What’s old is new again. Just posted to www.ZeroHedge.com, is a fairly comprehensive and enlightening recap of the recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) report which documents their stress testing of 53 large banking holding companies and published its findings last month.
This report and analysis is not only objective, but it’s consistent with many postings on this Blog. All […]

Finally, some good news. Commercial real estate markets across the U.S. continued on their trend of improvement in the second quarter 2010, according to Moody’s. The news is more than welcome, in that some upward pricing movement is always a good sign for the market, if not for the industries psyche. But the long-standing problems are […]

Talk about the housing dominoes now falling at a fast pace. Banks repossessed a record number of U.S. homes in the Q2 2010, but slowed new foreclosure notices.

There is a six-fold increase in homes starting the foreclosure process, and …
1 in 78 homes received at least one foreclosure filing in the 1st-half 2010 and […]

One more chart to put the home price development in a broader context. This chart compares residential home prices to commercial property prices.
Residential prices have fallen about 30% from their peak, while commercial property prices have fallen 40%.
 
Those are serious and significant declines that reflect a huge amount of price adjustment, easily enough to absorb excess […]

Fitch reported today the commercial real estate (CRE) values continue to decline giving rise to greater loan losses on CRE. On the average throughout 2009, lenders recovered ONLY 43 cents on the dollar on distressed loans. And there’s more bad news; they see the loss rate only going up.

The average loss severity rate or the ratio […]

So you thought commercial construction has been off? You’re right and in a big way ….
Completed construction projects in downtown Baltimore fell by 62 percent in 2009 as money for new offices, homes and shops virtually dried up across the region.
Downtown Partnership of Baltimore Inc., the marketing group for city businesses, released the figures in […]

Unadjusted Case-Shiller data for February 2010 indicated that on a sequential basis the decline in home prices is accelerating. And this is even with every stimulus imaginable thrown at the problem.
SO WHAT HAPPENS when the latest round of homebuyer subsidies runs out?
As the press release states: “Existing and new home sales, inventories and housing starts all show […]

Commercial Delinquencies Rise Again, Data Goes Ignored: Mortgage Bankers Association
Commercial Real Estate delinquency rates for loans held >30 days rose to 5.69% (as REITs continue to hit record highs)
CMBS debt has continued to have the highest delinquency rate of all debt by sector

ALARMINGLY, today we discover that more than 1.2 million households [have been] lost to the recession, according to a report issued this week by the Mortgage Bankers Association that looked at data between 2005 and 2008.
That number doesn’t include information from 2009, when job losses and foreclosures continued to rise. So it’s likely that the […]

 In a word, the residential mortgage picture is: BAD.
As reported by MarketWatch, more than 11.3 million homeowners — nearly one-fourth of all Americans with a mortgage — owe more on their loan (or are “under water”), than their home is now worth, according to a report released February 23, 2010, by FirstAmerican CoreLogic.

More than 10% of […]