CBIA - "Riverside Is First City to Provide Incentives for California Green Builder Program" (6-13-07)

"The City of Riverside on Tuesday became the first community in California to provide incentives to builders who utilize the voluntary California Green Builder program as a way to meet the city’s “Clean and Green” requirements, the California Building Industry Association announced today. The Riverside City Council enacted an ordinance officially recognizing the program. The vote was unanimous. Riverside joins a number of other communities, including Palm Springs, Palm Desert and Cathedral City, that have recognized the California Green Builder program as a preferred green homebuilding alternative. In addition, the Imperial Irrigation District provides incentives to builders who utilize the program in its service territory in the Imperial and Coachella valleys."

NAHB - "'Father Of Suburbia"' William J. Levitt Name To National Housing Hall Of Fame" (6-13-07)

"In recognition of his outstanding lifetime achievements in the housing industry, William J. Levitt, a real-estate developer widely credited as the father of modern American suburbia, was inducted into the National Housing Hall of Fame on June 9, 2007. 'The National Housing Hall of Fame recognizes individuals whose spirit, ingenuity and determination have changed the face of housing history for the better. Except for the man who invented nails, no one man has had a greater effect on home building in America than William J. Levitt,' said Brian Catalde, a Southern California home builder and president of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB)."


NAHB - "Citing Regulatory Overreach, NAHB Files Clean Water Act Lawsuit" (6-13-07)

"The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over the latest iteration of the agency’s Nationwide Permit (NWP) program. With the new rules, the Corps has overstepped its authority to regulate development under the Clean Water Act, said NAHB. With Nationwide Permit 46, issued as part of the newest version of the program, the Corps has extended its reach into upland ditches. 'Now, they’ve gone way too far,' said NAHB President Brian Catalde, a home builder from El Segundo, Calif."

NAR - "Commercial Real Estate Sound With Record Investment" (6-13-07)

"Investment in commercial real estate remains at record levels with sound fundamentals in most sectors, according to the latest COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE OUTLOOK of the National Association of Realtors®. Lawrence Yun, NAR senior economist, said there are variations across the commercial sectors. 'The overall office market has been booming, the industrial sector is holding its own, retail is a bit sluggish while apartments are strong with some condo conversions reverting to rental,' he said. 'We expect fundamentals to remain basically sound for the commercial sectors.'"

MBA - "Mortgage Applications Increase in Latest MBA Survey" (6-13-07)

"The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) today released its Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending 6/8/2007. The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, was 666.5, an increase of 6.6 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from 625.3 one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index increased 17.4 percent compared with the previous week and was up 16.1 percent compared with the same week one year earlier. The Refinance Index increased 5.6 percent to 1854.8 from 1757.1 the previous week and the seasonally adjusted Purchase Index increased 7.2 percent to 464.7 from 433.6 one week earlier. The seasonally adjusted Conventional Index increased 6.4 percent to 979.1 from 920.6 the previous week, and the seasonally adjusted Government Index increased 9.3 percent to 145.2 from 132.8 the previous week."

MBA - "Q1 2007 Commercial/Multifamily Mortgage Debt Outstanding Exeeds $3 Trillion" (6-13-07)

"The level of commercial/multifamily mortgage debt outstanding grew by 2.5 percent in the first quarter, exceeding $3 trillion for the first time, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) analysis of the Federal Reserve Board Flow of Funds data. The $3.001 trillion in commercial/multifamily mortgage debt outstanding recorded by the Federal Reserve was an increase of $72.4 billion from the fourth quarter 2006. Multifamily mortgage debt outstanding grew to $741 billion an increase of $11.8 billion or 1.6 percent from the second quarter."

Bloomberg - "Subprime Crash Squeezes Out First-Time Home Buyers" (6-13-07)

"Josh Tullis, who in his eight years as a senior loan officer rarely felt compelled to reject a first-time home buyer's mortgage application, is sending people away empty- handed in 2007. Tullis's latest clients are a married couple that banks ought to love. Between them they make $70,000 a year and they've been renting the same apartment for three years with zero late payments, he said."

The Press Enterprise - "Foreclosure rate spikes in region" (5-13-07)

"With the cooling of the housing market compounded by a spike in mortgage failures, foreclosure activity is skyrocketing in California, according to a report released Tuesday. The state had the third highest foreclosure rate in the nation in May, the report found."

Bloomberg - "Regulators Kept Quiet as Subprime Lenders `Targeted' Minorities" (6-13-07)

"The U.S. agencies that supervise more than 8,000 banks haven't censured any of them for violating fair-lending laws, three years after Federal Reserve researchers began assembling data showing blacks and Hispanics are more likely than whites to be saddled with high-priced home loans. Minorities stand to be hardest hit by rising delinquencies and foreclosures in subprime loans. While Census Bureau data show that homeownership rates rose to records among blacks in 2004 and among Hispanics in 2005, they still trail whites by 25 percentage points, and the gap may widen in the current bust."

CNN - "Old realtors vs. young Web threat" (6-13-07)

"If there's a lesson to be learned from the Internet, it's that old business s can't rely on past results - just ask your neighborhood travel agent. Like stock brokerages, travel agencies have watched their customers migrate to do-it-yourself sites like Orbitz and eTrade because of easy service and low charges. But what about real estate? Agents collect sizeable commissions for what looks like little effort. And now, for-sale-by-owner Web sites promise to eliminate the middleman and put more money in your pocket. So are realtors worried they're going to be replaced by masses of home sellers infected with the D.I.Y. spirit?"

The Arizona Republic - "Valley realty bloggers generate strong opinions - but beware" (6-13-07)

"Debi Averett has a master's degree in botany and can tell you everything you want to know about the mint plant, her specialty area of study. But what really gets her charged is a good argument about the Valley's housing market. Averett, a Gilbert mother of five, runs a blog called HousingDoom .com. She is one of the growing number of people locally and nationally sounding off about housing in online journals, where the conversation ranges from calm and reasoned to and intolerant. One blogger, for instance, goes so far as to root for a housing collapse."

NorthJersey.com - "Lowering broker's fees can pay off" (6-13-07)

"Hogans' confusion is common. A national survey released Monday shows that public misunderstanding abounds concerning just how the real estate industry works. Few of the 2,000 respondents knew that they can negotiate an agent's commission, or how to determine whom a broker represents -- the seller, buyer or, in many cases, both."

The Union-Tribune - "Housing slump into '08 likely, study finds" (6-13-07)

"The implosion of the subprime mortgage market is likely to prolong the national housing slump, Harvard University researchers said yesterday in their annual report on the state of the nation's housing. 'At a minimum it will slow any recovery,' said Nicolas P. Retsinas, director of Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies, which issued the report. 'Add to that the overbuilding and the inventory correction and you can see why it appears, particularly for the new-home market, that this slump will last well into 2008.'"

Reuters - "Lehman sees housing downturn ing" (6-13-07)

"The U.S. housing market downturn could for years but probably does not pose a major risk to the overall economy, Lehman Brothers' chief global fixed-income strategist said on Monday. 'The subprime saga will not be sufficient to derail the U.S. and world economy,' Lehman's Jack Malvey said at the Reuters Investment Summit in New York."

CNN - "Foreclosures jump 90% over last year" (6-13-07)

"Home foreclosures in May jumped 90 percent from a year earlier, reflecting a poor spring housing market and foreshadowing even higher levels later in 2007, real estate data firm RealtyTrac said Tuesday. The May foreclosures - a sum of default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions - totaled 176,137, up 19 percent from April, the firm said in its May 2007 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report. After a barely perceptible dip in April, foreclosure activity roared back with a vengeance in May,' James Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac, said in a statement."

Orange County Register - "California ranks third in foreclosure filing" (6-13-07)

"Foreclosure filings jumped in May as the national housing slump rolled on. RealtyTrac of Irvine said Tuesday that 176,137 foreclosures were filed nationwide, a figure that includes default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions. The number is up 19 percent from April and nearly 90 percent from May 2006. In California, one in every 308 households filed a foreclosure, making the state's foreclosure rate the nation's third-highest, up a notch from April. The national average is one foreclosure for every 656 households."

Orange County Register - "Readers say inventory best signal" (6-13-07)

"Perhaps the O.C. home market is near a bottom. Or maybe, a real estate turnabout is still months or years away. Either way, we asked visitors to the Lansner on Real Estate online blog what key housing statistic would be the first economic signal to say that the market is about to turnaround."

Orange County Register - "Values of nine homes go three ways" (6-13-07)

"A survey of nine homes across Orange County showed that values went down for four, went up for two and stayed the same for three."

Los Angeles Times - "We Stand Corrected: You Can Buy a House in Santa Monica For Under $1 Million" (6-13-07)

"When we are wrong, we admit it, and we were wrong when we said you can only get a master bedroom suite for under $1 million in Santa Monica. Proof of the error of our ways: Westside Bubble found THREE listings in Santa Monica for under $1 million"

Los Angeles Times - "Homebuilder CEOs Dodge CNBC; 'I've Never in My Life Seen So Many Freaked Out CEOs'" (6-13-07)

"A funny thing happened to CNBC real estate reporter Diana Olick yesterday at a Wall Street conference full of homebuilding CEOs: the executives ran away from her like frightened children. 'I've never in my life seen so many freaked out CEOs,' Olick wrote on her real estate blog. 'I say this only because not nine months ago I attended a similar UBS conference, where the homebuilder CEOs and their CFOs and their PR reps and their baggage handlers and their mother-in-laws were all fighting with each other to jump in front of our cameras to talk about the recovery shining brightly ahead in the housing market.'"

Real Estate Journal - "Home Prices to Drop Further, But Recovery May Be Ahead" (6-13-07)

"It's still too early to tell exactly when this housing slump is going to end, with house prices just beginning to soften, mortgages at risk of defaulting beginning to hit reset dates and lending standards that are starting to tighten, according to researchers at the Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. One thing's for sure: Before the sun shines again on the housing industry, a good amount of excess inventory will have to be sold, according to the center's 'State of the Nation's Housing' report, released Monday. Employment growth will play a role as well in the recovery, as will interest rates, the report said."

Los Angeles Times - "Seller Discovers There's Work Required to Stage Her Home" (6-13-07)

"I've always been fascinated with 'staging,' the art of depersonalizing, decluttering and "merchandising" a home for sale.bStaging a home can boost its price by about 7% and make it sell up to 50% faster than the market average, according to data from Stagedhomes.com, a site for accredited staging professionals."