With housing now in recovery and apartment rents rising, there is new concern that tenants and investors alike will move out of the multi-family space.
I’m reporting a story on Lennar today. The sixth largest public homebuilder in the nation sent out an interesting letter to its contractors a few months ago offering them two choices: (A) Reduce your unpaid invoices as of 1-26-07 by a minimum of X [many have reported up to 20%]… or (B) Not reduce your unpaid invoices and be excluded from bidding future work for a minimum of 6 months. Those companies who choose to participate in this request and/or can exhibit the best price possible will continue to have every opportunity for future business with Lennar.
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I’m not going to talk about mortgages today. I’m not tired of the topic; I just want to remind myself that there are other stories playing out in the real estate market. Lest we forget, people are still buying and selling homes, legally and responsibly, and I want to focus on that for a minute.
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Ok, I want to take a little space here to respond to a number of complaints you readers have been sending to the RealtyCheck mailbox. Don’t get me wrong, I love it that you’re riled up, I love it that you disagree, most of all I just love it that you read all this stuff, so here goes:
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I’m working on this story today about the ripple effects of the subprime crisis on the wider mortgage markets, specifically something called an Alt-A loan. What’s an Alt-A? Well, I did a little net-search and found a wide variety of definitions:
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With anxiety over the subprime mortgage market, calls for tighter lending standards, continued high inventory of unsold homes and home prices dropping from coast to coast, to call Tuesday’s housing starts number curious is an understatement. The U.S. Department of Commerce reports housing starts in February jumped 9% from a month ago but are still 28.5% below February 2006. This is the biggest jump since January of last year and comes off a 14% drop in starts in February.
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Anxiety over trouble in the subprime mortgage market has home builders changing their vision of a recovery in the housing market. After a slow and steady rise from a low in September, the monthly survey of home builder confidence from the National Association of Home Builders slipped three points in March.
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Continuing in the blame game … today we took a look at all the potential litigation, which will inevitably be the next bit of ooze in all this subprime seepage. Yesterday lawmakers on Capitol Hill were pointing fingers, then today, in New York City, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, asked about the subprime market, jumps on the bandwagon, “We’re looking at that market as well.” Then in DC, at about the same time, Sen. Hillary Clinton says, “This market is clearly broken, and if we don’t fix it, it could threaten our entire housing market which in turn would threaten our entire economy.”
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Since I received so many responses to my blog yesterday on Subprime Subterfuge, I thought I’d post them here for everyone to see. Thanks to all for writing in!
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Today the Mortgage Bankers Association released its quarterly “National Delinquency Survey.” Delinquencies and foreclosures rose across the board, across each sector of the mortgage marketplace, prime and subprime alike.
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If you’re at all interested in the housing market, then you’ve probably heard the sound from yesterday’s webcast of a Citigroup homebuilder conference. Donald Tomnitz, CEO of D.R. Horton, the nation’s largest homebuilder by volume, said, “I don't want to be too sophisticated here, but '07 is going to suck, all 12 months of the calendar year.”
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Realty Check takes you from the housing boom to bust and beyond. Led by Diana Olick, we were here when the house came crashing down and we have the singular expertise to explain how it will be rebuilt. The goal of this blog is to bring the market, the rescue plans, the politics and the pontification home to you, with clear concise explanations of the wildly complicated issues in all facets of real estate today and tomorrow. Realty Check is read by leaders in the real estate industry: Investors, Realtors, Big builder CEOs, Mortgage Bankers, Wall Street Analysts and Administration Officials to name a few.