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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For better or worse, actual foreclosures are still elevated:

Actual recorded foreclosures show up as recorded trustee deeds went up by over 11 percent from Q1 of 2010 to Q2 of 2010.  This jump of course occurred because of a variety of reasons including a crappy economy but also the abject failure of HAMP which merely bought a few more months for many homeowners.  Notice of defaults fell by over 13 percent over the quarter.  I would only take this as good news if actual late payments on loans were also falling at this rate but they are not.  We are still near record territory for actual loans that are distressed in the state.  Then we hear about areas like Los Angeles that will now fine banks for homes that are left to disrepair.  Banks being the patron saint of taxpayer money, are now going to have even less of an incentive to file a notice of default.  Let the sucker borrower mow the lawn.  The amount of time for a foreclosure has gone to record levels because banks are simply ignoring late payers.  They are overwhelmed or simply don’t care (both are not good reasons).  So the decline in NODs is probably a bigger reflection of this trend as opposed to the actual market suddenly turning some proverbial corner.

Keep in mind that the housing market still sucks.  I’m not sure how else to put it especially for California.  Things are so bad, that people actually think 47,000+ recorded foreclosures in Q2 of 2010 is some sign of progress.  Let us put this into context for you:

In the aftermath of the last California housing bubble, the apex of recorded trustee deeds occurred in Q3 of 1996.  At that time, 15,418 foreclosures were actually recorded.  In Q2 of 2010 we actually recorded some 47,669 foreclosures.  So we are foreclosing at a rate of 3 times what was being experienced at the peak point of the last real estate crisis.  Yet this is somehow good?  For absurdity purposes, look at how low things got in Q2 of 2005 at the height of insanity.  Only 637 foreclosures were recorded during the entire quarter!  This is absolute insanity.  I mean think of how out of sync things had to be.  People always lose homes for a variety of reasons including divorce, loss of job, or medical illnesses.  Did life suddenly come to a pause in this quarter?  Actually, anyone and everyone could qualify for a loan so it is surprising that we even had 637 foreclosures.

There is still a large contingent that thinks housing is all of a sudden gearing up for housing boom 2.0.  Keep in mind that we are only tasting a tiny respite thanks to the Federal Reserve flushing over a trillion dollars down the toilet to buy mortgage backed securities and has also artificially kept the interest rate low.  Add to this the expensive and horrible policy blunder of the home buyer tax credit and the market was juiced on easy money steroids.  What more can we do?  Give homes away?  As absurd as that sounds, not really because the big gimmick is that banks need to keep homes valued at bubble levels and have home borrower suckers making their payments to keep the massive debt current.  Banks need an army of debt slaves.  So what if you stop paying on a $500,000 loan even though the home is valued at $250,000?  The bank still pretends the loan is valued at that level and this is where the gigantic gap appears:

Source:  MLS, MBA

This is where the excitement over the drop in NODs is basically hot air.  Currently on the MLS California has 137,000+ homes for sale.  This is what the public can see.  This does include some distressed properties but not many.  If we look at distressed properties including those currently in foreclosure, we find that the market has 255,000+ homes.  Some of these appear on the MLS, most clearly do not.  Yet the next column is where the sham is really happening.  Nearly 800,000 loans are 1 payment behind or even worse, already in foreclosure.  Naively some think that many of these won’t enter into foreclosure.  Actually, recent data shows otherwise.  Of loans that get behind one payment roughly 90 percent enter into foreclosure.  But let us be generous and say that only 80 percent will go into foreclosure.  We are talking about 640,000 properties here.  So much for the drop in NODs (it was a drop of roughly 11,000 from Q1 to Q2 of 2010).

I’m highly suspicious of the data because the actual real economy, you know the thing people use to pay their mortgage with, is actually still in a big mess.  California is flying off a budget cliff even though people pretend all is well.  We still have no budget for the next fiscal year and the gap of $19 billion still lingers (even as we give tax credits to those to buy homes!).  So we are in for some serious financial issues going forward.  Not much has changed.  If I saw wages increase by 50 percent in one year and all of a sudden high paying jobs were available for many unemployed Californian then maybe we can jump on the recovery bandwagon and justify high home prices.  But this is the reality:

Source:  BLS

In other words, the drop with NODs is largely based on funny math.  Banks are not moving on homes which is something that is already documented.  Extend and pretend programs also took some of these homes out of the NOD landscape.  But this is largely a distraction because the housing market is still in a giant toilet bowl.  I vividly remember talking about the massive rise in housing inventory in 2007 right before the market imploded.  People were laser focused on price and ignoring the major headwinds.  Home prices peaked at the moment we were heading for a rollercoaster price decline.  We are in a similar position today.  Ignore the data at your own peril.

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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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Take for example this Chase modification that recently occurred here in Los Angeles County:

This loan modification occurred in the 91306 zip code of Los Angeles County.  The current median price for this market is $355,000.  Remember those horrific option ARMs?  Well they are now morphing into other products.  Here are the original terms on the note:

Option ARM payments

Negative Amortization:                 $1,754

Interest Only:                                    $2,265

P&I:                                                       $2,905

The “real” monthly cost on the mortgage is closer to $3,000.  Yet with this new modification, the borrower can stay in the house paying $1,694 per month all the way until 2015 with a 3.75 percent interest rate.  This is someone that took out an option ARM from one of the former option ARM kingpins.  The borrower who speculated wins because they get to stay in the home and the bank has already won with all the taxpayer money they have stuffed into their pockets.  Oh, and what is the new principal balance?

So the bank can assert that they have a $542,000 asset in a market where the median home price is closer to $355,000.  What do they care?  They already have taxpayer money to speculate on Wall Street and basically allow these mortgages to sit fertile for as long as the borrower can string by a few payments.  Moral hazard?  We are beyond that point.  I’m surprised we don’t have tens of thousands of people marching down Wall Street but as long as those iPhones have new apps each week then I guess all is well.

If you look at market rents in this area, it actually turns out that this borrower is making out big time:

Hard to tell the size of the home but assuming the basic 3 beds and 2 baths home, rents can range from $2,300 to $2,400.  Keep in mind that the borrower can write-off on their taxes the interest portion of the note (100% for the next few years) plus taxes.   Ultimately, banks and borrowers are being rewarded for bad behavior.  And this hurts everyone especially the prudent majority.  Keep in mind that if this home was added to the market even as a rental, overall rent prices would go down.  So by funneling money into the banking sector, what is occurring is we are favoring one group over another.  In this case, the vast majority of the reward goes to the bank while the borrower shares in their dirty little secret.

This is only one example of many of the option ARM reworks that are currently happening.  Make no mistake, the vast majority are failing and going into default but there are also many loans like the above that are being reworked through hocus pocus and subsidizing another group that made a very bad bet.  And enough with the keeping people in homes argument.  There have been modifications of toxic loans in million dollar neighborhoods!  These people will be renting in top of the line areas if they lose their home so don’t go sobbing about that especially here in California.  We’ve already analyzed top priced areas and you see that the stats show a very peculiar trend.  Why not say that we won’t allow modifications that go above the median nationwide home price of $170,000?  I think most can live with that.  But that isn’t exactly what is happening.

Shocked yet?  Well how about a 40 year IndyMac loan modification?  A reader sent over this interesting example:

Remember IndyMac?  They were the bank that fell flat on their face and had a large number of people here in Southern California doing bank runs that looked similar to the Great Depression.  Keep in mind that this is a giant loan amount.  The national median home price is close to $170,000 as we just mentioned.  In California, the median price is $278,000.  Who are we really helping here and how do banks have the money to make these kinds of deals?  That’s right, we’re in a crony banking system that basically operates to funnel money into the completely unregulated (actually, regulations are there but no enforcement) and wild west banking industry.

This absurd behavior goes on because both Democrats and Republicans (especially in the Senate) are owned by corporate lobbyist and Wall Street.  Until people demand real change, the same beat will go on and banks will continue to suck every ounce of real wealth from our economy.  The fact that it is cheaper to live in an option ARM financed home today than to rent responsibly tells you a lot of where things are.

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