[dukey]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')ome prices fall at fastest rate in 13 years
Case-Shiller index shows prices down 1.5% in past year

[shortonoil]

dukey said:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')ome prices fall at fastest rate in 13 years
Case-Shiller index shows prices down 1.5% in past year

[FoxV]

There is an even worse statistic that is the "total Value" of the market (in quotes because I made the term up).

But basically its the total amount of money that is going through the RE system, and its a statistic that tells some of the details that the Median and Averages can hide.

consider single family homes
Year ----- Sales(Ms)-- Ave Price ---- Value (Ts) ---- %Change
2004 ---- 6.675 ------ 195400 ------ 1.30
2005 ---- 7.072 ------ 219600 ------ 1.55 ----------- +16%
2006 ---- 6.478 ------ 221900 ------ 1.44 ----------- -8%
07 YTD -- 6.12 ------- 217000 ------ 1.33 ----------- -8%

So it looks like on average RE agents are taking an 8% cut in pay each year. Couldn't happen to a nicer set of folks

And even this doesn't show the picture of how much seller "incentives" (such as new cars, payed Vacations, and kick backs) are keeping values up

The scary part is that this is just the beginning. Lending standards are still pretty easy (received a Capital one application for my former tenant just the other day, it was an laughable change to all the collection agency notices we receive for him, he skipped out on us two years ago ). When all the foreclosure crap jumps the tracks from sub-prime to prime, Look out below

[FairMaiden]

I don't think you read this much into housing prices. In the 80s, interest rates climbed as high as 18% which had a very negative impact on housing. So the market is cyclical and this was bound to happen regardless of peak oil.

I do see that alot of the home equity and "paper money" we've been living on may dry up. But we've had recessions before and we lived through them w/o "cataclysmic catastropy".

I'd have to see more evidence of this influence before I jumped to that conclusion. So far, its bad news for the economy but not a collapse.

[shortonoil]

FairMaiden said:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') don't think you read this much into housing prices. In the 80s, interest rates climbed as high as 18% which had a very negative impact on housing. So the market is cyclical and this was bound to happen regardless of peak oil.

[FoxV]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('FairMaiden', 'I') don't think you read this much into housing prices. In the 80s, interest rates climbed as high as 18% which had a very negative impact on housing. So the market is cyclical and this was bound to happen regardless of peak oil.

[TreebeardsUncle]

Have read that the subprime loans and ARMs were used to swindle people out of their assets using the houses as bait.

Also, here is an interesting recent article from the Sacramento Bee:

Foreclousure in Full Boom

In ominous signs of more to come, capital region default notices also hit record highs during first quarter of 2007

By Jim Wasserman
Bee Staff Writer

There's a new kind of "For Sale" sign appearing in the region's neighborhood's - offering property repossessed by the bankcs -- and there will be more, according to the newest round of statistics.

Both notices of default, the first sign that homeowners are having trouble making payments, and foreclosures reached historic highs across much of the Sacramento area during January, February, and March, a property research firm reported Monday. [Does that qualify as a soft landing, as soft as a drop onto a sheet resting gently on anvil from a drop from 500 feet, perhaps?]
Among many who received a default notice in March after missing payments was Mary Ann Wilson of Elk Grove. [Elk Grove is mostly a particularly repulsive dysfunctional piece of metastasizing cancer of sprawl thrown out here for the benefit of Bay Area commuters and developers.]
"We had our house built in 2003, and we were both working, both making very good money [That is a low class expression.], and in June 2006 I got sick," she said.
The slow descent into default on a home equity loan [equity removal operation] ended Monday when the house was sold in a short sale in which lenders accepted less than owed to avoid greater losses.
"It was very difficult, very emotional, very hard for us," Wilson said Monday two weeks after major surgery.
The statistics behind such stories are the newest indication of stress in one of California's most troubled major housing markets. They come as spring sales already are slowing amid a glut of resale inventory and tightening of borrowing standards by lenders.

Defaults: Hangover Linked to Loans Surge of 2005 [aka Time to Pay the Pied Piper or Ask Not for Whom the Loan Surges for it Surges for You]

Real estate industry analysts call the region's dafaults an echo from the surge of home loans made during the summer of 2005 as the region's real estate market soard. That summer, capital region buyers stretched [went into hock] their hardest to buy homes [take out loans to temporarily occupy wooden boxes they couldn't afford], with about 76 percent using adjustable rate loans, according to DataQuick Information Systems of La Jolla.
Many of those loans, as well as refinancings to tap housing boom equity for things like swimming pools and cars, are resetting to higher payments and pressuing the area's economy.
"You can't party that hard and not have a hangover. You just can't do it," said Keith McLane, who watches the market as principal of Carmichael-based West Coast Home Auctions, which ofers sellers a quick sale for a lower price.
Notices of default -- issued after a homeowner [debt slave] -- misses at least two monthly mortgage payments -- reached their highest levels ever duing this year's first quarter in Amador, El Dorado, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo, and Yuba counties, DataQuick reported.
The number of defaults stopped rising only in Placer County. Nevada County remains below previous highs reached in the 1990's, DataQuick reported.
First-quarter foreclosure numbers also reached highs across mch of the rgion -- in Sacramento, Placer, El Dorado, Yolo, and Sutter counties -- according to DataQuick, which tracks county property records.
DataQuick said 1,505 homeowners [heavily indebted mortage borrowers] in Amador, El Dorado, Nevada, Placer, Sacramento, Yolo, and Yuba counties lost their houses to foreclosure during January, February, and March. That's up from 865 the previous three months.
DataQuick reported just 143 foreclosures in the 8-county region in the first first quarter of 2006.
"A lot of these lenders are going to end up with an awful lot of properties," said Pam Canada, executive director of Sacramento-based Neighborworks HomeOwnership Center, which counsels people with mortage trouble.
"It's been difficult these past weeks particularly. There's more of a tone of desperation from people we're finding now. They have very few alternatives."
DataQuick attributed part of the record-breaking numbers to a greater supply of homes and loans in the Sacramento region since previous records were established during the recession-plagued mid-1990's. But the bigger factor is a combination of risky 2005 and 2006 loans and falling home prices that make it difficult for owners [debtors] to refinance out of trouble. Even in a time when the economy continues to generate job growth, selling the house is becoming harder.
"It makes all the sense in the world," said Andrew LePage, DataQuick analyst. "This is probably the weakest (housing) market in the state, and showing some of the biggest year-over-year declines in home prices and some of the slowest sales."
Still, the Sacraemnto region has plenty of troubled company. Statewide, defaults reached a 10-year high during the year's first quarter. Among major urban counties Riverside and Contra Costa counties also had record levels of defaults, DataQuick reported.
Nationally, Yuba County ranked ninth and Sacramento 16th among more than 1000 counties for the percentage increase of defaults from the first quarter of 2006, according to ForeclosureS.com, a Fair Oaks - based Web site that tracks them for intestors. Placer and El Dorado counties ranked 19th and 20th.
Alexis McGee, the site's president and co-founder, said many of those in default are first-time buyers [borrowers].
" I don't think a lot of them are going to stick," she said. [No, they will just get stuck by the banks, spectulators, and mortgage brokers. It is the American and English and capitalist way. ]

The Bee's Jim Wasserman can be reached at (9916) 321 - 1102 or jwasserman@sacbee.com.

[Newsseeker]

Kunstler is going to revel in this no doubt.

[Cobra_Strike]

He is already....

And so are many of the people that, over the past few years, have pointed out how monumentally stupid people have been in the housing sector on the whole.

[seldom_seen]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('shortonoil', 'I') don’t think the housing disaster has anything to do with PO.

[TreebeardsUncle]

How long (until the moment of reckoning is at hand)? I give it about 5 to 10 years, before the effects (of declining global oil supplies) become clearly evident to the US population at large.
g

[Kristen]

Well if the U.S. is the biggest consumer and they all go broke, wouldn't that delay the peak because 25 percent the demand per day is gone.

[Lore]

As we all know home prices were ridiculously high and a correction was on its way. Subprime loans were an indication of the housing market's hubris and greed that got out of hand, but doesn't seem to be filtering much into the secure credit area.

I believe the markets of today cannot be equated with those of a few decades ago. There is so much liquidity floating around the world and money flowing into the US economy from the outside that events that use to affect the market, such as a slowdown at GM, housing, etc, no longer have the same impact.

The DOW today blew through 13,000 and is expected to continue to rally higher led by many companies reporting stronger sales outside the United States, especially in Europe and the United Kingdom, inflated because of the falling dollar.

Orders for durable goods rose more in March than had been forecast. Orders increased 3.4% from a 2.4% rise in February.

You have employment at maximum, inflation in check and the only thing that will derail the train is a major outside event.

We can all guess at what the latter might be.