"Maybe they'll become collector's items, my coffee table from Bombay Co., some old bedside tables from Scan. Both are retailers that have shuttered their stores after filing for bankruptcy protection. It's the trickle-down result of a poor housing market.
" (2008-9-21)
December 5, 2008
When Your Couch Is on Order and the Company Goes Bankrupt
A House Tour With Two-Wheeled Appeal
"PORTLAND, Ore. -- With gas prices high, bicycles flying out of stores and a buyer's market for houses, a handful of real estate agents around the country are touting the two-wheeled appeal of their listings.
" (2008-9-13)
December 2, 2008
Nowadays, the bank says what a house is worth
"It used to be a market mantra: A house is worth only as much as a buyer is willing to pay. But given today's bank failures, foreclosures and tightened credit, real estate experts have had to modify the aphorism to reflect harsher realities. "A house is only...
" (2008-11-30)
Civil rights complaint targets Wall Street rating firms
"Moody's and Fitch's high ratings of subprime mortgage bonds disproportionately harmed black and Latino home buyers, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition alleges.
In what is apparently the first legal action of its kind, an association of community-based organizations has filed a federal civil rights complaint against two of the three largest Wall Street rating firms, charging that their inflated ratings on subprime mortgage bonds disproportionately caused financial harm to African American and Latino home buyers across the country." (2008-11-30)
New crisis, in commercial real estate, looms
"The full scope of the housing meltdown isn’t clear and already there are ominous signs of a new crisis — one that could turn out the lights on malls, hotels and storefronts nationwide." (2008-11-28)
The death penalty: Reasonable doubt
"Troubling questions surround a capital case in GeorgiaIN 1989 Troy Davis and two friends were hanging out in Savannah, Georgia. They saw a homeless man leaving a shop and started to bully him. An off-duty policeman heard the commotion and intervened; he was shot and killed. Though no gun was found, the state produced nine witnesses who said that Mr Davis was the culprit. He was convicted of the murder and sentenced to death in 1991. It seemed a straightforward case. Americans particularly revile cop-killers and here was a parade of people saying that Mr Davis had shot a policeman. But after the trial, no fewer than seven of the nine recanted. Several of them said they had felt subjected to pressure by the police. Others thought someone else was the killer. The homeless man said he could not remember, and anyway he had been drinking. ..." (2008-11-27)
New home sales fall to slowest pace since 1991
"Sales of new homes fell in October to the lowest point in nearly 18 years while the median price of a new home dropped to the lowest level since 2004." (2008-11-26)
November 26, 2008
Home prices tumble by record in 3Q
"Home prices tumbled by the sharpest annual rate on record in the third quarter, according to two widely watched indexes released Tuesday, and the trend is expected to get worse." (2008-11-25)
Home prices tumble to 2004 levels
"Sales of existing U.S. homes fell more than expected last month, as economic fears made buyers leery even though prices plunged to the lowest level in more than four years." (2008-11-24)
Falling prices a bitter pill for homeowners
"The housing market may have bust, but many homeowners are still living in a bubble. Despite dismal housing headlines and reports showing falling prices nationwide, owners in some once-hot areas still believe their home is gaining value or at least holding its...
" (2008-11-23)
Earlier closings may be in home buyers' best interest
"Most people schedule real estate settlements late in the month to save on paying upfront cash, but the last-minute rush often causes mistakes and creates logjams.
To milk all they can out of their final rent checks, first-time buyers often try to schedule their closings as close to the end of the month as possible." (2008-11-23)
Efforts expand to help financially distressed homeowners
"Two mass-market loan modification programs are aimed at preventing foreclosures. But critics say they don't solve the problem and could have a corrosive effect on borrowers.
You may have seen headlines about the latest public and private efforts to help financially distressed homeowners cope with their mortgage payments. But you might not have caught key details that could affect you or people you know -- now or in the recession months ahead." (2008-11-23)
Freddie, Fannie suspend foreclosure actions
"Mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are suspending foreclosures for about 16,000 U.S. households during the holiday season." (2008-11-20)
Spending and the economy: The end of the affair
"America’s return to thrift presages a long and deep recessionDEBBIE JEFFRIES could see it coming. When she manned the cash register at Linens ’n Things, the household-goods chain where she has worked for 14 years, a customer would sometimes open her wallet and display 15 credit cards. “That people can pull out that many credit cards—that’s insane. You say, whoa, maybe that’s why we’re here. We have so much debt.” Ms Jeffries cut up her own credit card several years ago when the balance became unmanageable, but still became an indirect victim of the credit crunch that is now dragging America into recession. Linens ’n Things filed for bankruptcy protection in May; in October, unable to find a buyer for its stores, it began to liquidate itself. A sign in the window of Ms Jeffries’ store in suburban Maryland invites anyone interested in buying the fixtures to see the manager. Ms Jeffries expects to be out of a job by the end of December. ..." (2008-11-20)
Green trends in California: Cooling off
"The economic slowdown is having one good effectCALIFORNIA tried to save the world again this week. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the state’s governor, rounded up politicians and officials from across the globe (expending quite a bit of carbon) and urged them to tackle climate change more aggressively. To set an example, he ordered state power companies to obtain one-third of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020. California is indeed leading the way in cutting greenhouse-gas emissions—but not for the reason it might want. Mr Schwarzenegger became an environmental hero two years ago, when he signed a bill committing the state to cut greenhouse-gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. California’s lead was followed by 17 other states, Congress and Britain. Many one-upped California by adopting even more ambitious targets. A slight stain on this otherwise heartwarming picture was that, until recently, California appeared to have little chance of hitting its own target. Then the state’s housing market collapsed, petrol prices soared and the economy slid towards recession. ..." (2008-11-20)
Adult children moving back home with parents
"Extended families sharing a home was once an American tradition. Now with rising foreclosures and layoffs, it's a necessity. But there is a silver lining.
Donald Garcia, 35, and his wife, Augustine, were living in a Burbank apartment when Augustine's mother approached them for help. She had refinanced her three-bedroom Tujunga home a year and a half earlier with an interest-only loan, and what had been a $900 monthly house payment had doubled." (2008-11-15)
FDIC plan could help 1.5 million keep homes
"Publicly breaking with the Bush administration, the FDIC proposed to use $24 billion in government funding to help 1.5 million American households avoid foreclosure." (2008-11-14)
Foreclosures spike 25 percent year-on-year
"The number of homeowners caught in the wave of foreclosures in October grew 25 percent nationally over the same month in 2007, data released Thursday showed." (2008-11-13)
Florida: Snowbirds, meet the repo men
" The property crash is devastating a boom townYOU can gauge the depth of Florida’s economic woes with a quick look at a parking lot on the north side of Cape Coral, on the state’s south-western coast. Since the implosion of the local housing market last year, Gulf Coast Recovery has hauled in the cars of wiped-out building workers who fell behind on their payments. But now the beefy, heavily-tattooed repo men at Gulf Coast hoot about the red Corvette they have just towed away; and their lot contains Cadillacs, $40,000 Harley-Davidsons, even speedboats. “We don’t mind taking those,” says Scott Friga, the company’s owner. “They’re toys.”Cape Coral was a boom town a few years ago, buoyed by a huge upturn in house-building. Workers flooded in, and speculators and builders alike could buy Hummers on credit. In 2004 the Los Angeles-based Milken Institute rated the resulting sea of stucco and strip malls the best-performing city in America. Now it is 120th. One in 71 homes in Cape Coral’s Lee County has a foreclosure filing, and nearly half the mortgages on recently purchased houses in the area are under water. ..." (2008-11-13)
The global economic summit: After the fall
"On November 15th world leaders are due to sit around a table in Washington, DC, to fix finance. They have their work cut outTHE leaders arriving in Washington, DC, for this weekend’s economic summit are being presumptuous. If they want what they are calling Bretton Woods 2 to live up to the original, which took place in New Hampshire overshadowed by war and the Depression, it will have to establish a new economic order for the capitalist world. In 1944 that meant creating the IMF, the World Bank and a body to oversee world trade. Imagine Hank Paulson, America’s treasury secretary, as John Maynard Keynes; or picture Gordon Brown, Britain’s prime minister, as Winston Churchill (as Mr Brown himself secretly may), and you get a sense of the task ahead.The Bretton Woodsmen of 2008 are grabbing the credit before they have earned it—rather as all those subprime householders did. More than two years of gruelling technical work laid the ground for the wartime conference of officials and finance ministers (prime ministers and presidents had other things to deal with). By contrast, the leaders gathering this weekend from the G20, a mix of industrial and emerging countries, plus the European Union, have cobbled together an agenda in a few frenetic weeks. They will doubtless produce no shortage of promises. Just what these are worth will depend on sweat and summits yet to come. ..." (2008-11-13)
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