Are you looking for one more thing to be incensed about? Well, here you go. The WSJ, citing a study done by a professor at Cal State Fullerton says that in Southern California borrowers who defaulted on their mortgages tended not to have bought at the top of the market but had refinanced their houses […]
Archive for July 28th, 2009
How And When Will We Recover Lost Jobs
Here is an interesting chart from the Wall Street Journal’s Real Time Economics blog. It was done by IHS Global Insight and contains their prediction about when various states will return to pre-recession job levels. te Return to prerecession job level Alabama 2013 Alaska 2011 Arizona 2014 Arkansas 2012 California 2013 Colorado 2012 Connecticut after […]
The Implosion Of San Francisco Commercial Real Estate
Via Calculated Risk here is an article in SF Gate about recent CRE foreclosures in the Bay Area. I found this paragraph astounding: More distressed deals are expected. Nearly three-quarters of Class A office buildings downtown sold between 2005 and 2007, a bonanza that drove up prices to all-time highs and squeezed the ratio of […]
Homebuilders Going Small
Is small beautiful? The homebuilders evidently think so as they’re cutting the size of their starter homes in an effort to compete with foreclosures. BusinessWeek has an article that features KB Home’s new Open Series which starts at 964 square feet. In Tucson the base model sells for $89,999. It downsizes hallways and bathrooms and […]
Case-Shiller May Numbers Continue To Show Stabilization
The Case-Shiller numbers are out for May and they continue to show a slow improvement in the overall housing market. For May, 15 of the 20 cities managed to show either flat or monthly housing price increases. In April 9 cities were either flat or increasing. Even the cities showing declining prices are doing so […]
A Defense Of Goldman Sachs
Michael Lewis has an entertaining, tongue-in-cheek defense of Goldman Sachs on Bloomberg. Here is his rebuttal to Rumor Number 1: Rumor No. 1: “Goldman Sachs controls the U.S. government.” Every time we hear the phrase “the United States of Goldman Sachs” we shake our heads in wonder. Every ninth-grader knows that the U.S. government consists […]