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Many brokers thrived last year amid record home sales, but this year the industry has taken a turn for the worse. TAMPA — The sneeze came first: Home sales in the Tampa Bay area dropped by a third from last year’s peak. For symptoms of the developing head cold, plunge into the exhibition hall at the Tampa Convention Center, where the Florida Association of Mortgage Brokers is holding its annual trade show. Puffed up to handle record-breaking home sales of last year, which poured money into savvy brokers’ pockets, the residential lending industry and affiliated businesses are mostly deflating this...

With new home slaes down 10.5 percent in February, and with home prices declining for the fourth month in a row, it's high time for a sober look at the consequences of a major housing correction. The Federal Reserve, Wall Street economists, and other observers of the U.S. economy are closely watching the housing market because it has been a key driver of economic growth over the past several years. Roughly a quarter of the jobs created since the 2001 recession have been in construction, real estate, and mortgage finance. Even more important, consumers have withdrawn $2.5 trillion in equity...

We are living through the biggest financial bubble in history. According to estimates by The Economist, the total value of residential property in developed economies rose by more than $30 trillion over the past five years. Not only does this dwarf any previous house-price boom, it is larger than the global stock market bubble in the late 1990s or that of the late 1920s.San Diego County resale house prices fell in December by the largest monthly amount in 18 years. The median resale price for existing single-family homes dropped $15,000 from November to December to stand at $550,000, the largest...

The run-up in home prices in many markets around the country makes it a matter of when and where, not if, the housing bubble bursts. Consider this comment from economist Joel Naroff after new-home sales hit yet another record high in June, "Welcome to our worst nightmare. It is the housing market." In that vein, we cannot ignore the potential for a housing bust any longer. Like procrastinators living in a hurricane-prone area that eventually scramble to stock up on supplies as a storm nears, it is time to look at some strategies homeowners and home buyers can adopt to...

In case you have been living in a cave, the business news talking heads have been prognosticating a burt to the housing bubble. Set aside your opinions for a moment and lets work a thought exercise. So, lets assume that there is a housing bubble and that it is going to burts. 1) What would be the key pre-indicators that would signal a price downturn. 2) How could a person capitalize on the price bust during the start of the fall? 3) What can be done with other less liquid assets to protect them from any such burts? Would you...

NEW YORK, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Sky-high prices are not preventing cash-strapped consumers from getting the house of their dreams now that lenders are letting them drag out the term of their mortgages to 40 years. By moving from a fixed-rate 30-year to a 40-year loan, borrowers can stretch out loan payments and qualify for larger mortgages with lower payments. While that seems to be good news for consumers, financial experts say the benefits are far outweighed by higher interest rates, 10 years of extra mortgage payments and a reduction in home equity. "This (40-year) loan product screams of a...

Rising rates yet to pierce mortgages Rising interest rates are supposed to be an economic sedative, but the hyperactive real estate market has retained its vigor even as the prime lending rate has climbed to a nearly four-year high. One of the biggest reasons for real estate's unusual behavior is that home mortgages are less expensive than they were 14 months ago when the Federal Reserve Board began to push up the short-term cost to borrow money. That inflation-fighting effort has raised the prime rate from 4 percent in June 2004 to 6.5 percent now, making it more costly to...

Even before the Federal Reserve announced its tenth recent increase in interest rates Tuesday, key financial players already knew that the housing bust had arrived.   Home prices continue to rise, and new building is frenetic - but that's typical of the last gasps of a bubble. At the same time, those on the inside at major home-building companies are selling shares of their companies' stock - and at a brisk pace. Do they sense that the housing bubble is about to burst?   We think they know better than most.   For the first half of this year, executives...

This is the way the bubble ends: not with a pop, but with a hiss. Housing prices move much more slowly than stock prices. There are no Black Mondays, when prices fall 23 percent in a day. In fact, prices often keep rising for a while even after a housing boom goes bust. So the news that the U.S. housing bubble is over won't come in the form of plunging prices; it will come in the form of falling sales and rising inventory, as sellers try to get prices that buyers are no longer willing to pay. And the process...

This is the way the bubble ends: not with a pop, but with a hiss. Housing prices move much more slowly than stock prices. There are no Black Mondays, when prices fall 23 percent in a day. In fact, prices often keep rising for a while even after a housing boom goes bust. So the news that the U.S. housing bubble is over won't come in the form of plunging prices; it will come in the form of falling sales and rising inventory, as sellers try to get prices that buyers are no longer willing to pay. And the process...

At Arm's Length: 07.28.05 Nine Signs of a Bubble No doubt, you have heard about all you want to hear about housing bubbles. All the major media concerns have alerted folks to the unreasonable costs for homes but have failed to offer any real reason why this is a problem. But alas, their job is to sensationalize and what better sensation exists than the pursuit of news where there may not be any. But on the other hand, perhaps there is something in the telltale signs listed below that would give even the risk-prone investor some pause to reconsider. No...