Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Yahoo - "US Foreclosure Filings Up 68 Pct in Nov." (12-19-07)

"U.S. homeowners increasingly failed to keep up with their home loan payments in November, as the number of foreclosure filings surged 68 percent nationwide compared with the same month a year ago, according to a mortgage research company. In all, 201,950 foreclosure filings were reported last month, compared with 120,334 in November 2006, Irvine-based RealtyTrac Inc. said Wednesday."

Bloomberg - "Bass Shorted `God I Hope You're Wrong' Wall Street" (12-19-07)

"J. Kyle Bass, a hedge fund manager from Dallas, strode into a New York conference room in August 2006 to pitch his theory about a looming housing market meltdown to senior executives of a Wall Street investment bank. Home prices had been on a five-year tear, rising more than 10 percent annually. Bass conceived a hedge fund that bet on a crash for residential real estate by trading securities based on subprime mortgages to the least credit-worthy borrowers. The investment bank, which Bass declines to identify, owned billions of dollars in mortgage-backed securities."

Yahoo - "Morgan Stanley Posts Loss on Writedown" (12-19-07)

"Morgan Stanley, the No. 2 U.S. investment bank, reported a $9.4 billion writedown on Wednesday from bad bets on mortgage-related debt, leading it to take a $5 billion infusion from an arm of the Chinese government."

Bloomberg - "Trichet Says Inflation Pickup to Be `More Protracted'" (12-19-07)

"European Central Bank President Jean- Claude Trichet said his economy faced a 'more protracted' period of elevated inflation than previously expected, signaling he's not planning to cut interest rates to ease a credit squeeze. 'The risks to price stability over the medium term are clearly on the upside,' Trichet told the European Parliament's economic and monetary affairs committee in Brussels today. 'The ECB's Governing Council stands ready to counter upside risks to price stability.'"

NAR - "Commercial Real Estate Fundamentals Are Sound But Investment Slowing" (12-19-07)

"The fundamentals in commercial real estate remain healthy with only slight increases in vacancy rates expected for the office and industrial sectors during 2008, although credit restrictions have recently slowed overall investment activity, according to the latest COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE OUTLOOK of the National Association of Realtors®."

Mortgage Bankers Association - "Mortgage Applications Decrease In Latest MBA Weekly Survey" (12-19-07)

"The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) today released its Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending December 14, 2007. The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, was 653.8, a decrease of 19.5 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from 811.8 one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index decreased 21.3 percent compared with the previous week and was up 1.7 percent compared with the same week one year earlier. "

Yahoo - "Fed Loans Banks $20 Billion" (12-19-07)

"Cash-strapped banks took the Federal Reserve up on its offer of $20 billion in short-term loans to help them overcome credit problems, but the interest rate wasn't as low as some had hoped. The central bank said Wednesday that it had received bids for $61.6 billion worth of loans, more than three times the amount that was made available. The loans carried an interest rate of 4.65 percent, which is slightly less than the 4.75 percent the Fed charges banks on emergency loans through its "discount" window. Banks have been reluctant to use the Fed's discount window because of the fear that investors will believe they are having trouble getting funds in a normal manner."

Orange County Register Blog - "Beach homes still O.C.’s least-hit ZIPs" (12-19-07)

"My trusty spreadsheet tells me DataQuick identified 337 homes selling in beach cities’ ZIP codes last month, a 24% drop from a year ago. In these 17 ZIPs, last month’s median price change was a 5.2% gain vs. a year ago."

Los Angeles Times - "Fed looks to rein in lenders" (12-19-07)

"The Federal Reserve on Tuesday proposed new mortgage lending rules to protect consumers against fraud and deception, but consumer advocates said lenders would still have the ability to make the kinds of bad loans that triggered the sub-prime lending crisis."

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