Detailed report on housing overvaluation in America

A great report from National City on housing prices in American, how much they're overvalued, and where. Bend, OR is #1 most overvalued market in the US, and Portland is #11. See the .pdf here.

Suprise! CEO of Countrywide lied.....

I posted here when the CEO of Countrywide said it would be profitable in Q4 that there is no way I bought it. Stock shot up so CEO and friends could dump at higher price points. Article here:

"The net loss for the quarter totaled $421.9 million, or 79 cents per share, compared with a profit of $621.6 million, or $1.01 per share, a year earlier. On Oct. 26, Countrywide projected a quarterly profit of 25 cents to 75 cents per share. Analysts on average had expected a loss of 32 cents per share, according to Reuters Estimates."

Hope nobody bought it.

My opinion: meltdown isn't over just yet. Reset your loans while Bernake tries to get rates down low enough that enough people can refi those 2 year ARMs.

Portland Housing Blog auction story from the O

Oregonian has an article on the Auction as well. See Portland Housing Blog for more info.

Portland homes go on auction block...

From a portland housing blog comes a very interesting link about an upcoming auction in portland suburban homes. This might come in handy, say, if you were relocating from a town, like say, maybe seattle, and maybe wanted to pick up a good deal on a house, might be worth at least checking out.

Portland Condo Market continues to sour quietly...

While there have been one or two articles on the market of condos in Portland, nobody in the press is discussing the death of the Pearl. On a run yesterday by the waterfront I went by a building where the normal 10+ units for sale with all the signs posted FINALLY had some lower prices after a year of holding onto irrational valuations. There are holes in the ground with no construction workers. Its quiet, like remnants of a bombing in a city the world has forgotten. The beautiful Wyatt has moved from condo to apartment, the civic up the street on burnside isn't selling.

The sooner these folks wake up and get the prices back down to reality the sooner we can get on with it. They are holding on and telling how 'things are just going back to normal', but that isn't how markets work and there is no normal, only a bouncing back and forth around a theoretcially 'normal' line of 6 month inventory.

While not really suprised by the lack of coverage, I am disappointed. Not that I ever had any faith in mainstream journalism, but the lack of any quantitative profiling of the cave in is interesting. Makes me think about some of the conflicts around the world going. Seems if the press isn't there, it isn't happening.

One reasonable article from last week is here. They say Portland is immune from the downturn that's infected other big cities. Job growth remains strong, and people continue to move to the area, providing demand for urban living. "It's steady as she goes here," Scanlan said. "There's no reason to panic."

Good article on housing market

Oregonian does what it should have done a few months ago. Finally started to report on the changing dynamics of the real estate market in pdx. Good article by Robert Bruss on buying rental houses located in the Homes and Rental section of the Oregonian. I'd link to it but it takes freakin' forever for anything from the oregonian to come up, and they do this annoying thing when you want to see an article where you have to type in your zip code and age, and its just ignoramous so I'm going to not wait any longer. However, the author has his own website, which came right up and has much better information anyway, so i'm going to link to it here to reference for myself in the future.

Pearl District Condo Slowdown...

Matt Fife pointed me to this link:

Most of the media is paranoid to report on the virtual halt of condo sales in the pearl. Finally the Wyatt has thrown in the towel. This beautiful building is going to go to apartments, with only 25% of the units sold.

Condo sales drop in Pearl

The Wyatt reports sales of just 25 percent of its units.
By Alan Scaia
Friday, September 21, 2007
Developers in the Pearl report a drop in condominium sales. The owners of The Wyatt say they have sold just 25 percent of their condos, so they have decided to rent the units as apartments.