Orange County Register - "Orange County’s mortgage market distress could soon top the U.S" (6-14-08)

"Keith Carson is a senior consultant for TransUnion, which recently published a report on loans 60 days or more past due in the first quarter of this year. The report said O.C.’s delinquency rate of 3.14 percent, was less than California’s 4.34 percent and the nation’s 3.23 percent."

Blogger.com - "The Country’s Biggest Liar" (6-14-08)

"NAR’s chief economist, Lawrence Yun, is making his predecessor David Lereah (Liar) look like a wimp when it comes to touting the strength of the housing markets. Yun met with Realtors in Coral Gables this week and told them this is nothing more than a 'small blip on the radar screen.' He touted prices to be 20-30 percent higher in Florida in just five years."

Blogcritics Magazine - "Planned Economies Do Not Work - Part II" (6-14-08)

"The fact of the matter is that the Fed is the primary culprit for the current subprime crisis and housing bubble. Through artificially low interest rates and expansion of the money supply, the Fed caused many debt-ridden Americans to go deeper into hock by committing to loans they had no chance of repaying. For instance, in 2000, the federal funds rate, the rate set by the Fed that is related to mortgage rates, was at 6.24% (see table below). To head off a recession caused by the dot com bubble (another crisis caused or at least not prevented by the Fed) and 911 attacks, Fed chairman Alan Greenspan took the rate down to 3.88 in 2001 and into the 1% range for the next three years."

Safe Haven - "House Prices, the Wealth Effect and the Cash-in-Hand Effect" (6-14-08)

"House prices are collapsing, which means that homeowners' equity in their houses is plunging. According to Federal Reserve flow-of-funds data, homeowners' equity dropped by $399 billion quarter-to-quarter in Q1:2008 and $880 billion year-over-year - both record absolute declines (see Chart 1). The drop in homeowners' equity contributed significantly to the $1.7 trillion decline in household net worth in the first quarter (see Chart 2)."

Los Angeles Times - "Short sales: A tough road" (6-15-08)

"RESIDENTIAL short sales sound like a picnic: Owners need to sell their homes for less than they owe, lenders forgive the difference and buyers grab a good deal.If only. This is one picnic that requires a long wait for dessert. The only 'short' thing about short sales, buyers and sellers say, is one's patience."

News-JournalOnline.com - "Hard Sell" (6-15-08)

"The glut of unsold real estate on the local market has begun to shrink, but that doesn't mean more houses are getting sold. What would appear to be a promising sign instead may reflect a trend toward giving up -- hundreds of sellers taking their homes off the market each month, unwilling to accept purchase prices that have dropped about 20 percent in the past year."

Orange County Register - "1st drop in ‘08 for O.C. distressed homes for sale" (6-15-08)

"Distressed properties, as a percent of all listed homes for sale, were 39.6% of the market last week vs. 39% two weeks earlier. Since Dec. 27, the number of distressed homes on the market has grown 2,147 while the non-distressed supply is 2,782 lower."