The Housing Bubble Blog

A report from Multi-Housing News. "Multi-Housing News talked to Brown Harris Stevens’ first CEO, Bess Freedman, about the luxury real estate market in the time of COVID-19. How was New York City’s luxury real estate market before COVID-19? Freedman: Before the coronavirus, we had been in a strong...

A report from Narcity in Canada. "Toronto's Regional Real Estate Board offered a glimpse into the housing market in April, and it's not all bad news. According to the report, Toronto housing prices actually dropped this month. Detached homes were hit the hardest and actually saw a 9.1% drop in...

A report from News 4 Jax in Florida. "The short-term rental market has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. Short-term rentals are a big driver of tourism in St. Augustine, where a large number of homes have been converted to short-term rentals. The 'for rent' signs are becoming 'for sale'...

A report from the Orange County Register. "Impac Mortgage temporarily shut lending operations and furloughed 333 workers due to market turmoil tied to the novel coronavirus. The Irvine-based company, one of the few non-traditional lenders that survived the mortgage collapse of the Great Recession,...

A report from CBC News in Canada. "There is nothing so bad that it does not end up helping someone is the old saying, and while the COVID-19 outbreak is bad for pretty well everyone, long-suffering renters may finally get a break. Already, there are early signs that while the supply of rental...

A report from Bloomberg. "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s regulator is confronting a fresh crisis for the U.S. housing market: The companies won’t buy recently issued loans that were made to borrowers who already can’t afford their monthly payments because of coronavirus. Industry executives have told...

A report from Wharton. "Financially engineered collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) consisting of leveraged loans to highly indebted companies are today’s counterpart of the collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) of the last crisis, which contained subprime mortgage loans to highly indebted...

A report from Atlanta Agent Magazine in Georgia. "The country is much better positioned to rebound from the current recession than in the Great Recession, according to Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors. The housing shortage in Georgia is likely to help keep...

A report from The New Daily in Australia. "Property prices have fallen on a week-to-week basis for the first time since August, fuelling concerns the housing market is careening towards a catastrophic slowdown. CoreLogic analysis reveals growth in average house prices has been falling for the past...

A report from Lancaster Online in Pennsylvania. "Shifting borrowing requirements, sudden job losses and state-ordered restrictions on real estate activity meant to limit the spread of COVID-19 in Pennsylvania have complicated — and in many cases halted — home sales during what is traditionally the...

A weekend topic starting with the Wall Street Journal. "More than 600,000 small businesses were created in Airbnb’s inaugural year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Half of them were out of business within five years. Only one-third were still standing at the end of 2019. 'There’s...

A report from Market Watch. "The coronavirus pandemic has turned the $4.4 trillion U.S. commercial real estate finance market upside down. Moody’s analysts warned that property-level 'cash-flow stress, particularly across hotels and retail properties,' will trigger more defaults. In the first two...

A weekend topic on this Politico article. "With millions of suddenly unemployed homeowners expected to seek relief on their mortgage payments, a libertarian regulator is standing in the way of the federal government using its most powerful weapon to stave off a housing crisis. Fannie Mae and...

It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "Some buyers may look for deals, thinking all sellers are desperate to sell. But if this isn't you, there's no reason to cave or whittle down your home's price. 'Regardless of the events, there will always be buyers who will write a lowball offer,'...

A report from Mortgage Professional America. "In a recent report that examines county-level housing markets and their vulnerability to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, Attom Data Solutions found that 24 of the 50 most at-risk markets are in New Jersey and Florida. COVID-19 will only...

A report from the Berkeley Newsroom. "Berkeley Haas Professors Nancy Wallace and Richard Stanton were some of the few voices to forewarn of the massive risk posed by shoddy practices in the mortgage industry prior to the 2008 financial crisis. Unfortunately, history seems to be repeating itself....

A report from Bloomberg on Canada. "Canadian housing once seemed so infallible that the head of the world’s biggest asset manager in 2015 described Vancouver condos as a better store of wealth than gold. The coronavirus is putting that theory to the test. Canada’s situation is more precarious than...

A report from Marketplace. "New survey data on Wednesday from the National Association of Homebuilders shows builder confidence fell the most ever in a month, to 30. Anything below 50 is considered negative, and this is the first negative reading in more than five years. Jeff Caruso, CEO of Caruso...

A report from Bloomberg. "The nascent market for private U.S. mortgages is teetering on the brink of collapse as the coronavirus crisis imperils years of work to lessen the government's role in home lending. Several firms that issue mortgage bonds without federal guarantees have laid off most of...

A report from Global News on Canada. "The housing industry in Saskatoon is slower but remains steady, according to experts. And right now it is a buyers market. 'If you are in the market to buy a new home there has been no better time to do it (then right now),' said Saskatoon and Region Home...