Today’s release of the S&P/Case-Shiller home price indices for May 2009 showed the first month-to-month gain in 34 months (almost 3 years!).
Clearly this is a notable development but it’s important to put today’s results in perspective before getting to confident that even the initial leg of the declining trend has ceased.

First, it’s important to recognize […]

Governor Martin O’Malley and Lieutenant Governor Anthony Brown released data in the form of a StateStat Update on foreclosure prevention outreach efforts in Maryland:

Through the first six months of 2009, approximately 18,112 foreclosure filings occurred in
Maryland.
Compared with 17,625 filings for the same period last year, this represents a growth of about 2.8 percent.
In […]

Mortgages on commercial property held by U.S. banks have been failing at the fastest rate in nearly 20 years, the Wall Street Journal said. 
Losses on loans used to finance commercial spaces would possibly reach about $30 billion by the end of 2009 at the current rate.  The $30 billion estimate is based on financial reports […]

Moody’s REAL CPPI July 2009 Report

So Much Thats False & Nutty_07!08!09

THE “HALF-EMPTY” PERSPECTIVE: It is estimated that more than 50 percent of American homeowners are either in or near a negative equity situation. And if all that is not bad enough, check out the latest news:

 U.S. mortgage applications plunged to a seven-month low last week as demand for home refinancing loans tumbled 30 percent, data […]

It’s a buyers market, for sure. Nope. No good news here for sellers. Would you believe that Malls in the Northeast would sell for 50% off their highs …
As reported in today at www.ZeroHedge.com, finally we get a market test valuation of the Commercial Real Estate marketplace.   The Buffalo News reports that REIT Developers […]

SeekingAlpha’s Jeffrey Bernstein makes the case that – as a friend of mines 15 year old son Max likes to say —  “things are gonna get a whole lot worse before it starts to get betta.”  
Some glass-half-full rosy-eyed thinkers have even argued that the economy is now fixed. You know all the green-shoots and mustard seeds […]

We all learn and process information differently. Some have found it difficult to understand the current financial crisis and what the government is doing to stimulate the economy.
So here is another way to visualize the capital allocated from/to financial companies during the current financial crisis.
Interestingly, the chart created by Keefe, Bruyette & Woods concludes that […]

As published in Zero Hedge, where their tag line signals the sentiment ……  “on a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero,” it is reported that the result of the stress test in the just published S&P “Scenario Analysis: Standard & Poor’s Expects the Downgrade Risk To Be High For Recent-Vintage U.SCMBS […]