2007 Real Estate Forecast

How Companies Are Riding Out The Housing Slowdown

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!Focusing so closely on the real estate side of housing, we sometimes forget all of the other industries that have tied their fortunes to the housing boom. When a new home is built, there is the demand for appliances, […]

15Sep2007 | Tom Royce | 1 comment | Continued

Countrywide Lending Falls Off 17 Percent in August

The bellwether indicator for the mortgage industry has to be Countrywide Financial as they are the 500 pound gorilla of the industry. So when business is off 17 percent from August of last year, you know that the landscape has changed drastically.

Countrywide Financial Corp (CFC.N), the largest U.S. mortgage lender, said on Thursday its mortgage fundings slid […]

13Sep2007 | Tom Royce | 0 comments | Continued

No Money Down is a Distant Memory in Home Buying

And I am glad for it. No money down on an asset as large as a home is and was pure madness in my mind. Sure, a few ended up making a nice profit at the end either through appreciation or speculation, but many others were burdened with the threat of a fluid housing market […]

8Sep2007 | Tom Royce | 1 comment | Continued

Federal Reserve Issues Loan Company Guidelines - Work With Defaults

The Federal Reserve made a radical move to “keep families in their homes”. The Fed is asking banks and other institutions to pursue a loss mitigation strategy for homeowners behind on their mortgages by offering loan modifications, deferral of payments, or a reduction in principal.
The sudden action by President Bush on Friday and the […]

4Sep2007 | Tom Royce | 1 comment | Continued

A Little More Good News - Home Sales In July Up Over Previous Month

While the numbers are not large, there was an uptick in home sales for the month of July over June’s numbers by 2.8 percent. If you factor in the sales that probably got blown out by a failure to finance the numbers would have been better. (I know, woulda, coulda, shoulda) Overall, sales were down […]

24Aug2007 | Tom Royce | 0 comments | Continued

Top Performing Stock in S&P 500 For July - A Mortgage Company

We have been just as guilty as the other guys in reporting the gloom and doom, but there are some shining lights in the real estate world right now. The top performing stock for July, 2007 on the S&P 500 was a mortgage company. Hudson City Bancorp was up 21 percent for the month while […]

24Aug2007 | Tom Royce | 1 comment | Continued

Housing Inventory Increases For Majority Of Cities, Drops In Boston and San Diego

Get the feeling that a trend has developed. The cities of San Diego and Boston are seeing their housing inventory drop. They have been a couple of the hardest hit cities in the country for value decline and also the earliest to feel the downward pressure by the slowing market.
Now these cities are seeing […]

11Aug2007 | Tom Royce | 0 comments | Continued

NAR Says 2007 Will Hit 5 Year Low in Home Sales

While not a surprise, the National Association of Realtors forecasting arm revised it’s forecast for home sales down to 6.04 million homes for 2007. The NAR is an advocacy group so they will always be predicting sunny skies and glorious times ahead, however their projections seem to be in a perpetual downward revision.
The National […]

9Aug2007 | Tom Royce | 0 comments | Continued

Have We Hit the Bottom of the Housing Market? Anecdotal Evidence Says Maybe

Two pieces of anecdotal evidence says that we well may have. First, our good friends at Business Week dedicated their edition to the perils and pitfalls of the housing market. Even Dean Foust, the erstwhile reporter who has been following the market closely notices the risk in doing this issue.

When major magazines publish a […]

8Aug2007 | Tom Royce | 7 comments | Continued

News Today is Morbid, Are We Close To The Bottom?

Waking up this morning trying to determine the stories I will write about is a bear. Seriously, everyone is talking about the bear real estate market in the media.
Even Time Magazine is getting into the act. When that behemoth wakes up to a story you know that it is in full form. When Time finally noticed […]

27Jul2007 | Tom Royce | 2 comments | Continued