trillion mountain of Alt-A loan resets. The first big wave hits mid-2011, with the peak expected to come in early 2013.
Rebound Obstacle #3: Foreclosures. One in four homeowners are now underwater. If we break it out by loan type the picture gets worse – 25% of prime loans, 45% of Alt-A loans, 50% of subprime loans are severely underwater. Add in the 6.5 million Americans out of work since the recession began and it doesn’t take an Einstein to predict where foreclosures are heading.”
Read More:
http://www.housingnewslive.com/articles/reasons-housing-market-going-down.php
November 4th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
Mr. Ritholtz, how do you embed Yahoo vids? I can’t figure it out.