Thursday, Oct 29, 2009
Foreclosure, foreclosure.
Bloomberg: U.S. Home Vacancies Rise to 18.8 Million on Defaults
"About 18.8 million homes stood empty in the U.S. during the third quarter as banks seized properties from delinquent borrowers and new home sales fell in September. The number of vacant properties, including foreclosures, residences for sale and vacation homes, rose from 18.4 million a year earlier and 18.7 million in the second quarter, the U.S. Census Bureau said in a report today. The record high was in the first quarter, when 18.95 million homes were vacant. The homeownership rate, stood at 67.6 percent". The worst U.S. housing crash since the Great Depression has led to a record number of foreclosures and shaved almost a third off property values.
Posted by alan @ 08:51 PM (578 views) Add Comment
9 Comments
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1. str 2007 said...
18 million homes vacant WTF.
Surely repossessed people then need to live somewhere else.
Don't we talk of 1 million empty homes in this country with a 1/6 of the population ?
Therefore there are 3 times as many in the US per head of population or 18 times the actual number.
Seems incredible that houses maintain any sort of value atall.
2. icarus said...
For all those who think the UK is alone in propping up the housing market, just take another look at the US.
1) Tax credits of $8,000 to FTBs and $6,500 to those paying mortgages, in their homes for more than 5 years, and earning less than $250,000 per couple. (The Brookings Institute calculated that most FTBs were going to buy anyway, so it cost $43,000 for each FTB that had to be persuaded by these means to buy.) According to the WSJ about 100,000 claims are scams, thus creating a lot of employment for the IRS anf Justice Dept.
2) The Fed has spent more than $1 trillion buying MBSs and Fannie/Freddie debt, helping to drive down mortgage rates.
3) A recent report by Amherst Securities Group estimated that loans on 7 million housing units were in the delinquency/foreclosure pipeline because of government moratoria, incentives to modify loans and the resulting months of paperwork and negotiation. The vast majority of those loans are forecast to end in foreclosure. The pipeline will spew them out in big numbers in 2010.
4) A Goldman Sachs (yes, them) report calculated that props such as these had caused house prices in the US over the last few months to be 5% higher than they otherwise would have been. The phasing out of the tax credits and the purchasing of mortgage securities by the Fed, added to the loans making their way through the foreclosure pipeline, is forecast to cause substantial houseprice reductions next year.
5) So I'd be careful about saying things like "the Americans have had their HPC while the UK HPC has been artificially suspended by Brown and Badger".
3. crunchy said...
"If the American people ever allow private banks
to control the issue of their money,
first by inflation and then by deflation,
the banks and corporations that will
grow up around them, will deprive the people of their property
until their children will wake up homeless
on the continent their fathers conquered."
Thomas Jefferson.
4. icarus said...
.....and Bismarck (who had an inside track) said the US civil war had nothing to do with slavery and everything to do with anglo-american bankers trying to prevent a union with its own currency and without debt payments to said banking elite.
Getting back to the US HPC - another report/survey by the US Mortgage Bankers' Association in Q2 2009 showed that 13.5% of mortgage loans were in delinquency or foreclosure. Analysis of these loans estimated that nearly all (12.4% of total loans) would liquidate (end in foreclosure). Re-default rates on modified loans was &0% and counting.....
5. icarus said...
...make that 70% and counting.
6. crunchy said...
4. icarus
USA homelessness will have everything to do with HPC along with anglo-american banks.
HPC 100% myopia. Remember the title- Bloomberg: U.S. Home Vacancies Rise to 18.8 Million on Defaults.
7. crunchy said...
icarus
"Vacancies" "Defaults2 if you need help!
8. icarus said...
crunchy - didn't mean to separate HPC, banks, homelessness etc. First para @4 was meant to support yours @3, then 2nd para just a clumsy link back to my post @2 - wanted to make a couple of additional points.
9. crunchy said...
8. icarus
I missed your first post @ 09:39PM it came in @ the same time as mine.
Myopia indeed. Thanks for the Post No 2 info.. Agree with (5) "So I'd be careful about saying things like "the Americans have had their HPC while the UK HPC has been artificially suspended by Brown and Badger"
The American housing/homeless crisis I feel is still underway. Perhaps Fema camps will have the answer for all ills. : (