Mortgage Fraud Epidemic: How the FBI Blew It and Why There's No 'Perp Walks'

Mortgage Fraud Epidemic: How the FBI Blew It and Why There's No 'Perp Walks'

From Bubble to Depression?

From Bubble to Depression?
(Source Wall Sreet Journal)
Bubbles have been frequent in economic history, and they occur in the laboratories of experimental economics under conditions which -- when first studied in the 1980s -- were considered so transparent that bubbles would not be observed.
We economists were wrong: Even when traders in an asset market know the value of the asset, bubbles form dependably. Bubbles can arise when some agents buy not on fundamental value, but on price trend or momentum. If momentum traders have more liquidity, they can sustain a bubble longer.
But what sparks bubbles? Why does one large asset bubble -- like our dot-com bubble -- do no damage to the financial system while another one leads to its collapse? Key characteristics of housing markets -- momentum trading, liquidity, price-tier movements, and high-margin purchases -- combine to provide a fairly complete, simple description of the housing bubble collapse, and how it engulfed the financial system and then the wider economy.
Read article and analysis...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123897612802791281.html

The Wealth of the Baby Boom Cohorts After the Collapse of the Housing Bubble

The Wealth of the Baby Boom Cohorts After the Collapse of the Housing Bubble
Boomer wealth is evaporating
(CEPR) Center for Economic Policy and Research

This report builds upon previous CEPR projections to more accurately describe the current wealth prospects for the baby boom cohorts aged 45 to 54 and 55 to 64. The severity of the housing market meltdown, coupled with the recent collapse of the stock market, has had a severe negative impact on the wealth of these cohorts. Using data from the 2004 Survey of Consumer Finance and the November 2008 Case-Shiller 20 City Price Index, the authors create three possible scenarios for baby boomer wealth and find these households will enter retirement with little wealth beyond Social Security. For each cohort in 2004 and 2009, the paper analyzes net worth, financial assets, equity in real estate, percent of households in each cohort who will need cash to close on their primary residence, net worth of homeowners, net worth of non-homeowners, and the percent of homeowners who would need cash to close on their primary residence.

Download PDF: http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/baby-boomer-wealth-2009-02.pdf

Plummeting house prices and investment losses will leave millions of baby boomers dependent on Social Security in their retirement
Press Release: February 25, 2009

Dutch housing market slipping

Dutch housing market no longer a treat as economy teeters toward a recession

(From The Shanghai Daily)
Eighteen months after real estate markets in Spain and Ireland began to sputter, the Netherlands is following suit. Prices of properties including 17th-century Amsterdam canal-side townhouses dropped in the third quarter for the first time since 1980 after doubling in the last decade.
The boom has left the Dutch saddled with the highest level of mortgage debt in the euro region just as the economy slides into recession. As recently as the second quarter, the Netherlands was the only euro-area country among 11 surveyed by the Global Property Guide with rising property prices.
Average prices slipped 0.3 percent in the third quarter from the previous three months, according to Nieuwegein-based NVM, the Dutch Realtors Association. In the Amsterdam region, where narrow houses loom over canals winding through the city center, prices fell 4 percent to an average 265,000 euros.

Marktinformatie woningmarkt
De NVM publiceert elk kwartaal de woningmarktcijfers. De kwartaalcijfers geven inzicht in de ontwikkeling van de woningmarkt in de 76 woningmarktgebieden. Voor vijf types woningen wordt inzicht gegeven in transactieprijzen, prijzen per vierkante meters, aantallen verkochte woningen en totale omzet.

In September 2008, the price index for owner-occupied houses was 2.5% up on a year earlier, according to Central Bureau of Statistics. When adjusted for inflation, the index fell 0.5%. (Source: Global Property Guide Netherlands)

Chinese property hunters to raid US

Chinese property hunters to raid US

Chinese property hunters to raid US By Geoff Dyer in Beijing
Published: December 5 2008 20:10 | Last updated: December 5 2008 20:10
Chinese bargain hunters are preparing to descend on American cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco, where homeowners have suffered some of the steepest price falls in the US.
SouFun, the biggest real estate website in China, is organising a trip next month to look at properties in California and possibly Nevada. Liu Jian, the company’s chief operating officer, said about 300 people had expressed interest in the idea in the three days since it was advertised, though the company would take only a small group on the first trip.
The trip would focus on California, particularly San Francisco and Los Angeles, where big Chinese populations might make his clients more comfortable, but might also include Nevada.
Restrictions on taking money out of China would be an obstacle, he added, but some potential investors had an overseas connection such as a foreign passport that would make it easier.