Mortgage Bankers Association - "Purchase Applications Increase In Latest MBA Weekly Survey" (2-6-08)

"The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) today released its Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending February 1, 2008. The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, was 1086.6, an increase of 3.0 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from 1054.9 one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index increased 4.4 percent compared with the previous week and was up 73.2 percent compared with the same week one year earlier."

Bloomberg - "Toll Has Seventh Straight Drop in Quarterly Revenue" (2-6-08)

"Toll Brothers Inc., the largest U.S. luxury homebuilder, reported its seventh consecutive quarterly drop in revenue as demand for new homes continued to fall. Homebuilding revenue dropped 22 percent to $842.7 million in the fiscal first quarter from a year earlier. Horsham, Pennsylvania-based Toll said in a statement today it may incur as much as $300 million in pretax expenses to write down the value of property."

The San Diego Union Tribune - "Bubble trouble in Treasury market?" (2-6-08)

"Investors' raging demand for safe assets over the past six months may have created a bubble in the Treasury market – and some onlookers expect to hear a bursting sound any minute now. A market bubble exists when asset prices are driven well above their intrinsic value, as occurred with stocks in 1999 and housing prices in many parts of the country in 2006. The end of a bubble is often marked by disruptively sharp price declines as investors abruptly conclude that assets are overvalued."

Bloomberg - "Morgan Stanley Cries Mommy, SEC Comes Running" (2-6-08)

"First the Securities and Exchange Commission's chief accountant gave the subprime-lending industry a valentine that wasn't in his power to bestow. Now some of the accounting rule-makers are starting to push back. The SEC's Conrad Hewitt got things rolling with a Jan. 8 letter, blessing an industry plan to keep problem subprime mortgages off lenders' balance sheets while freezing their interest rates. Hewitt's letter came in response to requests by the Treasury Department and a group called the American Securitization Forum, whose accounting committee is led by a Morgan Stanley managing director, Esther Mills."

CNN - "Troubled homeowners: Can't pay? Just walk away" (2-6-08)

"Homeowners are abandoning their homes and, more importantly, their mortgages, rather than trying to keep up with rising payments on deteriorating assets. So many people are handing their keys back to lenders that a new term has been coined for it: jingle mail."

Bloomberg - "Goldman's Viniar Says Fear Rules in Credit Markets" (2-6-08)

"'Credit markets are trading like we're in the middle of the worst recession we've seen in a very, very long time,' Viniar said at an investor conference in Naples, Florida, sponsored by Credit Suisse Group. Executives from Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch & Co. also said demand for debt remains weak."

Orange County Register - "O.C. No. 2 when it comes to least affordable rents" (2-6-08)

"Last year an O.C. worker needed to make $28.56 an hour ($59,404.80 a year) to afford the average $1,485 fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment, says the non-profit Center for Housing Policy in Washington, D.C. That is out of reach for most of the service industry workers — the burger flippers, hotel workers and sales clerks — that keep O.C.’s economy humming. Even an entry-level worker in a white collar job might have trouble making that much. To be fair, paychecks of sales clerks and service workers fell short of rents in all 210 metropolitan areas studied. Only in San Francisco did workers find it harder to afford rents than in O.C. Hourly workers there had to make $29.83 ($62,046.40/ year) last year to afford the average $1,551 rent for a two-bedroom apartment."

Real Estate Journal - "Commentary: How to FixThe Housing Crisis" (2-6-08)

"If U.S. policy-makers really want to help our ailing economy they will treat the cause of our problem, not the symptoms. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. Treating the symptoms -- a flagging economy, with falling sales and rising unemployment -- is usually easier, since it does not require complicated explanations and can be tailored to fit the politicians' preferences."