The Housing Bubble Blog

A weekend topic starting with NPR. "This week's Democratic presidential debate touched on a topic that usually doesn't get much attention in these forums. ELIZABETH WARREN: Our housing problem in America is a problem on the supply side. And that means that the federal government stopped building...

A report from the Urban Land Institute. "'Real estate doesn’t appear to be the sector where we are taking risks that won’t pay off,' says Sam Chandan, an associate dean of New York University’s Schack Institute of Real Estate. 'By and large, we have been fairly reserved in our development activity,...

It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "John Bryan was one of dozens of investors spending thousands of dollars to buy properties from a Florida-based company that flipped homes in Johnstown, promised to manage the properties and pay them the rent they collected. Over two years Citrona...

A report from the Wall Street Journal on California. "Over a decade ago, Jeff Greene earned a fortune betting against risky mortgages in the last housing market crash. These days, the billionaire is finding himself less lucky in a different real-estate investment—an enormous Los Angeles mansion...

A report from Bisnow on California. "While 2019 represents a bounceback year for housing completions in San Francisco, this year's number of groundbreakings tells a much different story. Through the first three quarters, construction starts on market-rate multifamily units are down 62% to 1,281...

A report from the Mortgage Reports. "A new study indicates that first-time home buyers are having more mortgage delinquency problems than they have since 2010. Black Knight’s most recent Mortgage Monitor report had some alarming findings: Nearly 1% of mortgage loan originations in the first quarter...

A report from Market Place. "The housing market is in a weird place. In 2012, demand for homes started rising. The problem was — and continues to be today — that there aren’t enough houses on the market to meet demand. So prices are way up. Susan Wachter, a real estate and finance professor at the...

A report from KOMO News in Washington. "Sale prices for new homes fell 12.1% year over year in the Seattle metro area in the third quarter, according to a new report. The report also found the price per square foot for new homes fell 7.1% year over year in the third quarter to a median price of...

A report from the Wall Street Journal on New York. "The urgent inquiries for office space from companies aiming to do business with Amazon have long ceased. The near-constant flurry of calls from would-be investors in commercial buildings and condominiums has eased. Asking rents for office space...

It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "New York City is coping with a nationwide exodus of residents from big, expensive cities. In addition, foreign buyers have retreated from the market. 'The thing is, you don't have the Chinese buyers anymore,' said FOX Business' Cheryl Casone from...

A report from WTBW in South Carolina. "An off-campus student apartment complex near Coastal Carolina University could be foreclosed on after a bank accused it of owing more than $24 million. One of the newer off-campus housing options is The Provincial, which is right across South Carolina Highway...

A report from ABC News in Australia. "Doc Davey purchased his home in a booming West Australian mining town for $560,000 in 2009, but today the same home is close to worthless after ongoing vandalism by local youths. 'I've rebuilt the back fence six times, and they've knocked it down within two...

A report from Westword on Colorado. "Over the past year or so, there's been debate aplenty about whether Denver's real estate market has finally started to cool off after being red-hot for the past few years. Megan Aller, a sales representative for American Title Insurance Company, is an...

A report from the Wall Street Journal. "The aging-in-place technology trend marks a challenge to the numerous real-estate developers who have been rushing to build senior housing to accommodate the roughly 72 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964. Developers continue to build new facilities....

A report from KCRA in California. "California is at the epicenter of a housing crisis. Thousands of people are fleeing the state, and many of them say they can no longer afford to live here. But today there’s help, and hope, for people wanting to buy that very first home. The help comes from a...

A report from the Sunday Times. "The housing crisis in Silicon Valley has reached new heights. Police officers in San Mateo, priced out of a market where the median house price has surged to $1.3m (£1m), have taken to sleeping in their cars. In the nearby town of Sunnyvale, homelessness has nearly...

A weekend topic starting with the Charlotte Agenda in North Carolina. "Jonathan Osman points to a one-story, brick house in Camp Greene. A little more than a decade ago, the home sold for $38,500. Now, it’s listed by another Realtor for $369,000. Osman shakes his head, then pulls up a nearby...

It's Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. "Here are some of my observations from Mortgage Bankers Association convention I attended in Austin last month. One exhibit hall lender offered primary residence mortgages void of any income information or any income documentation so long as you put...

A report from Bisnow. "A strong jobs report, the stock market performing at record highs and low interest rates continue to fuel U.S. commercial real estate’s prolonged growth cycle. But overall economic growth has fallen as the year progresses, raising commercial real estate’s favorite question:...

A report from the New York Post. "The Long Island mansion from the 1986 flick 'The Money Pit' has become a real-life money pit. This Nassau County home has sold for $3.5 million after five years on the market. That’s 76 percent less than its original 2014 asking price of $12.5 million. Sellers Rich...