Dizzying home-price increases fused with pandemic hype and trillions from the Fed into a self-propagating force. It’s now accepted that housing will recover all the way to where it was in 2006, a sign the Fed has done its job, that it cured the ill that has dogged this economy for so long. Prices of 2006 are no longer “the peak of the housing bubble” but a goal.
Housing
The New Housing Market “Recovery” – Fact V. Fiction
by Lee Adler • • Comments Off on The New Housing Market “Recovery” – Fact V. Fiction
This is What Mucks Up Housing, Costs Homeowners Dearly
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on This is What Mucks Up Housing, Costs Homeowners Dearly
Home prices have jumped around the country, in some cities over 20% on an annual basis. “Recovery of the housing market,” is what this phenomenon is called. Everyone from President Obama on down has taken credit for it, particularly the Fed, whose handiwork this is. But there is a very ugly fly in this illusory ointment.
In Last 12 Months: Fed SOMA Up 27%, Housing Prices Up 13.5%, Stock Market Up 22%, Jobs Up 1.7%
by Contributor • • Comments Off on In Last 12 Months: Fed SOMA Up 27%, Housing Prices Up 13.5%, Stock Market Up 22%, Jobs Up 1.7%
By Lee Adler, of The Wall Street Examiner: By now it’s clear to everybody, even the Fed, that QE does absolutely nothing to stimulate economic growth while fomenting bubbles in housing and stock prices. The Fed will disingenuously use steady job growth as an excuse to begin cutting back on QE soon. But its real reason lies elsewhere.
Wall Street Engineers Newest Frankenstein’s Monster For Housing
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Wall Street Engineers Newest Frankenstein’s Monster For Housing
Wall Street engineering is back in the housing market. Its newest product is one heck of a contraption, a synthetic structured security of the type that helped blow up the financial system back in 2008. It’s like those triple-A rated mortgage-backed securities that became toxic waste in your “money-market-equivalent” bond fund – only worse.
Mother Of All Bubbles Pops, Mess Ensues
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Mother Of All Bubbles Pops, Mess Ensues
The asset bubbles the Fed’s money-printing and bond-buying binge has created are spectacular, the risk-taking on Wall Street with other people’s money a sight to behold. Big winners were mortgage Real Estate Investment Trusts – and those who got fat on extracting fees. But now the pendulum is swinging back, and the bloodletting has started.
US Housing Bubble II: Euphoria And Other Shenanigans
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on US Housing Bubble II: Euphoria And Other Shenanigans
Japan’s Vacant Houses: Visions of Detroit
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Japan’s Vacant Houses: Visions of Detroit
Unlike Detroit, which will run out of cash next month, Japan prints its own money, so bankruptcy in the Detroit sense is not in the cards. But they do have two things in common: depopulation and a ballooning stock of abandoned houses. For Japan, it’s an issue that even the most prodigious money-printing binge cannot resolve.
Housing Bubble 2 Forms: But This Time It’s Different
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Housing Bubble 2 Forms: But This Time It’s Different
We have seen it for several years now: foreclosure sales—there were 5 million since the peak of the housing bubble—have become the hunting grounds for investors with two goals: hanging on to these homes until the Fed’s flood of money drives up their value; and defraying the expenses of ownership by renting them out. And…
Bullish Hoopla in Housing Is Driven by Bogus Inventory Reports
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Bullish Hoopla in Housing Is Driven by Bogus Inventory Reports
I have written about the housing quagmire from different angles, and there hasn’t been a heck of a lot of good news. However, there have been spurts in home prices propagated by the media with enormous hoopla that later turned out to have been sucker rallies, with prices hitting new multi-year lows after each one. And now there is another wave of media hoopla about housing, but once again, something is off key.