FHA: Tighter guidelines could spark double dip
Posted on March 12, 2010 at 8:39 amThe boss of the Federal Housing Administration has told lawmakers that moves to hike the minimum downpayment on mortgages the agency insures could crush the nascent residential real estate recovery. But one lawmakers called foul on the FHA’s rationale.
Any steps that would sharply restrict the number of borrowers who are eligible for FHA-backed loans, such as higher down payments, would also limit the new business that the FHA desperately needs to help offset rising losses.
“It’s that sort of rationale that got us into the problem in the first place, that we need to be chasing the borrowers to prop up our system,” says Rep. Scott Garrett (R., N.J). “That’s what got us here in the first place.”
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The meaning of all of that: Some media is the whack
Posted on March 11, 2010 at 1:43 pmGrant Hammond channels his inner Public Enemy and says now is not the time to believe the hype that Nashville’s real estate market is back to boom times.
So imagine Grant as Chuck D, teaching the bourgeoise and rocking the boulevard. Some say he’s negative, but they’re not positive:
Pending sales, ah pending sales, how I love thee. The month over month increase of 24.63% represents the single largest increase in pending sales since March of 2005. This is significant in that pending sales are a pure indicator of future closings and future closings directly lead to inventory reduction (in a balanced market). Could this renewed activity be a result of the tax credit or perhaps pent up demand finally being released? Yes, but neither I nor anyone else is going to be able to tell you the mixture until much further down the road. By comparison, in 2009 pending sales only increased by 13.26% in the first month of the year.
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Is local foreclosure tide retreating?
Posted on March 8, 2010 at 8:23 amFrom this week’s print edition of the Post inside The City Paper:
Click here for more hopeful signs from the Middle Tennessee economy.
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Housing’s recovery petering out
Posted on March 5, 2010 at 8:26 am
Robert Shiller says there are “real clouds on the horizon” for the housing market and that the government programs set to expire this spring will likely have to be extended so that sentiment and spending can feel its way toward more normal levels.
It’s not just a question of a double dip. It’s a question about whether the economy can be vibrant for years to come.
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Local mortgage delinquency rate nears 6%
Posted on March 4, 2010 at 1:46 pmJanuary data from First American CoreLogic shows no change in the trend of rising mortgage delinquencies and foreclosure rates for the Nashville area. Since August, the mortgage delinquency rate has risen by a quarter of a percent per month.
To see regional foreclosure rates by ZIP code, click here.
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Three in a row is a trend, right?
Posted on March 3, 2010 at 2:42 pmThe latest set of building permit numbers compiled by the BERC team show that the value of single-family permits issued in the Nashville MSA rose 52 percent from a year ago. It was the third straight such increase after 27 months of negative year-over-year comps. Check the raw numbers here.
Housing’s sideways recovery
Posted on February 25, 2010 at 2:28 pm
A number of pundits are saying housing starts will pop this year and kickstart the influential construction sector (and likely drive shares of Louisiana-Pacific higher). Calculated Risk doesn’t see that happening.
Single-family starts were at 484 thousand (SAAR) in January, up 1.5% from the revised December rate, and 36% above the record low in January and February 2009 (357 thousand). Just like for total starts, single-family starts have been at about this level for eight months.
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A sign of hope for foreclosures
Posted on February 24, 2010 at 9:50 amThe Mortgage Bankers Association says the percentage of borrowers who missed only one payment on their home loans fell slightly in the fourth quarter. The Fiscal Times has some context.
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The rise of Nashville’s negative-equity homeowners
Posted on February 23, 2010 at 2:07 pm
First American CoreLogic says 11.3 percent of Middle Tennessee’s mortgaged homes were in negative equity at the end of 2009. That’s up from less than 10 percent on Sept. 30, but still well below Tennessee’s average and the national number. The latter sits well north of 20 percent.
Analyst action: LP, NHI
Posted on at 10:56 amShares of National Health Investors have been downgraded to ‘hold’ from ‘buy’ by Stifel Nicolaus analyst Jerry Doctrow, who’s making a habit of yo-yoing his recommendations. The Murfreesboro-based REIT (Ticker: NHI) has risen about 5 percent in the past six months but is off about 1 percent this morning.
At Scotia Capital, Benoit Laprade has downgraded Louisiana-Pacific to ‘underperform’ from ‘perform’ but maintained his $8 price target. Shares of Nashville-based LP (Ticker: LPX) are down 7 percent this morning but have risen about 17 percent in the past six months.
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S&P upgrade boosts LP
Posted on February 22, 2010 at 11:06 amStandard & Poor’s analyst Pamela Rice on Friday raised her outlook for Louisiana-Pacific, saying the Nashville-based building products supplier has the financial muscle to capitalize on the expected rise in housing starts this year and next. Shares of LP (Ticker: LPX) are up more than 3 percent this morning to a new 52-week high.
Separately, longtime LP director Archie Dunham last week bought more than $1 million of LP shares. Dunham had until then owned less than 9,000 shares outright; he now owns almost 160,000.
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Wells: Mortgage rates won’t top 6% soon
Posted on February 19, 2010 at 8:27 amCorky Watts passes along some details from a recent Wells Fargo report on the future of the housing market. Among them are a GDP number of just 2.4 percent in 2011 and a forecast that the 30-year mortgage rate will stay below 6 percent for at least 10 more months.
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After the Fed stops stimulating
Posted on February 17, 2010 at 7:35 am
Mortgage could rise anywhere from 50 basis points in a few months to more than 3 percentage points a year from now depending on whom you ask about the Federal Reserve’s pending deadline to end its support of the residential lending market.
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Headline homes: Nashville’s top sales, January 2010
Posted on February 12, 2010 at 7:24 am
This month’s recap of the region’s largest home sales features a high-level international executive previously based in Switzerland, an ex-Idol contestant and a former Titans linebacker.
Two years into this little exercise in gawking at the rich and famous, we feel able to draw one conclusion from the monthly fluctuations this column has observed: They tell us a little, but not much, about the local economy and housing market. “Headline Homes” prices, like the stock market, bottomed out in late winter or early spring 2009 and have posted a general upward trend since then — punctuated by hiccups. January was, if nothing else, a hiccup.
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Why the foreclosure rate could be much higher
Posted on February 11, 2010 at 9:36 am
Barry Ritholtz comments on the increasing adoption by banks of various forms of “strategic non-foreclosure” plans that keep troubled homeowners in their properties longer.
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