House Prices Drop US/UK Housing Crash? Subprime Bubble

BusinessWeek: Auto Workers Give Up Notorious Featherbed (Slightly off-topic, but here’s yet another reason why big companies should be refused bailouts and pushed towards bankruptcy and enforced restructuring instead.)
“The union is suspending its most ridiculed perk, called the JOBS bank. That program pays auto workers 85% of their pay while furloughed. Some workers reported for years to meeting rooms where they would sit and wait for an assignment or be sent to clean public parks. All the while, they would get paid most of their wages. The JOBS bank was costly in more ways than one. By making labor a fixed cost, it altered their manufacturing strategy. For most of the past 10 years, the car companies preferred to discount models with big rebates rather than cut production, because they had to pay workers no matter what.”

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Original post by drewster

Wall Street Journal: US eyes plans to lift home sales The Treasury Department is considering a plan to revitalize the U.S. home market that would push down mortgage rates for home loans, according to people familiar with the matter.
The plan would use the clout of government-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to encourage banks to lend at rates as low as 4.5%, a full percentage point below the current average.
Treasury views this plan as potentially halting the slide in home prices by enabling borrowers to afford bigger mortgages, thus increasing demand for homes and pushing up home values.
That, in turn, could boost the economy and improve the weak outlook for other consumer loans, such as credit cards.

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Original post by little professor

Check out slides 15 & 16 of Jerry Johnson’s slide show from the 2009 Homebuilders Association Convention. (700 kb)Personal update- I caught mono last month and spent a few weeks struggling to do anything more than sleep. I’m feeling much better now but I get to play catch-up at the office. Everything should be back to normal next week; thanks for your patience and thanks for all the support you’ve given me over the past month.

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Original post by noreply@blogger.com (Clint8200)

Housing Doom commenter coffee just dropped this in the comments.  Twist and I are over our heads on this one.  I’ll put a few of the relevant news links up in the comments later, but in the meanwhile any assistance would be appreciated.  This is about the latest Treasury moves to force down mortgage rates.  They seem awfully radical to me.
 

From Doomer Coffee

PSA: measures prepayment risk in a mortgage back security. PSA is the implied prepayment risk model at a specific yield. It measures the risk to the investor’s cash flow disappearing due to prepayment risk.
I do not have a bloomberg, so somebody might be able to get us today’s “PSA” on the 6% mortgage back. I would not be surprised if it exploded to over 1,000 today. normal PSA is 100
Think what will happen to all the 6% mortgage back securities backed by AAA collateral and clients, 740 plus […]

Original post by John M.

Times: State of economy demands rate cut to historic low of 2% Martin Weale, director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, summed it up nicely by saying; “A 1 per cent cut is likely to have more impact than sacrificing a goat”.

Original post by enuii

From the Tribune:
Struggling homebuilders are looking for a lifeline from local governments, asking for flexibility on rules and fees to help them get back to building.In a letter sent to cities and counties, the Home Builders Association of Metropolitan Portland sought a helping hand Oct. 31.Since then, their requests have sparked thoughtful debate among elected leaders in Metro area communities, including Lake Oswego. Several jurisdictions plan meetings with the Home Builders Association in the next two months.
Bend homebuilders tried the same thing earlier this year.

Original post by noreply@blogger.com (Clint8200)

Fox/CNBC: US in Denial of Debt/Economic crisis Posted in the past few days, an analysis of the current state of America. Is our service economy any better? Tom Sawyer got his friends to paint his fence and pay for the priviledge. Is the story being re-enacted in Brown’s economics? Today its throwing money at mortgages, how will the story end?

Original post by alan

Firstrung: The Homeowner Mortgage Support Scheme - the official government press release The Government today announced a new scheme to help people who suffer a temporary loss of income stay in their home. The new Homeowner Mortgage Support Scheme will enable households that experience a significant and temporary loss of income as a result of the economic downturn to defer a proportion of the interest payments on their mortgage for up to two years. The Government will guarantee the deferred interests payments in return for banks’ participation in the scheme…

Original post by converted lurker

This just in from Blown Mortgage.[1]
I wrote a year ago about the site, Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter, being sued by a mortgage company for damages allegedly tied to the company’s listing on the site’s imploded lender list. The claims were fanciful, with the lender claiming that their bank accounts had been drained by institutional warehouse lenders and other sorts of malarky that made the suit look exactly as it was: an attempt to simply shut-up the good folks at Implode by a brute force legal battle where they figured to have the upper-hand in capital to silence the critics.

…

I urge you to support Implode and the people there who have become the preeminent information source on the industry meltdown in their goal to uncover and bright to light the ridiculous systems and schemes that were set up to generate millions of dollars during the boom from unsuspecting (or suspecting) participants. […]

Original post by John M.

BBC: Latvia’s economic boom turns sour Having seen its economy grow at a rate 11% in 2007, Latvia’s GDP is now shrinking by more than 4%. After a property boom, house prices are now falling at a faster rate than any other country in the world - down 24% in the last 3 months.

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Original post by peter_2008