Orange County Register - "Tell me 'Am I talking to the right people?'" (5-1-07)

"Why does the O.C. chapter of the Building Industry Association no longer love me? I’m not sure. But parsing their public statement about my work last week. I’m guessing one beef ("Lansner regularly quotes sources with views far removed from other prominent housing market researchers") comes from an interview I did for my blog and The Register with investment adviser Peter Schiff. He boldly suggested O.C. home prices will fall 50 percent in this cycle."

Sign On San Diego - "California population nears 38 million, L.A. tops 4 million" (5-1-07)

"California's population is closing in on 38 million and its biggest city now has more than 4 million people, but the state's growth rate has slowed since the start of the decade, state officials said Tuesday. The Department of Finance's demographics unit said California had nearly 37.7 million residents as of on Jan. 1, up by about 470,000 since the start of 2006. One of every eight Americans now lives in the state."

Reuters - "Realtors' upbeat economist, Lereah, steps down" (5-1-07)

"The economist who prodded investors into the U.S. housing boom and has been skewered by bloggers during the bust is leaving a top real estate trade association, the group said Monday. David Lereah, the author of 'Are You Missing the Real Estate Boom?', will leave the the National Association of Realtors' by the middle of next month after serving as the head economist for seven years, a spokesman said."

Sign On San Diego - "Prices to start rebound next fall, forecast says" (5-1-07)

"Despite a surge in home foreclosures, the worst may be over for San Diego County's beleaguered housing market, according to a study to be released today by UCLA's Anderson Forecast, one of the state's leading economic think tanks. But that's not to say that home prices are going to immediately start going back up."

KCRA - "Investors Say They Were Duped In Real Estate Scam" (5-1-07)

"A three-month-long KCRA 3 investigation has uncovered millions of dollars of fraud in the local real estate market. Seven individuals, including Romano, have filed lawsuits alleging fraud, conspiracy and blatant misrepresentations by their loan officer, mortgage broker and real estate agent."

Yahoo - "Moral hazard is part of mortgage mess" (5-1-07)

"Today's subprime meltdown, and tomorrow's bigger Alt-A debacle, will bring out a lot of politicians who will demand that something be done to protect consumers from bad loans. But it's going to be hard to protect consumers without bailing out the lenders and investors who were behind those bad loan decisions. That's where moral hazard comes in."

CNN - "Homebuilder Centex posts loss" (5-1-07)

"Centex Corp., the fourth-largest U.S. home builder, reported a wider-than-expected fourth-quarter loss Monday as it responded to the U.S. real-estate slowdown by writing off and revaluing land and by exiting the sub-prime lending and commercial contracting businesses. For the fiscal fourth quarter ended March 31, Centex posted a loss from continuing operations of $22.3 million, or 18 cents a share, compared with its earlier forecast of break-even."

Herald Tribune - "'Soggy' economy renews fears about a recession" (5-1-07)

"Was former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan right when he put the chance of a recession this year at one in three? A report released Friday showed the country logged its worst economic growth in four years in the opening quarter of 2007. That raised fresh questions about whether troubles in the U.S. housing market will spread and throw the economy into a tailspin before the year is out."

Palm Beach Post - "This Eden is garden of trouble for condos" (5-1-07)

"During the recent condo-conversion craze, the Eden was among the first projects to promise buyers a hip lifestyle in a downtown setting. But four years after sales first started, the project remains a hulking eyesore, partly gutted and nowhere near done. Work on the conversion has started, stopped, started and now stopped again. Now comes word that two of the complex's four buildings won't be finished anytime soon. Two sources say those buildings are undergoing a redesign that will push the Eden's completion date even further into the future. Meanwhile, residents who have moved into the first building won't be enjoying their clubhouse in coming days. Work on the 8,000-square-foot facility has ceased, and several subcontractors have filed liens in Palm Beach County over unpaid bills. Among them: the clubhouse's general contractor, InCom Restorations. The Jacksonville-based company filed a lien for $251,305 in March but was paid on that lien this month - only to file another lien for $171,565 on April 16, county records show."

North County Times - "Renters market: Competition, 'doubling up' cited as reasons for shift locally" (5-1--7)

"In San Diego County, vacancy rates among large rental complexes jumped from 1.84 percent to 4.54 percent during the six-month period from October through March 31, the highest six-month rate since 1995, according to a MarketPointe Realty Advisors' Rental Trends survey, which supplies information to rental property owners."

Seeking Alpha - "Home Equity Debt: The Long Slow Squeeze Continues" (5-1-07)

"One of the many ing after effects of the Greenspan term at the Fed is that huge amount of home equity that has been extracted but not yet paid back by homeowners with no intention of selling their home. If your mortgage is more than a few years old, it no longer makes sense to refinance the extracted equity back into a new first mortgage for three reasons. First, you'd have to start back at month one on the loan amortization schedule; second, you probably won't get a lower interest rate; and third, you'll have more loan fees to pay."

Dr. Housing Bubble - "Mission Accomplished: 3 Housing Issues: Multiple Bottoms, Declining Dollar, and More Sub-prime and Alt-A Defaults." (5-1-07)

"It is said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. If we adhere to this definition, housing pundits must be clinically insane because since the middle of 2006 we’ve been hearing rhetoric of “yes, today we’ve reached bottom.” Amazing how these folks live on one way streets. During the past seven years, each new record high was welcomed and when asked if this was a peak most would respond that the sky was the limit. No end in their immediate future. If up to them, housing would appreciate 20% each year until the end of time. Yet now that we’ve experienced only two moderately challenging quarters the housing complex is ready to throw in the towel and issue a Siren call that this is the absolute bottom, mission accomplished. They would like us to believe their rhetoric as gospel and ignore every fundamental economic indicator pointing to the contrary."

eFinanceDirectory.com - "NAR Changes Forecast for Housing Again" (5-1-07)

"The National Association of Realtors (NAR) is notorious for making optimistic predictions in regards to housing. After stating repeatedly that there was no such thing as a housing bubble in 2005, the NAR changed their stance in 2006, admitting that a price correction may be afoot. The association then called the bottom of the correction in August of 2006, September of 2006, and December of 2006. Now it seems they have changed their tune once again."

Mortgage Bankers Association - "Freddie Mac Enhances Loan Propector for Processing FHA Loans" (5-1-07)

"Freddie Mac has enhanced the credit funtionality of Loan Prospector, making it easier for lenders to assess Federal Housing Authority (FHA) mortgages.The change reduces the number of times lenders have to reorder merged credit for a FHA loan for a single borrower. With these changes, the lender will only have to reorder merged credit for a borrower when any of the following changes are made during the loan process: There is a change tosingle borrower’s critical borrower data. The credit data has expired past the 120 days of credit freshness for the merged credit report for a single borrower. The lender selects to order a joint merged credit report rather than a single merged credit report and vice versa."

Orange County Register - "Merrill Lynch scraps Option One's $1.5 billion credit line" (5-1-07)

"Let's see, it has been two weeks since H&R Block announced the planned sale of its subprime unit Option One Mortgage Corp. in Irvine to Cerberus Capital Management L.P. Well, the tax preparer from Kansas City, Missiouri already has hit a little snag, though nothing that will derail the deal at this point. The company said in a filing today that its mortgage unit lost a $1.5 billion credit line from Merrill Lynch & Co. Other investment banks reduced or rearranged their financial backing. For example, UBS cut its credit line from 1.5 billion to $750 million."

Real Estate Journal - "Homeowners Wage a Rebellion As Property-Tax Assessments Rise" (5-1-07)

"Falling home prices and rising property-tax assessments are fueling a grass-roots tax rebellion. From coastal Florida to the shores of Hawaii, homeowners are lodging record numbers of appeals, fighting against rising assessments that are, in many cases, pushing up annual tax payments significantly."