Empiric Student Property Share Discussion Threads

[briarberry] 30/5/2009 20:15

Taxpayers are on the hook for an extra $55,000 a household to cover rising federal commitments made just in the past year for retirement benefits, the national debt and other government promises, a USA TODAY analysis shows.

The 12% rise in red ink in 2008 stems from an explosion of federal borrowing during the recession, plus an aging population driving up the costs of Medicare and Social Security.

That's the biggest leap in the long-term burden on taxpayers since a Medicare prescription drug benefit was added in 2003.

The latest increase raises federal obligations to a record $546,668 per household in 2008, according to the USA TODAY analysis. That's quadruple what the average U.S. household owes for all mortgages, car loans, credit cards and other debt combined.

"We have a huge implicit mortgage on every household in America - except, unlike a real mortgage, it's not backed up by a house," says David Walker, former U.S. comptroller general, the government's top auditor.

[briarberry] 28/5/2009 22:27

Existing-home sales rose 2.9 percent from March, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.68 million units, according to the National Association of Realtors. That was slightly better than analysts expected. The April numbers represented a 3.5 percent drop in sales compared with April 2008.

The excess inventory is also putting pressure on median home prices, which fell to $170,200, down 15.4 percent in April compared with the same period a year earlier. That was the second-largest price decline since the group began collecting this data in 1968.

[briarberry] 28/5/2009 22:18

The Fed is monetizing $billions of mortgages every week...


Fed Purchases $25.544bn in Agency MBS from May 21 through May 27

Net purchases from May 21 through May 27: $25,544 million

[briarberry] 28/5/2009 16:47

A record 12 percent of homeowners with a mortgage are behind on their payments or in foreclosure


NEW YORK (AP) -- A record 12 percent of homeowners with a mortgage are behind on their payments or in foreclosure as the housing crisis spreads to borrowers with good credit. And the wave of foreclosures isn't expected to crest until the end of next year, the Mortgage Bankers Association said Thursday.

The foreclosure rate on prime fixed-rate loans doubled in the last year, and now represents the largest share of new foreclosures. Nearly 6 percent of fixed-rate mortgages to borrowers with good credit were in the foreclosure process.

At the same time, almost half of all adjustable-rate loans made to borrowers with shaky credit were past due or in foreclosure.

...
the number of people receiving unemployment benefits was the highest on record.




"The U.S. delinquency rate climbed to a seasonally adjusted 9.12 percent and the share of loans entering foreclosure rose to 1.37 percent, the Mortgage Bankers Association said today. Both figures are the highest in records going back to 1972."

[briarberry] 27/5/2009 22:00

I guess in theory the banks should make more money if spreads widen ? Although can borrowers afford to pay ?

The 2year/10 year spread is a record 275 basis points.

The 2year/30 year spread is 366 basis points. The record is 369 on October 05 1992 (The time of the last property bust)

[briarberry] 27/5/2009 22:00

MBS - I've read a few comments that say the funds are now selling mortgage backed securities...

There has been massive selling of mortgages by an eclectic group of clients. In the early stages servicers and originators led the charge (to sell). Today real portfolios joined in the selling to make for the ugly scenario we have today.


quote - not sure if it's true

"Prudential just unloaded 10 billion in mortgage backed securities"

rates

[briarberry] 27/5/2009 20:22

May 27 (Bloomberg) -- "Yields on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage bonds rose for a fourth day, after yesterday for the first time exceeding where they stood before the Federal Reserve announced it would expand purchases to drive down loan rates."


TNX up too

[briarberry] 26/5/2009 16:52

I don't trust Finspreads ! 2nd time in a row they haven't allowed me to login at a crucial time, within a week.

[briarberry] 26/5/2009 16:20

Print NEW YORK (AP) -- Home prices fell at the fastest annual rate ever in the first quarter, but the pace of month-to-month declines continues to slow, a closely watched housing index showed Tuesday.

The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller National Home Price index reported home prices tumbled by 19.1 percent in the first quarter, the most in its 21-year history.

Home prices have fallen 32.2 percent since peaking in the second quarter of 2006 and are at levels not seen since the end of 2002.

[briarberry] 24/5/2009 13:11

Spam - a surge in demand for lower-priced products...



Spam sales soar as buyers seek value

Hormel, the meat products company that launched Spam in 1937, said on Thursday it had seen double-digit increases in sales of the canned meat during the quarter ending on April 26, continuing a trend that started late last year.

Sales of its Hormel Chili canned beef – another product that dates back to the Great Depression – and of Dinty-Moore brand canned stews also grew by double digits.

"These products created strong consumer demand because of their great value proposition," the company said.

[briarberry] 23/5/2009 18:19

May 20 (Bloomberg) -- California is on the verge of running out of cash for the second time this year after a ballot measure defeat yesterday added $6 billion to the budget deficit of the most-populous U.S. state.

Voters yesterday struck down five measures backed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, and the Democrat- led Legislature that were intended to shore up the state's finances. With the governor expecting California to have $21 billion less than it needs over the next 13 months, he has proposed cutting deeper into spending on everything from schools to jails as the state prepares to borrow record sums from investors.

[briarberry] 23/5/2009 18:13

San Francisco Home Prices Fall 41% on Foreclosures

May 21 (Bloomberg) -- San Francisco Bay Area home prices fell 41 percent in April from a year earlier as foreclosures accounted for almost half of all sales, MDA DataQuick said.

The median price dropped to $304,000 from $518,000 a year earlier. That's 54 percent below the peak reached two years ago, the San Diego-based research company said today in a statement. A total of 7,139 new and existing houses and condominiums sold in the nine-county area, a 13 percent increase from April 2008.

"Job losses and historically high foreclosure levels continue to pose serious threats to housing stability," John Walsh, president of MDA, said in the statement. "In much of the Bay Area, there's the added problem of 'jumbo' loan financing still being relatively expensive and, for many, hard to get."

[briarberry] 22/5/2009 19:55

Chinese bubble ???


Chinese banks' surge in lending to support the government's stimulus package is leading to excessive risk taking, said the Fitch ratings agency.

Banks lent 5.2 trillion yuan ($762bn; £489bn) in the first four months of the year, encouraged by government backing for infrastructure projects.

Ambitious profit targets also contributed to the massive volumes of money being lent, Fitch said.

Last year, the Chinese government announced a 4tn yuan stimulus package.

This was designed to boost economic activity during the downturn.



One of Asia's richest men has warned of a stock market bubble in Hong Kong.

[briarberry] 22/5/2009 19:54

Another big US bank goes under...


The closure of BankUnited, which had $12.7bn (£8bn) in assets and $8.6bn of retail deposits, will cost the FDIC's insurance fund – which all banks pay into to cover losses for depositors in this sort of situation – an estimated $4.9bn. This makes it the second-costliest collapse of the crisis to date, after IndyMac which cost the fund close to $11bn.

[briarberry] 22/5/2009 19:09

As a result of the current plunge in earnings and the recent 2.5 month stock market rally, the PE ratio has spiked to the low 120s – a record high.

[briarberry] 21/5/2009 22:09

doesn't happen very often

dollar down
stocks down
bonds down
oil down

[briarberry] 20/5/2009 15:17

U.S. 1Q commercial real estate index falls 4.8%

[briarberry] 20/5/2009 14:17

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Foreclosures in April exceeded even March's blistering pace with a record 342,000 homes receiving notices of default, auction notices or undergoing bank repossessions, according to a regular industry report.

More than 1.3 million homes have now been lost to foreclosure since the market meltdown began in August 2007.

[briarberry] 19/5/2009 15:24

May 19 (Bloomberg) -- The derivatives market shrank for the first time in the second half of 2008 as the global financial crisis curbed trading, the Bank for International Settlements said in a report.

"The amount of outstanding contracts linked to bonds, currencies, commodities, stocks and interest rates fell 13.4 percent to $592 trillion, the Basel, Switzerland-based bank said yesterday. That's the first decline in 10 years of compiling the data. The amount of credit-default swaps protecting investors against losses on bonds and loans fell 27 percent to cover a notional $41.9 trillion of debt. "

[briarberry] 19/5/2009 12:55

CNNMoney.com's bailout tracker

[briarberry] 18/5/2009 23:36

no more SIVs ???


WASHINGTON (AP) -- The board that sets U.S. accounting standards on Monday moved to end companies' use of a device that allowed them to park hundreds of billions of dollars in loans off their balance sheets without capital cushions and has been blamed for helping stoke banks' losses in the housing boom.

The change will tighten the use of so-called "qualified special purpose entities" by requiring companies to report to regulators the loans contained in them and to increase their capital reserves in proportion as a cushion against potential losses.