We’ve been slowly turning a corner in housing for a while, and recent plunges in prices in the Atlanta area are almost certain to help clear some of the excess inventory. Most of the time when I write about housing,…
Tag: Home Prices
Newly released 2006 notes show how badly Greenspan, Bernanke, and the Fed missed the housing bubble
I think that Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve generally have done a pretty good job managing the fallout from the financial crisis in 2008. But — despite ample warnings from credible analysts for a period of years — Greenspan…
NPR on the growing trend of principal reduction for underwater mortgages
Why are Atlanta home prices falling so fast?
There are obviously lots of potential answers for the question in my title. But since posting earlier today about the extreme declines for Atlanta home prices in September and October according to the S&P/Case-Shiller Indices, I’ve been looking at a…
Case-Shiller: Oct. home price declines “broad-based”; Atlanta leads the decline
The title of today’s S&P/Case-Shiller press release pretty much says it all: The Fourth Quarter Starts with Broad-based Declines in Home Prices Case-Shiller looks at repeat sales of homes. It’s one of the most widely respected home price indices, but…
National Association of Realtors revises 2007 to 2010 home sales downward by 14.3%
There’s likely going to be a lot of puffed up anger and indignation about today’s dramatic downward revision of existing home sales by the National Association of Realtors. (“Rebenchmarking” is the term being used by the NAR.) But those of…
60 Minutes: Cleveland using widespread demolition to tackle abandoned houses
Cleveland hasn’t fared nearly as badly as some other metro areas in the housing bust, but the city limits have been losing population — over 500,000 people — over the last 60 years. And that’s obviously a key reason why…
Where is the Savannah housing market headed in 2012?
In my City Talk column today, I talk about the direction that the Savannah area housing market is headed: What we can expect from the local housing market in 2012. I’m not going to rehash all my predictions and all…
Obama administration’s Housing Scorecard spotlights Atlanta
The Obama administration’s Housing Scorecard for November spotlights Atlanta, which recently saw the worst ever monthly price decline in the history of the S&P/Case-Shiller indices. The scorecard includes a number of graphics showing the Atlanta metro area’s relative weakness, like…
No surprise in CoreLogic index of home values
CoreLogic is the second-most watched home price index after S&P/Case-Shiller. The October data is a composite of August, September, and October. The data is not seasonally adjusted, so the size of the decline is not as worrisome as a similar…
SMN morning reading: column on housing; alleged campaign improprieties in mayor race
A couple of things I wanted to point out in today’s Savannah Morning News. Of first note, Charlie Harper — columnist, businessman, and editor of the right-leaning political blog Peach Pundit (a site I check almost daily) — has a…
So what lies ahead for the Georgia economy?
As Georgia legislators prepare for the 2012 session, let’s hope they ignore distractions like the proposed bills that would place a heavier burden on the state’s laid-off workers. Lawmakers should be spending their time looking at ways to improve the…
Case Shiller shows home prices down in September; Atlanta has nation’s worst decline
There are lots of ways of looking at today’s release of the S&P/Case Shiller Home Price Indices for September. The index actually uses three months of data — July, August, and September, in this case — and is released both…
In some cities, home prices and rents are coming back into sync, according to the WSJ
When I moved to Savannah in 1995, I paid $625/month in rent for a large parlor level apartment on East Gwinnett Street just off the park. It was a newly rehabbed space, and there were plenty of much cheaper places…