Inman News - "How to Sell Your Home in 5 Days" (5-17-07)

"I had a conversation today that made me rethink how homes get sold in slower markets. We know there are areas where Realtors are scratching their heads, wondering how to get homes sold. And, we know from this week's round of statistics that more sellers are listing their homes, sales are slowing and prices are dropping even more slowly than number of sales is slowing down."

DQNews.com - "Bay Area home sales drop, prices up" (5-17-07)

"Bay Area homes sold at the slowest pace in 12 years last month, the result of a continued buyer-seller standoff as well as very slow sales in some lower-cost neighborhoods in the East Bay. Prices increased for the third month in a row to a new record, a real estate information service reported. A total of 7,447 new and resale houses and condos were sold in the nine-county Bay Area last month. That was down 10.5 percent from 8,317 in March, and down 18.4 percent from 9,129 for April last year, according to DataQuick Information Systems."

The Californian - "Home prices fall locally, nationally" (5-17-07)

"Home prices in Riverside County fell in April for the first time in a decade as buyers continued to gain market power from large numbers of unsold houses, a research firm reported Tuesday. New and existing homes in the county sold for a median $409,000 last month, down 1 percent from April 2006, DataQuick Information Systems reported. Just 2,987 escrows closed, making April's pace barely half that of a year earlier and slower than any month in more than three years, according to DataQuick."

The Washington Post - "The Bad News On Condos" (5-17-07)

"Two years ago, during the giddy real estate frenzy, some investors bought 300-plus garden-style apartment units in Fairfax County to convert to condominiums. Yesterday, a California bank foreclosed on the group's loan and bought the property -- minus about 45 units that had been sold -- for $60 million, outbidding a suitor from suburban Chicago at an auction on the front steps of the Fairfax County Judicial Center. The bank, Fremont Investment and Loan, said it hoped to resell the property."

The News & Advance - "A matter of denial: The housing market" (5-17-07)

"Changes in the mortgage market are starting to affect the Lynchburg real estate market. By the end of March, local real estate agents had placed 991 homes under contract so far this year, about 47 more homes than in 2006, according to the Virginia Association of Realtors."

CNBC - "Subprime Worries Persist Despite Views of Bernanke, Paulson" (5-17-07)

"Testimony by the two top U.S. economic officials on Wednesday raised fresh concerns in financial markets about the deteriorating housing market, despite their view that subprime mortgage problems are 'contained.' The practices of lenders in the $1 trillion subprime sector have drawn scrutiny from regulators and law enforcement officials who believe some borrowers have been fraudulently induced to take on more debt than they can handle."

The Market Oracle - "US Housing Sector is Crashing, False Housing and Jobs statistics to eventually benefit Gold" (5-17-07)

"The newest deceptions are with jobs and housing. Each is much worse than reported. The housing decline might be as much as 15% worse than reported, which leads to much bigger job loss than is reported. Most of the home construction job loss is under the table, to people not on state jobless insurance programs, and to immigrant workers paid in cash. Both fall through the statistical cracks in those home frames and plywood floors underlayments. A quick preface on the two biggest corrupted statistics first, since of paramount importance."

Orange County Register - "No government aid for foreclosures, poll says" (5-17-07)

"There's much talk about various ways the government could get financial help to certain homeowners, primarily lower-income households, who can't meet their mortgage payments. We asked visitors to the Lansner on Real Estate blog if any homeowners facing foreclosure should get government aid. And the results from 870 votes cast online in what's an unscientific sample of public sentiment were stark"

Voice of San Diego - "What Could Save the Housing Market" (5-17-07)

"The speculative housing bubble that launched San Diego home prices so high is now in the process of deflating. Prices have been on the decline for over a year, but they remain well above the levels that would be justified by the economic fundamentals now that the bubble-era forces of rampant buyer optimism and unsustainably lax lending are disappearing before our eyes."

Providence Business News - "Mass. foreclosure auctions quadruple in April" (5-17-07)

"As the housing market in Massachusetts continued to weaken, foreclosure auctions rose 355 percent in April to the highest level in years, according to The Warren Group. The Boston real estate and research firm said 1,172 such auctions were advertised in the Bay State last month, compared with 376 in April 2006."

Ludwig von Mises Institute - "The Dark Side of the Credit Boom" (5-17-07)

"Under today's government-controlled paper-money standards, the world's major economies have embarked upon an unprecedented expansion of credit, starting in the early 1980s.[1] As credit growth has been outstripping economies' rise in output, total debt levels in percent of gross domestic product (GDP) have increased strongly. Take, for instance, the US. Figure 1 (a) depicts total debt and its constituent components in percent of GDP for the period 1960-Q1 to 2006-Q4. Total debt rose from 142% at the beginning of the 1960s to nearly 331% at the end of 2006. Excluding the domestic financial sector — which expanded from 5.6% to 105% — the debt ratio increased from 136% to 226%."