Calculated Risk Wed 2010-09-08 17:55 EDT

Freddie Mac: $4.7 billion Loss, REO Inventory increases 79% YoY

CalculatedRisk

Freddie Mac reported: "a net loss of $4.7 billion for the quarter ended June 30, 2010, compared to a net loss of $6.7 billion for the quarter ended March 31, 2010." and the FHFA requested another $1.8 billion from Treasury...Freddie Mac reported that their REO inventory increased 79% year over year, from 34,699 in Q2 2009 to 62,178 in Q2 2010...

4; 7; Calculated Risk; Freddie Mac; losses; REO Inventory increases 79; YoY.

Mon 2010-08-16 12:51 EDT

Nathan Lewis: Where's The Gold?

Nathan Lewis

...there are indications that the seller side of futures contracts (such as Deutsche Bank in April) are having a difficult time making good on their commitments. Second, the information reported by the Comex regarding physical inflows and outflows is looking more and more like a convenient fiction. Third, there is some doubt as to whether there is gold in inventory -- as there absolutely should be -- to match existing warehouse receipts. Fourth, the Comex warehouse is one of the most secure forms of gold investment in the world. If they can't be trusted, what does that say about ETFs, pooled accounts, futures, forwards, options, and all the other forms of "paper gold" out there? Fifth, if it becomes clearer that there is no physical supply to meet physical demand, the dollar price of gold could go much higher.

gold; Nathan Lewis; s.

Dr. Housing Bubble Blog Fri 2010-07-30 15:22 EDT

Banks cherry picking individual foreclosures that show up on the MLS in Culver City and Pasadena with proof: Southern California lenders pushing out properties in Culver City with an average price tag of $300,000. Median sale price for city is $600,000. Shadow inventory average price is $443,000 with loans at an average of $552,000. 141,000 homes in Southern California are distressed yet MLS only reflects 83,000 total properties.

...Prices even today are disconnected from market fundamentals. Inventory is still growing and the shadow inventory figures remain elevated...The bulk of properties are sitting hidden in bank balance sheets and are part of the shadow inventory...For Pasadena, for every one listed foreclosure or short sale, you can be assured that there are 5 other properties sitting in the depths of a bank balance sheet. Keep in mind this is for a highly desirable area...the numbers look nearly the same in Culver City. For every one distressed property on the MLS, you have 5 others hidden in some bank balance sheet. Now when I look at this data what I see is a façade in Southern California real estate...Banks are basically trying to avoid facing the music and realizing the reality that these properties are overpriced (people can't even keep up with their payments). Does any of this data look like a healthy market?

000; 000 home; 000 total properties; 141; 300; 443; 552; 600; Average; average price tag; Banks cherry picking individual foreclosures; Citi; Culver city; distressed; Dr. Housing Bubble Blog; Loans; median sales price; MLS; Pasadena; proof; property; reflects 83; Shadow inventory average price; showed; Southern California; Southern California lenders pushing.

zero hedge - on a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero Fri 2010-07-23 11:01 EDT

Charting The Second Half Economic Slowdown

Goldman's Jan Hatzius...summarizes all the adverse trends that continue to not be priced into stocks. He notes that while the inventory cycle has boosted growth, this artificial rise is now losing steam. Key headwinds facing the economy are that fiscal policy, which has been expansionary, has now become to restrictive; that there has been no overshoot in layoffs for a mean reversion expectation; that the labor market multiplier is very much limited; that while capital spending is just modestly above replacement levels, the large output gap suggests spending should be subdued; the housing overhang is still huge and house prices have further to fall; that there are risks to US from European crisis; that inflation is dropping (and non-existent) even as utilization is low everywhere, which creates a major deflation risk; that the scary budget deficit will destroy any hope for future fiscal stimulus as public debt is surging out of control; lastly, with Taylor-implied Fed rates expected to be negative, the Fed's monetary policy arsenal is non-existent...

chart; dropped; economic slowdown; long; survival rate; Timeline; zero; Zero Hedge.

Fri 2010-07-16 18:09 EDT

A Blistering Ride Through Hell: Key Property Charts to Make Sense of This Week's Housing Numbers and This Year's Financial Crisis - Michael David White -- Seeking Alpha

Michael David White

Housing inventory rising, housing price versus housing inventory may imply dramatic price falls; deleveraging is a myth; mortgage bubble; negative equity; forecasts total fall in property prices about half over, another 20% to go.

Blistering Ride; hell; Key property charts; make sense; Michael David White; Seeking Alpha; Week's Housing Numbers; year's financial crisis.

zero hedge Wed 2010-05-19 11:37 EDT

Guest Post: Goldman's CDOs Had Nothing to Do With the Real Estate Bubble

David Fiderer

If Goldman Sachs wanted to reduce its exposure to subprime mortgage investments, why didn't it simply sell the assets it owned? Two reasons: First, those large sales would have sent a signal that something was terribly, terribly wrong, and thereby pushed prices down further. That's how supply and demand normally works. Second, Goldman professed to be market maker, which uses its trading book to instill confidence. It ostensibly bought, sold and inventoried mortgage securities to provide stability and liquidity to the marketplace. Of course, we now know that such market confidence was entirely misplaced. To sidestep these issues, Goldman and other major banks found a solution that subverted the laws of supply and demand, and escaped the price discovery of a transparent marketplace. They fabricated synthetic CDOs, such as Abacus 2007 AC-1. These toxic assets, invented out of thin air, made the meltdown worse than it otherwise would have been...

Goldman's CDOs; Guest Post; real estate bubble; Zero Hedge.

zero hedge Thu 2010-01-07 18:52 EST

David Rosenberg's 2010 Outlook "The Recession Is Really A Depression"

The credit collapse and the accompanying deflation and overcapacity are going to drive the economy and financial markets in 2010. We have said repeatedly that this recession is really a depression because the recessions of the post-WWII experience were merely small backward steps in an inventory cycle but in the context of expanding credit. Whereas now, we are in a prolonged period of credit contraction, especially as it relates to households and small businesses (as we highlighted in our small business sentiment write-up yesterday).

David Rosenberg's 2010 Outlook; Depression; really; Recession; Zero Hedge.

Calculated Risk Wed 2009-12-30 11:11 EST

Housing Leads the Economy, Existing Home Sales are Irrelevant

CalculatedRisk

...Residential investment is the best leading indicator for the economy. Residential investment will not recover rapidly because of the large overhang of existing vacant housing units. Existing home sales are largely irrelevant for the economy. ...The key to reducing the overall inventory is new household formation (encouraging renters to become owners accomplishes nothing in reducing the overall housing inventory). And the key to new household formation is jobs. And usually the best leading indicator for jobs is residential investment.

Calculated Risk; economy; Existing-Home Sales; housing Lead; irrelevant.

zero hedge Mon 2009-11-30 11:15 EST

Fannie Mae Reports Massive Q3 Loss, Asks For Another $15 Billion From Government As It Is Set To Become Largest US Landlord

The latest particular does of lunacy and economic calamity coming out of the intellectual midgets at Fannie and the FHA should be sufficient to push the market well into 1,100 territory tomorrow. FNM's loss for Q3 is $18.9 billion, up from $14.8 billion in Q2, a time when the market was up a good 15%: ever wonder who keeps on subsidizing those gain? That's right - you. Credit-related expenses increased to $22 billion in Q3 from $18.8 billion in Q2. Oh, and Fannie now wants another $15 billion rescue from the Treasury (which is having some troubles with getting that pesky debt ceiling raised to one googol) so it can continue with its plan of keeping shadow inventory away from the market, rent foreclosed houses to their owners at staggeringly low rates, and continue the pretence that bank's balance sheets are well capitalized...

15; asks; becoming largest; Fannie Mae Reports Massive Q3 Loss; government; landlord; set; Zero Hedge.

naked capitalism Wed 2009-11-25 10:14 EST

Ivy Zelman: ``Home prices are going back down''

Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns

This is a post I wrote overnight about rising delinquencies and shadow housing inventory. I am not convinced house prices in the U.S. are headed higher permanently...The Mortgage Bankers Association is reporting that nearly one in ten households with mortgages are at least one payment behind. That is a record, my friends...Look, the fake recovery is now in full swing. But I expect the recovery to hit a brick wall by 2011, if not earlier. While the proximate cause of my concern is the likelihood of increased taxes and/or reduced spending by the Obama Administration, it is jobs that concern me. See Calculated Risk's post showing the correlation between unemployment and mortgage delinquency and you see the connection. The fact is we have a record number of foreclosures and that is a direct result of rising unemployment. Unemployed people don't have any money, so they don't pay mortgages.

Go; home prices; Ivy Zelman; naked capitalism.

Mon 2009-10-05 11:23 EDT

New Bubble Threatens a V-Shaped Rebound

Andy Xie

...What we are seeing now in the global economy is a pure liquidity bubble. It's been manifested in several asset classes. The most prominent are commodities, stocks and government bonds. The story that supports this bubble is that fiscal stimulus would lead to quick economic recovery, and the output gap could keep inflation down. Hence, central banks can keep interest rates low for a couple more years...I think the market is being misled. The driving forces for the current bounce are inventory cycle and government stimulus. The follow-through from corporate capex and consumption are severely constrained by structural challenges. These challenges have origins in the bubble that led to a misallocation of resources. After the bubble burst, a mismatch of supply and demand limited the effectiveness of either stimulus or a bubble in creating demand...he structural challenges arise from global imbalance and industries that over-expanded due to exaggerated demand supported in the past by cheap credit and high asset prices. At the global level, the imbalance is between deficit-bound Anglo-Saxon economies (Australia, Britain and the United States) and surplus emerging economies (mainly China and oil exporters)...The old equilibrium cannot be restored, and many structural barriers stand in the way of a new equilibrium. The current recovery is based on a temporary and unstable equilibrium in which the United States slows the rise of its national savings rate by increasing the fiscal deficit, and China lowers its savings surplus by boosting government spending and inflating an assets bubble.

New Bubble Threatens; Shaped Rebound.

Minyanville Fri 2009-09-04 19:31 EDT

Five Reasons to Stay Cautious with UNG

I'll be staying away from this market for now. However, beware that if hurricane season isn't disruptive and the winter is mild, we can probably expect a major decline in NG prices all along the curve early next year as inventory levels are near record highs and available storage is virtually tapped out. This could devastate the natural gas producer stocks...Many investors think that various natural gas plays in the master limited partnerships (MLP) field (pipelines, processors, etc.) are immune to fluctuations in the price of natural gas. In the short term, this may be true in many cases depending on the type of contracts. However, it's not true in the medium term. I'd be wary of this space at this time as any sort of alteration in pricing of contracts will almost certainly elicit cuts in distributions to shareholders. And since virtually all owners of these stocks buy them for the distributions, any cuts in distributions will likely devastate the share prices -- far beyond what would be theoretically warranted.

Minyanville; reasons; stay cautious; UNG.

Tue 2009-06-16 00:00 EDT

naked capitalism: Guest Post: Backdoor Way Investors Can Clear Housing Inventory

buying tax liens

Backdoor Way Investors; Clear Housing Inventory; Guest Post; naked capitalism.

Fri 2009-02-13 00:00 EST

Calculated Risk: Housing and "Ghost Inventory"

shadow housing inventory

Calculated Risk; Ghost Inventory; Housing.

Wed 2008-06-25 00:00 EDT

naked capitalism: Thomas Palley: "Beating the Oil Barons" (And the Misunderstood Role of Inventories)

speculative basis for commodity price surges?

beat; Inventories; Misunderstood Role; naked capitalism; oil barons; Thomas Palley.

Sun 2008-05-18 00:00 EDT

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis: Mike Morgan: Decession or Depression?

"nventory of homes is now beyond a two year supply and growing, while prices are falling off the cliff." "at least a third of todays builders will be bankrupt within the next 18 months."largest source of inventory is the homes moving through the foreclosure process" "The snakes have moved out of the mortgage business and into the REO disposition business."

Decession; Depression; Mike Morgan; Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis.