Posted on 03/01/2012 6:40:40 PM PST by Nachum
The latest quarterly report out of CoreLogic is as usual full of curious insights about the state of US housing. Key among them is the finding that "negative equity and near-negative equity mortgages accounted for 27.8 percent of all residential properties with a mortgage nationwide in the fourth quarter, up from 27.1 in the previous quarter. Nationally, the total mortgage debt outstanding on properties in negative equity increased from $2.7 trillion in the third quarter to $2.8 trillion in the fourth quarter." In other words, courtesy of no Mark To Market, there is at least $2.8 trillion in debt held by investors (read banks and GSEs) that is marked at par and should be impaired. And one wonders why Fannie lost $16.9 billion in 2011 (up from $14.0 billion in 2010), and needed another taxpayer injection of $4.6 billion in Q4: it is so banks can pretend reality exists, and in the process avoid evicting tenants who live in these underwater homes, and who can pretend they don't have to pay their bills, but can spend money on iGadgets instead. Yet the scariest data point is that if one is currently in Nevada and looks at three houses right this second, two of them are underwater, or said otherwise, have negative or near-negative equity.
(Excerpt) Read more at zerohedge.com ...
yikes!
The list, Ping
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“Yikes”? This news is like five years old, isn’t it?
Um, that is to say, I’m shocked (shocked!) that mortgages are underwater!
Harry Reid’s home.
Oh well - pay your taxes. Your government is broke. :)
Better news than expected, markets will start another leg up for sure.
.aaand they voted dingy horse thief Harry in.
Too bad it isnt 99%...any state who allows Reid to be fraudulantly reelected...hard to feel sorry for them.
Fighting fraud on both the state and federal level is no easy task in a 2 party system where Democrats are entrenched in positions of power. Name me even one state that is doing a good job at fighting back against the corrupted election process. I can't think of any. Most states do not even require any form of identification to vote.
Wow.
I live in Reno, my first house is not under-water, and my new house that I got by a collective of the greatest concentration of luck and perserverance but also being in the right place at the right time, I can sell for double what I what I paid easily within one weeks time.
That would put you in the evil 33%. That will be the next class warfare group to hate.
I know this, because after bidding closed before I spent a cent restoring it, people were trying to buy it for double what I paid for it. Now it is restored well beyond its original glory. My purchase price was not insignificant, either....the bank F’d up this sale like you wouldn’t believe.
Here is an example of the Reno market. I bought a house in Jan. 2002 for $226k. At the peak I could have probably gotten $410k. I sold in the spring of 2008 for $320k. Today on zillow it is worth $160k.
Take Zillow with a grain of salt. The reason I got the house for the price I did was because the bank used the Zillow price. My house was only opened for bidding on thanksgiving day 2010. Bidding closed by the bank on Monday. Tuesday, there were cash offers over 500 kilobucks, but the bank already closed the bidding process. Since then, a lot of work has gone into that house, including a complete rebuild of the pool, it also has one of the original historic bars from the Mapes casino. I knew it was coming into foreclosure, and waited patiently for 6 months for it to come on the market. I was fortunate that it did right during that week. I can sell it in one week easy, but it will have to be pried from my cold dead fingers. My other house took a hit from it’s high value, but it is 2 acres of horse property with well maintained horse barns, rare property so close to town, so it is still slightly up.
You are right about Zillow being taken with a grain of salt, but they usually aren’t a $160k off. Another sign of trouble in my old neighborhood (over in Sparks) is the elementary school. It used to be a three track year round school, is now a one track school.
When the two thirds are foreclosed on and sold, saturating the market, the other third will be underwater as well.
The bubble ain’t popped yet.
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