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EmailTuesday, September 22, 2009
Executive Summary
Tracking the housing market helps us see where the economy is headed. Two categories of data that are useful to focus on are house prices and housing supply.
House Prices
Measuring the value of housing is critical, because the amount of foreclosures and the economic fallout from them are both tightly linked to the difference between the current value of a house and the mortgage held on it.
Housing Supply
To appreciate housing supply, there are three things we need to track:
- Total number of existing homes for sale (expressed in either a raw number or in “month's supply,” which takes the raw number and divides it by the current sales pace)
- Total number of new homes for sale (expressed the same as above)
- Amount of “shadow inventory,” which are homes that are on the books of the banks but have not been released into the market for sale
This is Part I of a two-part report.
Your faithful information scout,
Chris Martenson
Copyright 2009, Chris Martenson. All rights reserved.
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Comments
Chris-
I can not wait until the second part of this report. The main reason is I keep thinking okay so what do we do now. I can not tell you how many people believe the reports that things are getting better and that I keep looking at the negatives instead of the positives...
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Wow! Great read, Chris! Thank you.
It confirms my observation that there exists a huge shadow inventory in southern CA where I do many appraisals and have found many people living in their homes without having made a mortgage payment in over 12-18 months! Given the 30% -50% value declines already, no wonder the banks can't foreclose...
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A vast and significant majority of mortgages are held in securitizations and not on bank's balance sheet.
Does anyone know how the trustee of the securitizations has been handling foreclosures? This would give us the best insight to the size of the shadow inventory...
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Does anyone know how the trustee of the securitizations has been handling foreclosures? This would give us the best insight to the size of the shadow inventory.
Good question 65Highland.
I am not qualified to give any sort of insider's view of the legal tangles involved here...
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I am reposting this. Its a recent post from 'Portals'. He posted this in the 9-22 blog.
Good Afternoon Davos,
I tried to send you a private message but apparently you didn't get it So, I just want you to see the following link concerning the MERS foreclosure situation in Kansas...
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Chris,
Whats to keep a person from claiming squatters rights on a property if the proper holder of the note cannot be identified?
Barry had an interesting piece on MERS:
*Enroll to see Link*
To me this was the heart of the piece:
It may be possible for trustees for the securitized loans to somehow perfect standing, i.e., develop the ability to claim loan ownership (perhaps via a purchase) and then move to foreclose...
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