There is a lot of confusion out there today over how the first time home buyer tax credit extension figures into the Commerce Department's report on sales of new construction. "New Home Sales," as we call it, plummeted 11 percent, quite unexpectedly, after another rise in "Existing Home Sales" yesterday.
I've already written a lot about investors in Las Vegas coming in with cash and pushing the organic buyers to the sidelines. Well apparently it's happening all over now, making me wonder just what exactly is going to happen to all those investor-owned properties?
In the last few days I've been bombarded with press releases from the likes of Citigroup, Fannie Mae and others, touting their holiday foreclosure moratoria.
Thank goodness for holiday cheer, and the need to find holiday cheer in all the misery of today's housing market. Today Zillow released a list of the best performing cities of 2009.
After a long day of live shots in Las Vegas, reporting various incredible stories of builders, buyers and investors, I got into a cab to the airport... only to hear yet another story from housing's front lines.
I'm in Las Vegas today doing a bunch of stories on the housing "recovery" here. Many of you may be wondering what ever happened to Katie, the subject of my "Lunacy in Las Vegas" blogs of a few months ago.
For the first time, today, the U.S. Department of Treasury is releasing the number of trial mortgage modifications in its $75 billion Home Affordable Modification Program that went permanent.
Late last year I did a story on a guy who was raffling off his million-dollar, Maryland home because, thanks to the housing crash, he couldn't sell it on the open market.
Tomorrow the House Financial Services Committee, under the leadership of Chmn. Barney Frank, will grill mortgage servicers as members examine the "response to the mortgage foreclosure crisis." This is all about how banks are converting all those trial modifications under the government's Home Affordable Modification Program into permanent modifications.
I'm not sure what half of a nanosecond is, but that's about how long it took after the positive jobs announcement this morning, for folks to start ruminating about the Fed raising interest rates; in turn, one more half of a nanosecond later, and someone asked me what all that would mean for mortgage rates.
