Archive for the ‘housing and real estate’ Category

Reaction to bulldozing homeowner

February 23, 2010Jon Brooks 1 Comment »

Making news around the world: An Ohio man has bulldozed his home rather than let a bank foreclose on it. From WLWT Cincinatti: Terry Hoskins said he’s been in a struggle with RiverHills Bank over his Clermont County home for nearly a decade, a struggle that was coming to an end as the bank began [...]

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Fannie and Freddie and the financial crisis

February 11, 2010Jon Brooks Comments Off

Last year in The American Spectator, Peter J. Wallison wrote about the political importance of determining causes of the financial crisis that blew up in 2008.

Two narratives seem to be forming to describe the underlying causes of the financial crisis. One, as outlined in a New York Times front-page story on Sunday, December 21, is that President Bush excessively promoted growth in home ownership without sufficiently regulating the banks and other mortgage lenders that made the bad loans. The result was a banking system suffused with junk mortgages, the continuing losses on which are dragging down the banks and the economy. The other narrative is that government policy over many years–particularly the use of the Community Reinvestment Act and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to distort the housing credit system– underlies the current crisis. The stakes in the competing narratives are high. The diagnosis determines the prescription. If the Times diagnosis prevails, the prescription is more regulation of the financial system; if instead government policy is to blame, the prescription is to terminate those government policies that distort mortgage lending.

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Rent control debate

February 3, 2010Jon Brooks Comments Off

In working up the two posts on Stuyvesant Town in New York City, I came across this rent control debate in the comments section of an article in New York magazine. The two main posters are a long-time resident of the Manhattan housing complex, which includes many rent stabilized apartments, and an opponent of rent [...]

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The Stuyvesant Town debacle

February 3, 2010Jon Brooks Comments Off

“So for all of those fiduciaries supposed to be investing money for teachers, firemen, the people of Singapore and God, shame on you. This was never a good deal for anyone but Tishman Speyer.” Yesterday, we posted about what’s happening in New York City’s Stuyvesant Town: The companies that bought the apartment complex for $5.4 [...]

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Migrations

February 3, 2010Jon Brooks 1 Comment »

Two maps from the Mint.com blog. First, moving from one of the most expensive cities to one of the highest-rated small towns. If you move from San Francisco to Farmington, Utah, for example, see what you’d be gaining in terms of cost of living. Click on the house icons to see specifics. Next, who’s moved [...]

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NYC housing rally

February 2, 2010Jon Brooks 1 Comment »

Three years ago, two companies, Tishman Speyer Properties and Black Rock Realty, bought Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village in Manhattan, an iconic post-war housing complex that is home to 25,000 tenants, many of them with rent-controlled apartments. Last month, in what one observer called “the poster child for the entire housing bubble,” the deal [...]

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Harping on TARP carping

February 2, 2010Jon Brooks Comments Off

“…it is not at all clear…that a Special Inspector General should be weighing in on government policy decisions, much less predicting the housing market or economy’s future.” Yesterday we ran a post about the Special Inspector General for TARP’s Quarterly Report to Congress. The report was highly critical of the bailout’s inability to increase bank [...]

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Uncommon economic indicators

February 1, 2010Jon Brooks Comments Off

Time for another go-round — our third — with The Brian Lehrer Show’s Uncommon Economic Indicators web page, where people submit signs of the recession observed around the New York City area. These won’t show up in any government statistics or charts, but they turn the abstract gloom of macroeconomic numbers into a concrete picture [...]

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Homeowner’s remorse

January 28, 2010Jon Brooks Comments Off

From the blog Love Your Layoff, some thoughts on buying a home at the wrong time at the wrong interest rate, in perhaps the wrong town…

As much as I’m proud of the work we’ve done on our house, there are some weeks I’d kill to be a renter again. The biggest reason lately is mobility. Last week I was in San Francisco for a conference and feeling the creative vibrancy of the place made me yearn to pack our bags for good… except for the ball and chain that is our mortgage.

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The real estate picture

January 27, 2010Jon Brooks Comments Off

Reading individual headlines on housing data this week only serves to confuse the picture: Home prices rise for 6th straight month (Washington Post) Home prices decline for first time in 7 months (CNNMoney) December home sales down nearly 17 percent (AP) Sales of new homes fall 7.6% to nine-month low (MarketWatch) Home prices suggest tenuous [...]

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