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

According to a report put out by the AP on January 23rd, Freddie Mac will need up to $35 billion from the Treasury in order to weather the rising number of foreclosures that are on their books, and Fannie Mae may not be far behind.  This is in addition to the $13.8 billion Freddie Mac already rec...

Last week I wrote a post about the three reasons why the real estate market is worse than the NAR numbers reveal. The reason that the post was relevant was because currently there is already an 11.2 month supply of housing as of the November 2008 data that the NAR published, this matches the all ...

Luke Mullins who has a blog with U.S. News & World Report titled "The Home Front",  recently did an interview with Peter Schiff.  For those of you who don't know, Peter Schiff is a staunch "free market" guy and is the president of Euro Pacific Capital.  He's also one of the most bearish people yo...

The Labor Department announced yesterday that new claims for unemployment benefits increased more than expected to a seasonally adjusted number of 589,000, up from 527,000 the week earlier. As I have written about before, the "real" unemployment rate in December of 2008 was actually 13.5%.  This ...

According to a blog published by CNBC's Diana Olick, Toll Brothers announced today that they were going to offer a 3.99% fixed rate mortgage on new homes that they sell so long as the buyer has 20% down and a 720 or higher FICO - fair enough, you certainly can't give the homes away like they were...

The U.S. Commerce Department today released the December data for housing permits and housing starts, both were alarmingly bad and continue to reinforce that whatever bottom to the new home industry that we thought existed, simply doesn't. On a seasonally adjusted basis housing permits fell -10.7...

According to the mortgage bankers association weekly application survey for January 22nd, the seasonally adjusted purchase index increased just 2.5% from last week and despite historically low mortgage rates, the four week moving average is actually down -1%.   The seasonally adjusted purchase in...

As I have written about several times before, focusing a housing stimulus plan at first time home buyers as Obama is proposing, and the NAR has lobbied for, with a $7,500 tax credit, is not going to have a meaningful effect on the housing depression. With homeownership rate hovering near 68% comp...

I like the word "sweeping" because that is exactly what the result will be of any plan to prevent foreclosures in the absence of a complimentary plan to stimulate demand for real estate, regardless of whether Obama spends up to $100 billion on this objective as has been rumored.  It will simply b...

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