“Massive inflation” is poised to strike the U.S. economy and the best hedge against galloping prices won’t be gold but real estate, says the sector’s mogul Donald Trump. Gold, a fixed asset whose supply does anything but fluctuate, has long been used as a hedge against inflation, although real estate will do a better...
Read more »
Click on graph for larger image. The first graph shows the S&P 500 since 1990 (this excludes dividends). The dashed line is the closing price today. The S&P 500 was first at this level in July 1999; almost 13 years ago. The second graph (click on graph for larger image) from Doug Short shows...
Read more »
While homes prices continue to be on the decline, rent prices are actually on the rise and showed a 3 percent increase from January 2011 to January 2012, as opposed to home values, which dropped 4.6 percent during that same period, according to a recent Zillow Real Estate Market Report. “While it seems that...
Read more »
Jed Kolko, Trulia’s chief economist writes about housing seasonality today: Springtime for Housing The housing market rides the seasons. Year in and year out, market activity has predictable ups and downs. Sometimes those seasonal patterns are hard to see when longer-term trends (like plummeting housing prices) or one-off events (like the homebuyer tax credit)...
Read more »
This is the UCLA Anderson Forecast and Ceridian Corporation index using real-time diesel fuel consumption data: Pulse of Commerce Index Increased 0.7 Percent in February The Ceridian-UCLA Pulse of Commerce Index® (PCI®), issued today by the UCLA Anderson School of Management and Ceridian Corporation, rose 0.7 percent in February but was not enough to...
Read more »
Nick Timiraos at the WSJ has some details about the settlement. He also writes that the settlement documents might be filed in court tomorrow. Here is the online site for the mortgage settlement. Note the “National Mortgage Settlement (coming soon)” in the upper right. From Timiraos: Mortgage Deal Is Built on Tradeoffs Settlement documents,...
Read more »
“They built this City… … Playing corporation games Write us off the page” Excerpted by Soylent Green is People from M.Page, B. Taupin, D. Lambert, and P.Wolf. From the FDIC: FDIC Approves the Payout of the Insured Deposits of New City Bank, Chicago, Illinois As of December 31, 2011, New City Bank had .2...
Read more »
A short note from economist Tom Lawler: In CoreLogic’s “Negative Equity Report” for December 2011, the company estimated that properties backing a conventional mortgage that were in a negative equity position had an average mortgage balance of 9,000 and were “underwater” on average by ,000. For properties backing FHA-insured mortgages that were in a...
Read more »
It used to be that home-ownership was a part of the American dream. Home-buyers would scour for properties that suit their needs whether it was for their growing family or for a second home. But the global economic slump that has plagued the real estate market has created a major shift on the housing...
Read more »