The Blog of Author Mark MacKenzie: It's The Housing Market, Stupid!

The Commerce Department published their monthly report today that showed housing starts and permits plummeted to their lowest points on record since they began tracking the data in 1959.  This is not simply a new home industry correction, this is a collapse of the industry. The seasonally adjuste...

With the Fed meeting tomorrow to discuss monetary policy and the economy, it is probable that they will once again slash the federal funds and discount rates.  With only 100 basis points to work with, it appears likely that at some point in the near future the rates will be cut to 0% - free money...

First of all I need to thank Marc Rasmussen for bringing this segment to my attention on his blog because I was not aware of it. I am also glad that 60 minutes had the foresight and courage to run a piece like this, even though it does instill concern about the direction of the housing market and...

Before you get too excited I am not talking about a homeownership bubble that started in 1940.  I am talking about a possible home ownership bubble that started taking shape in the late 1990s, where that second spike in the graph is; the spike towards 70% that we saw as a result of historically l...

The following commentary will be featured in an upcoming issue of REALTOR Magazine: You can't compare the loss of life that resulted from Hurricane Katrina with the loss of a home through foreclosure, but I believe that there's an unfortunately similarity between the devastation and the lack of g...

The following commentary will be featured in an upcoming issue of REALTOR Magazine: You can't compare the loss of life that resulted from Hurricane Katrina with the loss of a home through foreclosure, but I believe that there's an unfortunately similarity between the devastation and the lack of ...

For quite some time the FDIC's Sheila Bair has been the strongest proponent for loan modifications in Washington.  While Paulson was busy throwing a life preserver to his former company, Goldman Sachs, Bair has been calling for life boats for the rest of the American homeowners. And while recent ...

It appears that despite negotiations between Republicans, Democrats, executives, bond holders, investors, and the President of the United States, apparently the UAW does indeed trump all of them. Because of the UAW's inability to compromise on making wage concessions so they are "competitive" wit...

For those of you who have a life, unlike me, and are not familiar with Meredith Whitney, she is a bank analyst with Oppenheimer. She is one of the few people in the media that "called" the recent shock and awe events of the stock market and the real estate market this past year.  And it is for th...

  For the past several weeks I have been talking about the fact that this foreclosure crisis is just the beginning an unprecedented unraveling of our housing market. My concerns have been dismissed by those who have read my blog that say that the sub prime mortgage fiasco was the only thing that...