Let us bring our attention to the Westside of Los Angeles.  Today we salute Palms, Santa Monica, and Culver City with our Real City of Genius Award:

Source:  Wikipedia

Even within this niche area, there is a wide variance of properties.  The halo effect permeates to other cities from the big movers.  Maybe breathing in the Beverly Hills air gets to other surrounding cities at least when it comes to valuing real estate.  These mid-tier markets within a prime area are the next, I believe, place that will face price adjustments.  Even with all evidence pointing to this with massive amounts of shadow inventory building because people can’t afford to pay their mortgage, there is still a lot of doubt as to the extent of the price correction.  There is definitely a trend of more short sales making it to market.  Everyone by now has an understanding of a short sale (the lender agrees to sell a home for less than the mortgage balance) and the impact it has on the market.  Yet short sales are now part of the SoCal real estate market especially in prime locations.

I was meeting with a colleague, good guy but definitely a perma-bull on housing so you can imagine the conversation, but he is actually looking to jump back into Westside real estate.  His impression is that since prices haven’t fallen drastically in this disastrous climate, then nothing will jolt values later on.  However, the collapse of prices at the higher end is merely in the first stages.  The process is sequential and fluid; just because it hasn’t corrected doesn’t mean it won’t.

Let us look at our first short sale example.

Short Sale #1 – Palms, Mar Vista

12844 GREENE AVE, Palms – Mar Vista, CA 90066

Listing Details

Listing price:                      $495,000

Last sold (6/1/2007):       $655,000

Current difference:        -$160,000

Beds:                                     2

Baths:                                   1

Square feet:                       972

Built:                                      1952

On market for:                  90 days

The above property is located in the Palms, Mar Vista area of Los Angeles.  A nice area and certainly a good place for a starter home for a young professional family.  But prices are very much disconnected from fundamentals.  Look at the above home.  It is listed at 972 square feet and supposedly has a sale pending.  However, we are still talking about close to $500,000 for 972 square feet.  Now this is a big discount from the $655,000 peak sales price back in 2007.  So we are definitely seeing more movement with banks being more aggressive on certain homes in terms of taking lower offers.  But again, these are typically the lower priced homes in each area.  There are many higher priced homes with missed payments that are simply sitting in the shadow inventory.

Short Sale #2 – Santa Monica

2712 6TH ST, Santa Monica, CA 90405

Listing Details

Listing price:                      $850,000

Last sold (12/6/2006):    $1,155,000

Current difference:        -$305,000

Beds:                                     3

Baths:                                   2

Square feet:                       1,064

Built:                                      1914

On market for:                  27 days

It’s easy to be a millionaire when you don’t count your liabilities.  Just because you “own” a million dollar home doesn’t make you a millionaire.  The above Santa Monica home is listed for sale at $850,000.  It is 1,064 feet with 3 bedrooms and 2 baths.  At one point, it did sell for $1,155,000 in 2006.  Can prices fall in prime locations?  Absolutely.  And to most, a $300,000 haircut in 4 years is a significant deal.  Still think the Westside is immune to the correction?

Short Sale #3– Culver City

4178 CENTER STREET, Culver City, CA 90232

Listing Details

Listing price:                      $600,000

Last sold (12/2/2005):    $850,000

Current difference:        -$250,000

Beds:                                     3

Baths:                                   2

Square feet:                       1,918

Built:                                      1950

I’ve covered Culver City many times before and the above is a typical short sale in the area.  This home was bought back in 2005, half a decade ago, for $850,000 and is now listed for sale at $600,000.  It is listed at 1,918 square feet with 3 bedrooms and 2 baths.  We still have people willing to pay at these levels but only with the right lending.  For this home, let us run the numbers assuming a 10% down payment:

Sale price:                           $600,000

Down payment:               $60,000

Mortgage PITI:                  $3,606

Is this a good deal?  At the lower end you will need a household income of $175,000 to $200,000 a year to purchase this place.  The Westside is already showing major cracks in housing values.  $100k to $300k discounts are large for most people, even those in the Westside.

On a side note, I’ve added a new forum where people can discuss the specifics of certain areas so make sure to check it out.

Today we salute the Westside of Los Angeles with our Real City of Genius Award.

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Inventory in Southern California is still growing:

Source:  MLS

Now this growth in the MLS inventory is only in the subset of properties that the public can see.  The bulk of properties are sitting hidden in bank balance sheets and are part of the shadow inventory.  I wanted to show you how big of a difference this discrepancy can become when you include these additional properties:

Source:  MLS, MBA

The above chart is looking at MLS and MBA data for the entire state.  For Southern California, the actual breakdown of distressed properties looks like this:

The above chart is probably one of the most telling in regards to where things stand today.  Over 140,000 properties in Southern California have at least a notice of default, are scheduled for auction, or are now bank owned.  The amount of these properties that show up on the MLS is sparse.  We are seeing virtually a 2 to 1 ratio here.  For every one property on the MLS we will likely find two properties being distressed.  In mid-tier areas, it is higher as we will show.

Let us run an experiment to test this out.  We’ve covered Culver City and Pasadena many times in the past so let us use those two areas here again.

MLS Pasadena

Total Listed:                        678

Short sales:                         71

Foreclosures:                     44

Total distressed:               115

Foreclosure Data Pasadena

NODs:                   225

Scheduled for Auction or Bank Owned:                 400

Total distressed:                               625

For Pasadena, for every one listed foreclosure or short sale, you can be assured that there are 5 other properties sitting in the depths of a bank balance sheet.  Keep in mind this is for a highly desirable area.  But if you look at the data closely it wouldn’t appear that way:

Let us run this data now for Culver City:

MLS Culver City

Total Listed:                        148

Short sales:                         25

Foreclosures:                     7

Total distressed:               32

Foreclosure Data Culver City

NODs:                   74

Scheduled for Auction or Bank Owned:                 98

Total distressed:                               172

Well what do you know?  It turns out that the numbers look nearly the same in Culver City.  For every one distressed property on the MLS, you have 5 others hidden in some bank balance sheet.  Now when I look at this data what I see is a façade in Southern California real estate.  Prices in these areas are still extremely high relative to household incomes.  Unless you go out there and buy with an Alt-A or option ARM (no longer available) you will have to show a decent income.  But let us dig deeper a bit.  How much are those foreclosures selling for in Culver City versus what is off the balance sheet?

This is incredibly important.  Banks are listing (what appears) the bottom barrel homes here.  The average listed foreclosure price for Culver City is $330,000.  This is interesting given the median sale price for Culver City in zip code 90230 is $605,000 and in 90232 is $775,000.  Seems like a tiny bit of a discrepancy don’t you think?

I decided to jump deep into the data for this area and pulled up 19 bank owned homes in the area.  This is where you actually see bank behavior stand out.  The “estimated value” of the 19 bank owned homes in Culver City are $443,281 and the average estimated loan balance on each place is $552,159.  These places are massively underwater yet banks seen to be cherry picking which homes they funnel out to the MLS.  So right now you see a trickle at the bottom end but make no mistake, the bigger suckers are only a few months away and are already falling massively behind on payments.  Banks are basically trying to avoid facing the music and realizing the reality that these properties are overpriced (people can’t even keep up with their payments).  Does any of this data look like a healthy market?

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Some will point to smaller countries that suffered rampant inflation after their central banks printed money but we have more in common with Japan, what was the 2^nd largest economy in the world.  In this article we will try to carefully look at research on the Japanese boom and bust and also take a look where we stand in our current financial crisis.

Source:  The Economist

The first definite comparison we can make is with the rampant rise in home values.  Japanese real estate values saw a massive ten year boom during the Heisei boom.  The chart above clearly shows the trajectory of land values.  Yet research shows that a large part of this was concentrated on a few urban cities.  In this regard, the U.S. had a much larger and more pervasive boom impacting multiple cities across the nation like Miami, Las Vegas, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix, and many other locations.  If we separate Tokyo out we see that overall Japan did have a bubble but it doesn’t seem as large or as widespread:

Source:  Debt Deflation

The above is an interesting chart because it reflects a concentrated urban bubble.  We had many suburbs popping up with home builders trying to create demand where there was nothing more than a bubble to chase.  Many of these areas including the Inland Empire in California have large homes selling for half off (or more) with very little demand chasing after the homes.  It is an interesting case study as to why values go up so quickly but miscalculations by the Federal Reserve and misguided policies led to the biggest and most widespread housing bubble here in the United States.

A 2003 paper by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) focused on the Japanese housing bubble and concluded the following:

“What should be noted regarding Japan’s experience is that the enthusiasm of market participants, together with the inconsistent projection of fundamentals, contributed to a large degree to maintaining temporarily high asset prices at that time. Such enthusiasm is often called euphoria, excessively optimistic but unfounded expectations for the long-term economic performance, lasting for several years before dissipating.”

“It was thus excessive optimism rather than consistent projection of fundamentals that mainly supported temporarily high asset prices.”

There is little to debate that what fueled housing prices in the U.S. was also ignited by euphoria for real estate that was largely disconnected from fundamentals.  Let us construct a chart similar to the above with Tokyo and Japan but in this case, we will look at the Los Angeles MSA and the 10 city composite from the Case Shiller data:

Although it would appear that Tokyo had a much quicker and faster rise in prices, an area like Los Angeles saw a very similar trend.  Yet what separates the two bubbles is that the U.S. as an entire nation also saw a massive rise in prices over a short period of time.  Looking back, we see that the peak for U.S. housing values was reached in 2006 with the Los Angeles MSA also reaching a peak in this year.  The chart above shows the clear decade long boom in housing values.  What we find over this decade period is that home values in the U.S. increased by a factor of 3 while home values in L.A. increased by a stunning factor of 4.  In other words, the U.S. housing bubble was equally as large in magnitude as that faced by Japan but much more widespread.

The BIS paper also makes the comparison that Japan faced nearly two decades of bubbles, one started in the stock market followed by the real estate bubble:

“First, at the time of the Iwato boom, when Japan’s economy entered the so-called “high economic growth period”, asset prices increased rapidly, reflecting an improvement in fundamentals due to technological innovations. The real economic growth rate exceeded 10% per annum, driven mainly by investment demand due to technological innovations that replaced the post World War II reconstruction demand. On the price front, consumer prices rose while wholesale prices remained generally stable, thus leading to the so-called “productivity difference inflation”.

“Kakuei Tanaka, who became Prime Minister in 1972, effected extremely aggressive public investment based on his belief (remodelling the Japanese archipelago) that it was necessary to resolve overpopulation and depopulation problems by constructing a nationwide shinkansen railway network, which led to an overheated economy.”

This economy is largely seen by the charts below:

We have a very similar parallel here with our NASDAQ boom of the 1990s followed by the real estate boom reflected on the previous chart looking at Case Shiller home values.  If we look at the NASDAQ, we realize that even after the recent boom in stock values prices are nowhere near their peak:

On a nominal level the NASDAQ is still off by 55 percent from the peak reached a decade ago.  Often we hear about the lost decade comparison.  In stock values, we are already there.  In terms of real estate values, we are quickly approaching that point.  So we have more similarities in our booms and busts with Japan than many would like to admit.  The 1990s saw a rise also in productivity brought on by technological innovation but this also paved the wave for an economy largely decentralized on a global level.  This hit hard in the manufacturing core of our country.  Someone made the argument to me at the height of the real estate boom that “you can’t outsource real estate” which is true but that is a double edged sword as we are seeing.  The Nikkei peaked on December 29, 1989 closing at 38,915.87.  Today it stands at 9,431, a drop of over 75 percent.  Massive bubbles can have long lasting impacts on the economy.

Missing asset bubbles and targeting inflation

Another important comparison made in the paper is that of perceived stable inflation and how central banks can miss asset bubbles while they are happening.  It is the mistaking of a bubble for real economic growth:

“Third, in the Heisei boom, asset prices increased dramatically under long-lasting economic growth and stable inflation. Okina et al (2001) define the “bubble period” as the period from 1987 to 1990, from the viewpoint of the coexistence of three factors indicative of a bubble economy, that is, a marked increase in asset prices, an expansion in monetary aggregates and credit, and an overheating economy. The phenomena particular to this period were stable CPI inflation in parallel with the expansion of asset prices and a long adjustment period after the peaking of asset prices.”

“The decline in asset prices was initially regarded as the bursting of the asset price bubble, and an amplifying factor of the business cycle. Although the importance of cyclical aspects cannot be denied, further declines in asset prices after the mid-1990s seem to reflect the downward shift in the trend growth rate beyond the boom-bust cycle of the asset price bubble.”

This is an important key point.  The Federal Reserve publicly stated that during the bubble (it wasn’t labeled as such) that inflation overall remained tame and therefore keeping interest rates low was viewed as a prudent policy.  If the economy is growing and is stable, then the central bank should keep liquidity flowing into the system to keep building up legitimate businesses.  Yet separating real growth with an asset bubble can be tricky especially when the policies taken are part of the reason for the asset inflation.  Japan viewed there measures as stable.  We did this in a similar fashion but part of it was that our metrics to measure inflation largely missed the housing bubble.  The CPI measures “owners equivalent of rent” which completely ignored the rise in home values.  This measure is the biggest in the CPI so the data was skewed.  Also, innovation in mortgage products with teaser payments altered the true monthly payment and understated it.  The government for most of this time also only focused on OFHEO (now FHFA) which only looked at home loans secured by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and ignored the vast majority of subprime Alt-A, and option ARMs that fueled the last stage of the housing bubble.  In fact, year over year changes in the inflation measure from 1980 to 2000 seemed to be as stable as they come:

During this time we saw the massive NASDAQ bubble and also, the subsequent real estate bubble.  Inflation data largely ignored most of it because the measure was flawed when it came to measuring bubbles.  Japan had similar problems and taking policy decisions on this data has given their economy two lost decades and their economy is still suffering.  Then why follow that same path?

Japan gives us a working sample as to what can happen with asset deflation, a stock bubble popping, allowing banks to remain propped up by government funding, and massive government spending:

*Japan asset, stock and CPI measures

Some seem to think that Japan just sat back and did nothing during this time.  There is nothing further from the truth.  Japan was the first major economy to go down the path of quantitative easing.  Japan also injected enormous amounts of money into their economy to stimulate growth.  Yet the above chart is rather clear in the outcome.  Some point to unemployment in Japan remaining low.  This is more a sleight of hand with economic data.  Although the official rate is low, nearly 1 out of 3 Japanese workers are considered part-time employed.  That is, no security of long-term employment.  We have seen a massive rise in the number of Americans that now work in a part-time fashion.  No benefits, lower wages, and job security that is no longer an option in the longer term.  It is easy to see why asset prices in Japan have remained depressed for so long.  Prices in the U.S. are showing no sign of inflationary pressures because there is little mechanism to force wages up with such a giant over supply of labor in the market.  This is possibly one of the major points missed by those who predict inflation or hyper-inflation in the future.  Central banks can print but they can’t force wages up especially in a global market where cheap wages are the status quo.  To the contrary, banks are following the zombie like behavior of Japan banks by hoarding funds:

Now that we’ve had three full years after the bubble popped, we can see what banks have done to “fix” the problem:

-Hoard money to fix balance sheet imbalances

-Suspend mark to market (Japan banks zombie like tool of preference)

-Ignore major commercial real estate problems

-Drag out the real estate problems (we have done the same with banks delaying the foreclosure process, stopped lending their own capital in place of government loans, and banks have turned inward with government bailout funds).

The above chart shows that banks are still sitting on an enormous amount of excess reserves.  Now that due diligence is back (to a certain degree) who are banks going to lend to?  4 out of 10 workers in the U.S. are employed by the low paying service sector.  Close to 15 million are officially unemployed and unless we go back to the easy lending mortgage days, they won’t be getting any bank money soon.  We have another 9 million workers that are employed part-time for economic reasons (similar to the large employment base of Japan).  You think this group is going to get a loan for a home anytime soon?  Banks have turned their profits inward while the real economy is largely in stagnation.  Yet if Japan is any indicator, these profits will start to go down:

While it is easy to make money right now since a large part of the competition has failed while a select few have been given government backing and funding, as time goes on this profitability goes away.  And the real economy in Japan has languished all this time.  The BIS paper in 2003 gives a wonderful synopsis of what led to the Japanese boom and bust economy:

“The intensified bullish expectations were certainly grounded in several interconnected factors. The factors below are often pointed out as being behind the emergence and expansion of the bubble:

• aggressive behaviour of financial institutions

• progress of financial deregulation

• inadequate risk management on the part of financial institutions

• introduction of the Capital Accord

• protracted monetary easing

• taxation and regulations biased towards accelerating the rise in land prices

• overconfidence and euphoria

• overconcentration of economic functions in Tokyo, and Tokyo becoming an international financial centre

Focusing on monetary factors, it is important to note the widespread market expectations that the then low interest rates would continue for an extended period, in spite of clear signs of economic expansion. The movement of implied forward rates from 1987 to 1989 (Figure 5) shows that the yield curve flattened while the official discount rate was maintained at a low level.”

You might as well put this label on the U.S.  Aggressive behavior of financial institutions?  Doesn’t get more aggressive than giving a loan to someone with no job and no income.  Progress of financial deregulation?  What about repealing Glass-Steagall in 1999, protection we had put in place back from the Great Depression.  Inadequate risk management?  We need only look at AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and many others.  Protracted monetary easing?  Does a zero percent interest rate and buying up of mortgage backed securities count?  Taxation and regulations biased toward rising prices?  How about giving new home buyers a tax credit when they were going to buy anyway?  Over confidence and euphoria?  Just go to YouTube and watch some of the real estate commercials from the peak days of the housing bubble.

We have a lot that is similar to Japan and their boom and bust economy.  If their path is any indication of our own, we have a long road ahead and getting home prices back up is probably going to be the least of our concerns.

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HUD is seeking public comments for the next 30 days on the below:

Source:  HUD

Now some of you might be thinking why we are asking these basic questions three years deep into the housing implosion.  The first question focuses on the credit score of borrowers.  Can you believe that a 580 credit score will enter you into the “flagship” 3.5 percent down payment FHA insured loan program?  No wonder why defaults are off the charts.  No bank in their right mind would lend their own money so banks are basically using the government as their lender and sucker of last resort to continue to make these financially troubling loans.  The second point relates to seller concessions.  Yes, this stuff is still going on.  Serious reform apparently doesn’t involve basic common sense.  Finally, the third point focuses on tighter underwriting.  If we are asking these questions today from an agency that now insures approximately 4 out of every 10 loans we have some major issues coming down the pipeline.

Bank of America released their second quarter earnings report and you can see how poorly FHA insured loans are doing:

BofA saw a jump from $7.5 billion in Q2 of 2009 to $22.5 billion in their 30+ day late delinquent FHA loans.  This is nearly a 200 percent increase in one year.  Now how is this happening?  Well refer to the questions that are being asked from the agency overseeing FHA.  Did we not learn that a low down payment is a recipe for disaster?  It is also the case that a low down payment inflates housing values because it takes away the focus from actually saving money and going into massive debt instead.  What if you had to save 10 percent as a minimum to buy a home?  Think people would be willing to walk away from a property so quickly?  Plus, having a down payment creates a buffer.  I seem to be one of the few that think a good sized down payment is necessary in protecting us from future asset bubbles.  As you can see from the BofA chart above, the FHA is now in a big mess and this came about with income verified and documented underwriting.  But if you don’t correct the bigger issues, then what use is it?

The government will not voluntarily tighten standards on mortgages because the only lender right now is the government.  And even with these ridiculously low down payment programs, the demand for housing is waning because the economy is in a major funk.  A house can cost $100,000 but without a job, it might as well cost $1 million.

Deed-in -ieu of foreclosure

Banks are catching on that people are willing to stay rent free in homes for 12 to 24 months in some cases.  At first, this might have made sense with a handful of borrowers but the flood is now growing.  Banks realize that losing 12 to 24 months of mortgage payments might not be a good idea.  So some are now going after the deed-in-lieu (DIL) of foreclosure option.  Why would they do this?

I think there are a few reasons for the DIL of foreclosure option now being explored more carefully by banks.  For some areas, banks may realize that spring and summer (clock is ticking) may be the prime time to put some properties back on the market.  After all, we don’t know where interest rates will be next year and it already seems that the government is going to have to tighten lending standards more given massive defaults.  So banks would rather get a property back, ignore going after the borrower, and simply get the home back ASAP so they can put it back on the market while the government mortgage liquor is still flowing.  We don’t have clear data on this but I will venture that banks are only going the DIL of foreclosure path on select properties in more targeted markets.  How many DIL of foreclosures did banks pursue in Detroit?

Some are arguing that this has more to do with HAFA:

“(WaPo) To qualify for a HAFA short sale or deed-in-lieu, the mortgage must be for a borrower’s principal residence; the loan balance may not be more than $729,750; the borrower must have incurred some hardship such as a medical emergency or a drastic reduction in income; the loan must have closed before Jan. 1, 2009, and first-mortgage payments (including property taxes, insurance and mandatory homeowners or condo fees) must be more than 31 percent of current gross household income.

For a deed-in-lieu arrangement, borrowers must also be able to deliver clear and marketable title to the home, free and clear of all liens or encumbrances and leave the home in “broom clean” condition. Homeowners are given a minimum of 30 days to vacate the home from the date the short-sale agreement expires or the date of the deed-in-lieu agreement.”

I’m not sure I agree with this assessment.  I think the bigger motivating factor is the amount of money being lost by strategic defaulters and the prospect of taking a property back and selling it in the current market while government cheese is still flowing out of politicians’ pockets like mozzarella.  Next year it might be a very different picture.

Neglect and pay a fine

Another issue that might light a fire under banks to move shadow inventory is fines for neglected properties.  L.A. launched an effort to fine banks that don’t maintain foreclosed properties.  The biggest landlord today is the banking system with the entire shadow inventory out in the market:

“(LA Times) A dilapidated South Los Angeles home with tall weeds, a fallen fence, broken windows and graffiti was chosen to serve as the backdrop for a news conference Saturday as city officials announced the launch of new efforts to clean up foreclosed properties.

The beige stucco bungalow on West 77th Street is a neighborhood eyesore, playing host to drunken transients and stray animals and reeking of urine and feces, neighbors said.

“A lot of vacant homes have become a nuisance in the neighborhood because of the foreclosure crisis,” said Betty Steele, one of several community activists who canvassed the 77th Street neighborhood encouraging residents to report problem properties via the city’s 311 hotline. “And the banks should be held accountable for cleaning them up.”

As local governments hurt for money while the Federal government is off bailing out Wall Street, cities are going to try to get their funds from somewhere.  We are starting to see some of this trickle out into the market.  While all this is happening, a large number of Americans now have little faith in Social Security:

Source:  USA Today, Gallup

60 percent of non-retired adults believe Social Security won’t be able to pay them a benefit when they retire.  Ultimately people get that the party has ended and major changes need to be done.  But the choices we have aren’t pretty and very few politicians have the backbone to make the changes happen especially in an election year.  So what will happen?  We’ll have more public comment on things that should have already taken place (the public is very clear on the bailouts by the way) and more bread and circus for everyone.

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We’ve enjoyed a one year respite in the housing crash.  Yet housing in many parts of the country is overpriced relative to local area incomes.  I want to examine 10 charts that give substantive evidence that we are merely in the eye of the housing correction hurricane.

Chart #1 – Unemployment rate and labor force participation

It is often touted how great it is that the unemployment rate is falling.  First, a large part of that has to do with massive government hiring.  Next, a large part of the rate appearing better has to do with people simply dropping out of the labor force.  The headline unemployment rate is 9.5 percent but if we count those unemployed and underemployed the rate spikes over 16 percent.  Not only do we have an elevated unemployment situation, we have 40 percent of our country working in low paying service sector work.  This doesn’t provide a solid foundation for growing housing prices let alone a bustling economy.  Keep in mind we need to add 150,000 jobs a month simply to keep up with population growth.  Our economy faces challenges that rival those of the Great Depression.  If the unemployment rate were dropping because of adding a good portion of non-government jobs then that would call for a champagne celebration.  Yet calling it great news by massaging numbers is simply an exercise in self-delusion.

Chart #2 – Pending home sales

Given the weak employment situation, it should be no surprise that simultaneously the amount of pending home sales has collapsed to record levels.  The jump you see above from 2008 to 2009 came from gigantic forms of government stimulus.  The Federal Reserve purchased $1.25 trillion in mortgage backed securities.  Why?  No other investor in their sane mind would buy this.  The Fed has also kept interest rates dangerously low trying to encourage additional borrowing.  Alan Greenspan instead of confronting the real structural problems that came after the tech bust decided to take the easy road out and created a credit bubble and brought on a plastic recovery.  We now know none of it was real in sense of it being sustainable.  The above collapse shows the sugar high running out from the Fed and also the very expensive tax credits.

Chart #3 – Construction spending

As home sales jumped on a sugar high from government intervention, construction spending did jump up in the residential sector.  How long will this last now that the government is pulling back?  And in the more sensitive commercial real estate market, growth has contracted.  This is a better reflection of actual demand because who is going to build a strip mall during a time that consumers are embracing austerity?  The residential sector did go up but again, this was merely based on massive government intervention that has no guarantee going forward.  All we did was pull demand forward for one year and operated on tax credit fumes.

Chart #4 – Hires and separations

As expected hires have increased in the first half but this is largely due to government temporary hiring.  But look at the separation line above.  People are hanging on with their clenched hands to their jobs (jobs that are largely paying less).  Do you think these people are looking to buy a massive ticket item like a home moving forward?  The above chart does a good job reflecting the psyche of workers.  Confident workers are willing to leave a job to find a position that better matches their wants in a healthy economy.  What the above shows is that people are holding on tight to their positions even if they are not ideal and fund their needs.  It is all about needs today.  With 5 unemployed workers competing for each single job opening you can tell why the above pattern is holding.

Chart #5 – Export prices

During the Great Depression import and export prices collapsed.  During this globally difficult time we faced massive deflation.  Last week we saw that the CPI went negative.  The market is so tight right now that there is little pricing power for producers.  Ben Bernanke gave a speech a few years ago where he outlined every way we can avoid deflation.  He hasn’t been shy about keeping rates low and also offering quantitative easing.  But this has only helped the banks and that is ultimately who the Fed works for.  Americans as a whole did not benefit from this easy money.  In fact, say you buy a home today with a low down payment FHA insured loan, are you confident that you will have the money to pay off that debt for 30 years?  If anything, the decline in export prices shows that people are not confident about the future and are more concerned about the present.  They are competing on a price level and that is why even with home sales, the large push has come from lower priced foreclosed properties.  As time goes on we are looking more and more like Japan.

Chart #6 – Employment changes in big counties

Even though the stock market rallied in the last year employment has gotten worse.  The stock market is largely an indicator of the casino that we now call Wall Street and really doesn’t reflect reality for most Americans.  Look at the above chart.  While the stock market was raging in 2009 many large counties saw employment contract severely.  This was across the spectrum.  You have your typical Southwest locations but also Texas.  Recent articles have talked about how immune Texas is from the contraction.  Just because you don’t have a housing bubble doesn’t mean you don’t have people that used the same credit cards and auto loans to purchase other items.  We’re all in this together and Wall Street banks are the biggest winners with the stock market rally.  How anyone can look at the above chart and say things are economically good is beyond reason.

Chart #7 – Commercial real estate

Commercial real estate (CRE) prices are down 40 percent from their peak from only a few years ago.  There is no pricing power in this market.  CRE has collapsed and is also guilty of large amounts of toxic high flying mortgages.  This market isn’t going to collapse it HAS collapsed.  The only reasons we don’t see the ramifications of this more visibly is because banks are using extend and pretend tactics while siphoning off money from taxpayers.  The CRE market is enormous coming in with $3 trillion in loans outstanding.  Many of these bad loans are sinking smaller regional banks (we are reminded on bank failure Fridays).  The big banks have these as well but they have a money sucking hose to the taxpayer wallet via the Federal Reserve and every loss they face is already buffered by the majority of Americans.  More and more the public is waking up and public sentiment is furious.  At a certain point, there will be massive calls for action.  You think the public is looking to bailout the CRE market?  There is no political will for helping this bubble market.  In the end, reality will come to the surface.

Chart #8 – U.S. home prices

The only reason that you see home prices increasing above from 2009 to 2010 is because of the government.  From the previous charts, you can see that prices did not go up because of income and wages growing.  This is merely a tiny reflection of easy money coming from the government.  But even with that, you can see that prices are way down from the peak.  The median home price is still down by over 23 percent from the peak.  Why would prices go up if incomes are not?  There is little reason to believe we’ll see any jump here.

And this chart is very important.  I hear people talk about the 1970s and how inflation eventually brought the price of everything up including wages.  Well there is absolutely no pricing power for wages in our current market because we have largely outsourced our manufacturing base.  Working at McDonalds isn’t going to buy you a $175,000 median priced home.  Has anyone looked at what people earn in China?  The real estate cheerleaders make little attempt to connect macro level economic movements with what is going on with housing prices.  The Fed is vigorously trying to inject inflation into the market.  But most of the money is going to the banks!  It isn’t making its way back into the real economy.  What sectors are we seeing wage inflation in?  Without that, good luck seeing higher home prices.

Chart #9 – Total U.S. debt

We have more total outstanding debt as a percentage of our GDP than we did during World War II.  Think about that incredible fact for a moment.  In addition, during the early 1940s we had massive pent up demand and wages because of the deep problems of the Great Depression.  Is a war going to boost our economy?  If you haven’t noticed we are actively in two wars at the moment.  Plus, modern warfare doesn’t require troops that resemble the Battle of Philippi.  It puts things into a precarious state because anyone that is honest realizes we will never pay our debts back.  Why would a global investor put money into a company it knows will never pay it back in full?  Yet we insist on more spending without actually getting money into the economy.  If we really want to stimulate the economy take all the money given to the banks and build infrastructure.  At least it’ll leave something for the country instead of filling up the funds in some investment banker’s offshore account.

Chart #10 – Consumer sentiment

You might have noticed that the casino had a bad end of the week.  Apparently the public realizes how bad things are out in the real world.  Most people (as measured by ratings) don’t watch CNBC and are glued to their ticker tape counting their stock market wealth.  Why?  Because most of it is concentrated in the hands of the top 1 percent but more importantly, most pay their monthly bills and commitments through their job.  The vast majority of Americans simply want a job that allows them to cover the needs of their family.  They don’t care that someone shorted a stock and made a billion dollars.  The demands of their daily life are so removed from that nonsense.  That is why the above surveys are still near their lows.  People are simply not confident with a bad economy.  Outside of Wall Street, Americans are still having a tough time.

In a way, it is something of a coincidence that the big movie out is Inception.  I love the tagline:

“In a world where technology exists to enter the human mind through dream invasion, a single idea within one’s mind can be the most dangerous weapon or the most valuable asset.”

Apparently some people were dreaming when they thought their most valuable asset was their home.

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