Bay Area Real Estate Trends

A lot of people are asking what I think will happen in the housing market in 2012. But rather than just give a laundry-list of predictions, I’d like to share my thoughts within the context of steps that different type of readers and clients may be considering. First, a general note on the housing market… [...]

Guest Post from Mish. Inquiring minds are reading the latest LPS Mortgage Monitor, released today. Foreclosure timelines continue to increase across the board – almost 40 percent of loans in foreclosure have not made a payment in two years, and 72 percent have not made a payment in a year or more. New problem loan rates [...]

While reading Ben Jones’ latest, I saw an interesting report from San Mateo Country, titled “State of Foreclosures.” First of all, this was reported on in the San Francisco Examiner, but they got a critical fact wrong: The report, “State of Foreclosures,” found that while the rate of foreclosures in the county may have peaked [...]

The only reason why all of these “extend and pretend” gimmicks are needed is that, with home prices at their current levels, there simply isn’t enough demand. If Uncle Sam would get out of the way and let prices find their bottom, then, by definition, there would be appropriate demand and the housing market would be in harmony.

A data analyst for the National Association of realtors is projecting it will take at least three years to liquidate the distressed inventory. In reality, it will take much longer.

I was reading some of the comments on a post at Calculated Risk about the latest foreclosure and mortgage delinquency stats from LPS, when one comment jumped out. Not that it was saying anything revolutionary…just a simple reminder of how far we still have to go.