Housing/Construction

• THE HOUSING SLUMP ROLLS ON- A bit of good news on the real estate front would be ideal right about now. Alas, today's update on the housing market are once more disappointing. Housing starts for August posted another hefty decline, the Census Bureau reports. The...
• Signs of a Housing Turnaround-

  How do you know when the real estate turnaround is finally here?

• Hot Money Says a Housing Turn is Coming Soon- We've been talking about the strength in homebuilders of late ... but I wanted to point out the divergence between recent data for another group of stocks and their charts. The data points say "no recovery" and the executives in many cases say "no recovery" but that doesn't stop hot money from piling in, assuming a "recovery in 6 months". Maybe it's true, maybe it's not. If March 2009 marks the bottom in housing I'll come on and say "I was wrong - what an idiot I was, the American consumer is far better than I imagined." But it really doesn't matter if March 2009 will be a bottom because people are making money assuming so today - perception is reality. Remember, there is so much institutional money now, to make any real money, you need to out anticipate the out anticipators and buy ahead of everyone else it appears. Well ahead.
  
  #1 Quanex Building Products (NX) - from last earnings report in August
• Simple Models and Housing Prices- We are taking a new slant on modeling and forecasting. At the risk of over-simplifying, let us start with two schools of thought. The professionals take classes in various modeling methods, learn techniques in real-life situations, and then go into...
• Zillow.com: Majority of US Homeowners Think their Home is Insulated from Housing Crisis- Oh Americans.... at least we are an optimistic lot. Denial is not only a river in Africa...
• Bookkeeping: Cutting back Lennar (LEN) on Jim Cramer's "Bottom is in Housing" Call- I appreciate the6/?__source=yahoo%7Cheadline%7Cquote%7Ctext%7C&par=yahoo"> repeated calls for bottoms because it lets me execute my "buy on dips, sell on Cramer bottom calls" strategy ;) We can use Kool aid to our advantage.
• NYTimes: In the Central Valley, the Ruins of the Housing Bust- We continue to watch as more and more people's homes turn upside down; an interesting look at California - one of the epicenters of our current mess. Remember, if you believe housing prices still have a good 10% to fall, a substantially larger proportion of homes will be upside down this time next year.
• The Onion on the housing bill- A post with the working title "The housing bill doesn't go far enough" has been sitting around here for more than a week now, still waiting for a little "meat" to get added to the current "bones":
  
  • Bulldoze all unoccupied homes (be sure to remove squatters first)
  • Offer zero interest loans for the first five years (oops, already tried that)
  But, word came this morning (hat tip RC) that The Onion has already come up with something very similar:
  
  Maybe someone can explain the item about Jim Webb and coffee tables - I've got no clue what they're talking about.
  
  My personal favorite was the last provision, but the first one was pretty good too.
  
  
• Former Chairman Alan Greenspan on Housing- Greenspan Says Housing Prices Not Yet Near Bottom By Steve Matthews July 31 (Bloomberg) — Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said falling U.S. home prices are “nowhere near the bottom” and the resulting market turmoil isn’t showing signs of abating. While the odds of a recession are 50-50, achieving stable markets will “take a while,” Greenspan [...]
• Economic Trends: Housing Prices Continue to Plunge- In order for the market to really find its footing, housing prices have to stabilize and bottom out. It doesn’t seem like that is happening quite yet as evidenced by data out today. The S&P/Case-Shiller index of 20 cities showed that home prices plunged 15.8% from last year in May. This was the biggest drop [...]
• Setting a high mark for the next housing bubble- Still catching up on developments over the last few days when we were off in the high-country, one of the more shocking reports was the rise in foreclosure activity in California through the second quarter of the year. Not that rising foreclosures are any surprise, but already exceeding last year's total by a hefty margin after just six months (with no apparent slowdown in sight) makes you wonder just how big the total will eventually be for 2008 and what this chart might look like next year.
  
  When some of us were yelling "housing bubble" back in 2004 and 2005, many pollyannas would point to 1996 and say, "Pipe down - we're not even close to the levels of mortgage delinquency seen back then and that doesn't factor in the population growth".
  
• Economic Trends: Housing Data Not Following Barrons’ Plan- This morning, The National Association of Realtors said that existing home sales fell 2.6% last month, which was more than twice the drop that analysts had expected. Currently, sales are over 15% lower than this time last year. To boot, the median price slid 6.1% to $215,100. Inventories stood at a 11.1 month supply, which [...]
• Don't get too excited about the housing starts- There's probably going to be a lot of "clunking around at the bottom" in the home construction statistics, perhaps going on for years, and the June report on housing starts from the Census Bureau is a good example of how optimists (are there still housing optimists out there?) are being set up for many months of repeated disappointment.
  
  It's one thing to reach a bottom, which may now be forming in both the construction and sales statistics (certainly not in the price statistics), but it's an entirely different thing to make a substantive move up from the bottom.
  
  Due to an upcoming change to New York building codes that saw homebuilders rushing to file permits and start construction on multi-family homes, the 9.1 percent overall increase in housing starts shown below was not such a substantive move.
• Fed, Treasury to Help Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac-

• Fed Adopts Plan to Curb Shady Mortgage Practices-

• Mortgage Crisis
• Will Fannie and Freddie Go Belly Up?
• No End in Sight for Housing Market Decline-

  The National Association of Realtors’ Pending Home Sales Index (PHSI) is one of the broadest gauges of sale activity in the housing sector. Unfortunately, this past week brought more bad news to those hoping the U.S. housing recession may be bottoming out as the PHSI continued its steep decline. The report indicated that signed contracts for purchasing previously owned homes experienced its sharpest drop in nine months, declining 4.7% through the month of May. In comparison to the same period a year ago, activity has fallen 14.6%. The South experienced the biggest contraction (at -7.1%) propelled by the plummeting Miami market, followed by the Midwest (-6.0%), the Northeast (-2.9%), and the West (-1.3).

• Economy Sags on Housing, Consumer Confidence
• Albania Real Estate and Property - Final Frontier for Investors in Eastern Europe- 2008 will be the year that puts property in the emerging market of Albania on the map. Albania is a colourful and breath-taking country. Any negative press you may have heard about Albania is hard to believe once you have visited. The countryside is amazing from open fields to mountains. The beaches are beautiful. The people are friendly and helpful. The cost of living is very low. The food is all organic and very tasty. And the property prices are very low. Sure, Albania has had a few problems, such as energy shortages and infrastructure in need of improvement. But with a stable democratic government embarking on economic reform, a recent NATO membership and on course for entry into the EU, Albania is now cleaning up its act. After lagging behind its Balkan neighbours, Albania looks set to emerge into a well earned future of prosperity. Where to look - Tirana – Capital City
• Albania Emerging Property Market-

  Reasons to invest in Property in Albania.

  Albania: Situated in the southwestern region of the Balkan Peninsula, Albania is predominantly mountainous but flat along its coastline with the Adriatic Sea with mild temperate -- cool, wet winters; dry, hot summers. Bordering Greece and Montenegro this little beautiful unspoilt country was long forgotten by its dark past but it is now beginning to emerge. Albania is considered the last emerging property market in Europe.

  Albania is sharing the same coastline as and but with much better weather, more sunny days and more than 200 miles of sandy beaches Albania has it all and is the perfect place to invest. Comparing what Croatia and Montenegro had to offer in late 2000 with Albania in 2007-8, it offers the same capital growth so fare.

  Capital growth has been around 15-20% in recent years and expected to prosper. Property prices in Croatia and Montenegro currently are more than 75% more expensive to those of Albania at the moment but this will not last very long therefore this is the right time to snap a quick bargain.

• Alternative Investing with Real Estate Trust Deeds-

  

• SubPrime Crisis: Opportunities for Investors in Small Banks-

  The Banking sector has taken a beating this year because of the subprime mortgage fiasco. More share price decline is to come as bigger banks continue to write off billions of losses from bad mortgages. Smaller public community banks that do not even have subprime mortgages on their books are being punished as well.

• Housing Slowdown: How Long Will It Last?-
  My sense is the housing slowdown may not improve until late 2008 or into early 2009. Many sellers believe lower mortgage rates will stimulate buying activity as spring approaches. Consequently, sellers have not been too aggressive in lowering their selling price. Conversely, buyers believe prices should be substantially lower than where they stand today.
  
• Home Builders are Signaling A Market Bottom- Home Builder Bankruptcy ( PLURAL) May Mark The Bottom of the Cycle - But Not the END of Troubles More will go down - and that means a lot more houses and land sold at bargain rates . The large oversupply makes it impossible to sell at a profit - until these builders are closed down AND until the oversupply of new , older and foreclosed homes is down. The Fed rate cuts will help finance purchases and get some of the supply sold - but it will be a long march until the large builders we track are on solid ground.
• Homebuilder ETFs Make Gains After the Fed Makes Hints-

  Homebuilder exchange traded funds (ETFs) could be getting a little lift from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's hints that another rate cut could be nigh. Trang Ho of Investor's Business Daily reports that since the housing slump and high energy prices will continue to vex consumers for the time being, the central bank will have to be flexible.