From housing consultant Ivy Zelman commenting on the MBA Delinquency report in the NY Times U.S. Mortgage Delinquencies Reach a Record High "I’ve been pretty bearish on this big ugly pig stuck in the python and this cements my view that home prices are going back down."From Bloomberg: Housing R ... Read more

David Streitfeld at the NY Times adds some color: Easy Loans in Expensive Areas In January, Mike Rowland was so broke that he had to raid his retirement savings to move [to San Francisco] from Boston. A week ago, he and a couple of buddies bought a two-unit apartment building for nearly a millio ... Read more

There was some buzz earlier today about short term T bill rates turning slightly negative. This happened last year too, but for different reasons ... From the Financial Times: Short-term US interest rates turn negative Short-term US interest rates turned negative on Thursday as banks frantically ... Read more

Here is a scatter graph comparing the seriously delinquency rate for mortgage loans vs. unemployment rate for all states. The seriously delinquent rate include 90+ days delinquent loans, and loans in the foreclosure process for Q3 2009 (Source: MBA). Click on graph for larger image in new w ... Read more

Click on graph for larger image in new window. First, on the market ... This graph is from Doug Short of dshort.com (financial planner): "Four Bad Bears". Note that the Great Depression crash is based on the DOW; the three others are for the S&P 500. Reader Yuri asked me if ... Rea ... Read more

From HotelNewsNow.com: New Orleans leads ADR, RevPAR declines in STR weekly numbers Overall, in year-over-year measurements, the industry’s occupancy fell 6.4 percent to end the week at 52.6 percent, ADR dropped 9.9 percent to US$95.86, and RevPAR decreased 15.7 percent to finish at US$50.47. ... Read more

On the MBA conference call concerning the "Q3 2009 National Delinquency Survey", MBA Chief Economist Jay Brinkmann said this morning: The problem is moving to prime loans, including fixed rate prime loans, and also FHA loans. "We are seeing the first hit on the weaker prime fixed borrowers." R ... Read more

The MBA reports a record 14.4 percent of mortgage loans were either one payment delinquent or in the foreclosure process in Q3 2009. This is an increase from 13.2% in Q2 2009. From the MBA: Delinquencies Continue to Climb in Latest MBA National Delinquency Survey The delinquency rate for mortga ... Read more

The DOL reports on weekly unemployment insurance claims :In the week ending Nov. 14, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 505,000, unchanged from the previous week's revised figure of 505,000. [Revised from 502,000] The 4-week moving average was 514,000, a decrease of 6,50 ... Read more

This is a recurring theme: a bank fails, the Inspector General reviews the failure and discovers that the field examiners saw problems starting around 2002, and ... nothing happened for years. We saw this with the Federal Reserve and the failure of Riverside Bank of the Gulf Coast , and with the ... Read more