Crash Survival Zone

Home values in the United States extended their fall in the first quarter, with more than one in five homeowners now owing more on their mortgages than their homes are worth, real estate website Zillow.com said on Wednesday.

U.S. home values posted a year-over-year decline of 14.2 percent to a Zillow Home Value Index of $182,378, [...]

Rates may be tantalizing, but be prepared to jump through many hoops.

Refinance your mortgage now and you may capture the lowest interest rate of your lifetime. But unlike a couple of years ago, when it seemed all you needed was a pay stub (if that) and an eager mortgage broker, today’s process can be tedious. [...]

The nature of “homeownership is the foundation of middle class wealth” has changed from accumulating wealth by paying off a mortgage to speculating in housing by taking on more debt.

Once upon a time people spent decades paying off their home mortgages. That reduction in debt to zero left them equity. Those who paid rent for [...]

A Texas bank is about done demolishing 16 new and partially built houses acquired in Southern California through foreclosure, figuring it was better to knock them down than to try selling them in the depressed housing market.

Guaranty Bank of Austin is wrecking the structures to provide a “safe environment” for neighbors of the abandoned housing [...]

Pending sales of previously owned homes rose for a second straight month in March, while construction spending edged higher, according to reports on Monday that suggested moderation in the long housing slump.
The reports boosted U.S. stocks and lent support to the view that the recession, now in its 17th month, was close to finding a [...]

A record 19.1 million homes stood unoccupied in the first quarter and the U.S. homeownership rate fell as the recession sapped demand for real estate.

The number of vacant homes, including foreclosures, properties for sale and vacation properties, jumped from 18.6 million a year earlier, the U.S. Census Bureau said in a report today. Households that [...]

First-time buyers now a majority due to incentives, trade group says

Sales of existing homes and condominiums fell 3% in March to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.57 million units, with distressed sales now accounting for half of all sales, a trade group reported Thursday.
Sales are down 7.1% in the past year, the National Association [...]

House prices will eventually stop falling, probably in about two years. But will they ever recover to the levels we saw during the heights of boom? In some areas, prices might climb that high again. But for most markets, such a recovery will probably never happen, and would take decades it were to occur.

In an [...]

By Henry Blodget

As goes housing, so goes the rest of the economy.  So where do things stand?  After two years of precipitous declines that have taken prices down almost 30% from the peak, house prices are finally approaching fair value (which is perhaps 10% below today’s level).

That doesn’t mean that house prices will only fall [...]

by Mike Whitney
Due to the lifting of the foreclosure moratorium at the end of March, the downward slide in housing is gaining speed. The moratorium was initiated in January to give Obama’s anti-foreclosure program — which is a combination of mortgage modifications and refinancing — a chance to succeed. The goal of the plan was [...]