Housing market slips into depression territory

[Revere]

What's this "revving back to live" the article speaks of?

Did all this "trickle up" miss the housing market?

News Headlines

As the economy revs back to life, with signs of hiring on the horizon, the housing market is being left behind like Macaulay Culkin in “Home Alone.”


In the past few years, we’ve all been careful to choose our words carefully, not calling it a recession until it fit the technical definition and avoiding any inappropriate use of the “D” word — Depression.

Things were bad but the broader economy never reached Depression territory. The housing market, on the other hand, just crossed that threshold.

Home values have fallen 26 percent since their peak in June 2006, worse than the 25.9-percent decline seen during the Depression years between 1928 and 1933, Zillow reported.

November marked the 53rd consecutive month (4 ½ years) that home values have fallen.

What’s worse, it’s not over yet: Home values

 

[waltky]

Foreclosures adding to housing surplus inventory...

13% Of All US Homes Are Vacant
March 29th, 2011 — High residential vacancies are killing many housing markets, as foreclosed homes sit on the market and depress sale prices and property values.

And it’s only getting worse: The national vacancy rate crept up to just over 13% according to last week’s decennial census report. That’s up from 12.1% in 2007. “More vacant homes equal more downward pressure on home prices,” said Brad Hunter, chief economist for Metrostudy, a real estate information provider. Maine had the highest proportion of empty housing stock, at 22.8%. Other states with gluts of empty houses included Vermont (20.5%), Florida (17.5%), Arizona (16.3%) and Alaska (15.9%). The way the census calculates the vacancy rates, however, is problematic. It includes properties such as ski lodges, beach houses and pied-à-terres that many real estate statisticians would not.

10 fastest-growing U.S. cities

These are often summer homes or second homes, but census lumps them together with homes that have been sold but not occupied, empty homes for sale or rent, and homes used by migrant workers. Basically, anything other than a primary residence is considered vacant. “You can only live in one home,” said William Chapin of the Census Bureau’s Housing Statistics Branch. “If you own five homes that you occasionally live in, four of them will be counted as vacant.” But Paul Bishop, the vice president for research for the National Association of Realtors, countered that these properties aren’t vacant in the usual sense of the term. “A vacation home is hardly the same situation as a foreclosed home that has been taken back by the bank,” he said.

In Maine, more than two-thirds of the 160,000 vacancies were vacation homes in 2009; Vermont had a similarly high concentration. Compare them with Connecticut, which has a vacancy rate of just 7.9%, the lowest of all the states. If you back out the vacation properties from the statistics, the states have very similar vacancy rates: 6.1% for Connecticut and 7% for Maine. Some states have high vacancy rates even after backing out the second homes: Florida’s is about 10%; Arizona’s is 10.7%; and Nevada’s 11.4%. Besides Connecticut, the other states with lowest vacancy rates are California, Iowa, Illinois, Virginia and Washington, all at 9.2% or lower.

Source

See also:

US house prices still falling fast
Tuesday 29th March, 2011 - House prices in the United States have sunk to new lows.

The prices in 20 major American cities fell for the seventh month in a row in January. Hopes of a sustained recovery in the market have faded away with the news that home prices were down on average by more than 3 per cent compared to the same time last year.

A Standard and Poor's housing index has now indicated that house prices could sink lower than they did at the bottom of the market two years ago. The country's overall recovery from recession is reliant on a more positive US housing sector.

http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=762346

 

[Douger]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I0QN-FYkpw]Peter Schiff Was Right 2006 - 2007 (2nd Edition) - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Douger]

Type in an address for a taste of reality. Keep in mind. These are what will be referred to as "the good old days".
Zillow - Real Estate, Homes for Sale, Recent Sales, Apartment Rentals

 

[waltky]

One way to put foreclosed homes to good use - house the homeless...

Squatters say foreclosed homes beat homeless shelters
December 21, 2011, They may lack heat and a consistent water supply, but the vacant dwellings aren't as 'depressing,' as one New York mother puts it. Advocates say the number of squatters nationwide is rising.

Slips of paper are pasted to the broken door of the corner row house, violations for the garbage piled near the front steps. The stench of trash wafts up the dark interior stairway, where an ashtray filled with cigarette butts sits like an abandoned potted plant on the second-floor landing. Nobody lives here, at least not officially. But as you climb the narrow stairs to the top floor, a door opens into an airy apartment that is home to Tasha Glasgow, who is part of a largely invisible population of squatters occupying vacant homes across America. Given their clandestine lives, it's impossible to say how many people are squatting in this country, but with more than 1.3 million homes in foreclosure and hundreds of thousands of people homeless, advocates say it's safe to assume the number is growing.

"You have these abandoned dwellings that are sitting there vacant, sometimes for many months," said Patrick Markee of the Coalition for the Homeless in New York, where shelters are reporting record numbers of residents. "It's not an issue of whether squatting is right or wrong. The fact is that people are desperate for places to live, and they're going to do what they need to do." New York would seem to offer an ideal setting for squatters, with its ubiquitous apartment blocs providing safe hiding for people who can't afford the sky-high rents or stomach life in the shelters. The cutoff of funding this year for a program called Advantage, which helped needy renters pay for housing, has deepened the dilemma for people like Glasgow, 30, who has two children, one of them autistic. Her 9-year-old girl and 5-year-old boy have been taught to adapt to the idiosyncrasies of life in a squat, which is a bit like life during wartime.

There is no heat. Empty jugs sit on the kitchen counter, waiting to be filled when the water comes on. Toilet-flushing and bathing are timed according to the faucets' erratic flow. Bare bulbs jut from ceiling fixtures, the wood floors are bare of carpeting, and tattered drapes cover the windows. There are none of the signs of regular family life: no dishes in the sink from the last meal, no dining table, no mail to be opened. Still, it's better than a shelter. "I didn't want to be in a shelter. It was depressing. I wasn't getting support trying to find a place to live," said Glasgow, who has occupied this apartment near the ocean, on the foggy tip of Queens, on and off since 2007. Glasgow probably is not who most people have in mind when they envision squatters. With her shy smile, cropped curly hair, youthful face and earnest demeanor, she seems more like a grad student than a struggling mother.

At first, she was in this apartment legally, her rent covered mostly by the Advantage program. When the building's owner stopped paying the mortgage a couple of years ago, she had to leave and ended up in a shelter with the children. Glasgow's hopes of getting another apartment with city help faded after Advantage was canceled. She heard that her old apartment was empty, so she moved back in earlier this year. If all goes well, Glasgow and the children soon will move to another, better squat — a vacant Brooklyn house. The children's father, Alfredo Carrasquillo, entered it Dec. 6 as part of a nationwide effort by homeless advocates to highlight the housing crisis, which included public occupations of bank-owned properties. He won't move the rest of the family in until he has made it more suitable for habitation. "Honestly, we just thought it would be a great opportunity," Carrasquillo said of taking over the vacant house in a public manner, which included a march through the neighborhood and a party on the quiet street, complete with balloons and housewarming gifts. "This is for everyone who doesn't have a house right now — to show people they can fight back."

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[Jackson]

Fourth greatest president in history...YUP!