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发帖数: 5191 | 1 http://online.barrons.com/article/SB500014240531119047970045772
It hit with the ferocity of an Old Testament plague, wiping out large
populations of homeowners in the U.S. Five million of the country's 76
million mortgage holders have lost their homes to foreclosure or lender-
ordered short sales since 2006, and an estimated 14 million more owe more on
their homes than their properties are currently worth. In all, some $7.4
trillion in homeowners' equity has been destroyed, according to Mark Zandi,
chief economist at Moody's Analytics, and more than two million jobs in the
home-building industry disappeared.
At year end 2011, the S&P/Case-Shiller National U.S. Home Price Index fell
to a record low, 33.8% below the boom peak level, recorded in 2006's second
quarter. The descent has been all the more hideous in such once-manic
markets as Las Vegas, Phoenix and Miami, which, according to the Case-
Shiller 20-City Composite Index, have fallen 61%, 55% and 51%, respectively,
from their high-water marks.
Everyone has shared the pain. The negative wealth effect from the price
decline both contributed to the virulence of the Great Recession and crimped
the subsequent recovery.
Enlarge Image
Matt Collins for Barron's
Everyone has shared the pain. The negative wealth effect from the home-price
decline contributed to the virulence of the Great Recession.
Yet as grim as these year-end readings appear to be, there are signs that
the long nightmare for American homeowners is in its terminal stage, and
that, maybe, just maybe, home prices will bottom and begin to turn by the
spring of 2013—if not before. Certainly, the economy is doing better these
days—the sine qua non for improved demand for housing. Jobs numbers have
been up sharply three months in a row, leading to a jump in consumer
confidence of late.
The near-record low in mortgage rates and concomitant slide in home prices
has made houses and condos stunningly affordable (although stiff
underwriting standards have made getting home loans more difficult). This is
captured in the National Association of Realtors Housing Affordability
Index, which measures how much purchasing power a median-income family needs
in order to buy a median-priced home, using conventional mortgage financing.
This measure stood at 206 in January, which meant that the typical family
has more than double the income needed to purchase an average home. That
reading is more than twice the 102.7 at the peak of the bubble in July 2006.
MUCH OF THE HOME-PRICE DECLINE in the past six years has been fueled by the
distress sales of foreclosed properties, which typically sell at discounts
of 30% or more to dwellings in the conventional sales market. Distressed
sales, along with vacant houses and condos awaiting a sale, trash property
values for all the other homes in the immediate area.
These forced sales have weighed heavily on overall market prices that are
typically reported on a metropolitan-area basis that includes cities,
surrounding communities and exurbs, which are a good distance from downtown.
Within many metropolitan statistical areas, a bifurcated market has
developed in which a pricing recovery already is under way in communities
and neighborhoods far from the areas still reeling from past excesses of
subprime mortgages and predatory lending.
This phenomenon is showing up in the statistical service CoreLogic's Home
Price Index, which nicely separates distressed from nondistressed sales.
Indeed, for all of 2011, prices fell 4.7% nationally from the previous year'
s level. Excluding distressed sales, however, home prices dropped just 0.9%.
Enlarge Image
Of greater moment, perhaps, CoreLogic data show that nondistressed-sales
prices rose 0.2% month over month in December 2011 and 0.7% in January 2012.
Could this be an augur of better times to come?
Absolutely, in the opinion of Karl Case, professor emeritus at Wellesley
College and one of the progenitors of the Case-Shiller indexes, launched in
2002. "If you drill down in the numbers by zip code in the Boston area, as I
have done, you find that more desirable, affluent neighborhoods like Back
Bay and Beacon Hill are doing just fine now—while, say, Fall River is still
in the dumps and dragging down the entire Boston Metro area," he asserts.
This bifurcated market is seen all across the country. While the Nob Hill
neighborhood in San Francisco never saw values drop drastically and is now
recovering nicely, Stockton, Calif., remains in the dumps. It's a tale of
two cities elsewhere, too. The Santa Monica real-estate market is doing fine
, while the desert towns to the east are still suffering. And, in the Miami
environs, South Beach is strengthening; Hialeah, Fla., isn't.
Then there are areas that have been so depressed that the only direction now
seems to be up.
In fact, woebegone Detroit was the only place in the latest Case-Shiller
National Index to show an annual increase for December. True, the price
increase was a skimpy 0.5%, but that was lots better than the 12.8% slide
notched by the Atlanta area for 2011. And the only two metro areas that
showed month-over-month gains in December were Miami, up 0.2%, and Phoenix,
up 0.8%.
TO BE SURE, PLENTY OF headwinds remain for home sales. Unlike the stock
market, home prices display much long-term momentum and inertia. Prices, all
other factors being equal, tend to move in their past direction, and
lenders, chastened by recent experience, remain tight with mortgage credit.
Going through the home-loan application process these days is like
undergoing a financial colonoscopy. In contrast, during the salad years of
the housing boom, banks were shoving money at borrowers, with few questions
asked.
The biggest impediment to a turn in the home market remains the so-called
shadow inventory of some 3.671 million homes, according to estimates by Mark
Zandi of Moody's Analytics: those that remain somewhere in the foreclosure
pipeline. Payments on some are 90-plus days delinquent; others are already
lender-owned properties, known as REOs (real estate owned), that haven't yet
been listed for sale. | n******h
发帖数: 2482 | 2 Buy with both hands. All in!
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【在 b********2 的大作中提到】
: http://online.barrons.com/article/SB500014240531119047970045772
: It hit with the ferocity of an Old Testament plague, wiping out large
: populations of homeowners in the U.S. Five million of the country's 76
: million mortgage holders have lost their homes to foreclosure or lender-
: ordered short sales since 2006, and an estimated 14 million more owe more on
: their homes than their properties are currently worth. In all, some $7.4
: trillion in homeowners' equity has been destroyed, according to Mark Zandi,
: chief economist at Moody's Analytics, and more than two million jobs in the
: home-building industry disappeared.
: At year end 2011, the S&P/Case-Shiller National U.S. Home Price Index fell
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