Yahoo - "Nation Doomed To 2 Million Foreclosures" (6-12-07)

"A second study forecasting millions of foreclosures sweeping the nation in the next few years, says it won't matter what the Feds do to fix the problem. 'Foreclosures Will Affect 2 Million Homeowners,' by upstart housing market researcher HomePredictor.com says subprime mortgages are the culprit."

Bloomberg - "REITs Fall After Stifel Downgrades On Rate Concern" (6-12-07)

"Shares of some real estate investment trusts declined after Stifel Nicolaus & Co. analysts downgraded the companies to 'hold' from 'buy' on concern over rising interest rates. 'Recent interest rate increases may stick or tighten further,' hurting property values and capitalization rates, or the profit margin on the first year of a real estate investment, analysts including David Fick wrote in a note to investors. Fick also cut his rating on the REIT sector to 'negative bias.'"

MSN - "Who's most at risk for foreclosure?" (6-12-07)

"You have a 1-in-3 chance of losing your house to foreclosure if you got an adjustable-rate mortgage, or ARM, in 2004 through 2006 that had an initial teaser rate of less than 4%. If you got a subprime ARM in that period, you started out with a higher rate, and that puts you at less risk. You have a 1-in-8 chance of losing your home."

Brandenton Herald - "Economists foresee housing slump enduring past 2007's end" (6-12-07)

"Economists are giving up on the idea that the U.S. housing slump will be quick and relatively painless. Instead, more are concluding, the downturn that began nearly two years ago will last at least through the end of 2007, remaining a major drag on the U.S. economy. The culprits: a glut of homes for sale and growing caution among lenders who now regret being so free with their mortgages during the boom."

Yahoo - "Wannabe Buyers Welcome Housing Slump" (6-12-07)

"Kurt Montufar isn't stressing over the housing slump. He's actually hoping things get worse. Like many wannabe homebuyers who were priced out of the market during the last boom, Montufar spends time these days scanning real estate ads and news reports to determine if it's time to take the plunge and buy. Foreclosures rising? Great. Cash-strapped sellers pressured into lowering prices because they can't find buyers? Even better."

Market Watch - "'Pop!' Bubbles are great for America!" (6-12-07)

"Yes, that's the message of Dan Gross' new book, 'Pop! Why Bubbles are Great for the Economy.' Bubbles are miracle workers. So let 'em pop, Pop, POP! Gross is in love with what happens after a bubble pops, an idea first heard in uber-economist Joseph Schumpeter's 1942 law of 'creative destruction.' Destruction is a small price to pay: Business failures, bankruptcies, lost jobs, recessions are all part of natural law eliminating the dead wood from a prior bubble, clearing the way for a new round of creative innovations, prosperity and another roaring bull. So don't get all teary-eyed and maudlin. Suck-it-up, folks. 'Pops' are like Irish wakes, lotsa drinking, laughing, singing 'Auld Lang Syne,' having a good time saying goodbye to a bubble. Well, at least for Wall Street."

Market Watch - "The impossible dream" (6-12-07)

"Let me see if I have this right: Investors want the economy to be strong enough to generate decent profits growth, yet weak enough to give the Federal Reserve a reason to reduce interest rates. Talk about dreaming the impossible dream! When the economy nearly ground to halt in the first three months of this year, investors didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. They were happy in one sense because they figured for sure that this weakness would lead to an early cut in interest rates by the Fed. On the other hand, they also were concerned about what this lack of growth would do to corporate profits."

San Francisco Chronicle - "WOULD-BE HOME BUYERS HESITATE" (6-12-07)

"The Bay Area real estate market has become a giant game of chicken. Just 18 months ago, buyers swarmed open houses waving piles of cash. Now they are staying away in droves, waiting for prices to fall. 'Buyers don't want to buy until we're at the bottom of the market,' said Dean Wehrle, vice president for Northern California of the Sullivan Group Real Estate Advisors, which does consulting for new-home builders, developers and lenders. 'It's the converse of 2003, '04 and '05, when people would jump in the market because of the frenzy, thinking that they had to get in now because appreciation would go on forever in the double digits.'"

The Christian Science Monitor - "The cost of borrowing inching up" (6-12-07)

"Want to borrow money in New Zealand? The interest rate is more than half a percentage point higher than in January. Europeans are facing similar bank-account-sapping news. And in the US, a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage now costs at least a third of a percentage point more than in January. It's all part of a major shift taking place in the global economy: Borrowing is becoming more expensive. In Europe and other foreign industrialized countries, central banks are raising rates to try to keep inflation down as their economies become more robust. This may limit their economic growth later this year or next year."

thisismoney.co.uk - "ABN fears world housing crash" (6-12-07)

"Soaring borrowing costs could spark a housing slump on a 'global scale', investment bank ABN Amro has warned. Families have taken on 'unsustainably large' mortgages, leaving them vulnerable to the sharp increases in bond yields and official interest rates seen in recent weeks, wrote economist Dominic White."

Orange County Register - "O.C. homesellers firm on asking prices so far in '07" (6-12-07)

"The Housing Tracker Web site offers another view of the O.C. housing market: It tracks median asking prices – what sellers want. It also splits the market into three parts (median, what the 50th percentile wants; what I'll call a 'lower median,' or what the 25th percentile's asking for; and an "upper median," what the 75th percentile is asking)"

Los Angeles Times - "Housing affordability is likely to remain elusive, study finds" (6-12-07)

"Homeownership will remain out of reach for millions of Americans, despite slumping house prices, unless the wages of low-income people grow faster, a study released Monday said. A record 37.3 million U.S. households, or 1 in 3, were paying a "moderate cost burden" of 30% of their income toward housing in 2005, according to the State of the Nation's Housing 2007. The study said the number of households with that cost burden had risen roughly 20% since 2001, when interest rate cuts helped spark a price boom."

Los Angeles Times - "A Short Sale in Manhattan Beach: Too Much Leverage, Too Long on the Market" (6-12-07)

"The eagle-eyed Manhattan Beach Confidential has spotted something rare down there: a short sale. This is not your garden-variety "Prices-are-falling-and-I-financed 100%" short sale (otherwise known as the 'Sacramento Slipper'). It appears the owner here borrowed against the home at the peak and ran into trouble selling in a softening market."

Real Estate Journal - "Sizing Up the Competition: Will Home Sell at Its Asking Price?" (6-12-07)

"Friends have asked me if I considered skipping using a local real-estate agent and selling my Seattle home on my own or marketing my house through locally based companies Redfin.com, an online real-estate brokerage, or Zillow.com instead of going through the local Multiple Listings Service. If I had sold a home before or had a better financial cushion to tide me over should my efforts fail, I might have entertained trying a for-sale-by-owner (FSBO) transaction or some other form of sale. I personally know investors who successfully sell on their own."