Home Foreclosures Almost Double in July as Rates Rise

Aug. 21 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. homes facing foreclosure almost doubled in July as property owners with adjustable-rate mortgages saw their payments rise and were unable to refinance because of the subprime crisis, RealtyTrac Inc. said.
Lenders sent 179,599 notices of default, scheduled auctions or bank repossessions last month, a 93 percent increase from a year earlier, Irvine, California-based RealtyTrac said today in a statement. California, Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Georgia accounted for more than half of the country's total filings.
An increase in foreclosures will add more homes to the market and further erode values. U.S. home sales dropped to a four-year low in the second quarter and prices fell in a third of U.S. cities, according to the National Association of Realtors. In June, a nearly nine-month supply of houses was on the market, double that of two years ago.
``Home equity has been a major factor in consumer spending, and the major concern is we'll go into a recession as that equity dries up,'' said Susan Wachter, professor of real estate at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School in Philadelphia. ``Consumer spending drove us out of the last recession in 1991, and we might see a reversal of that now.''
`A Little Worse'

U.S. Housing Starts Dropped in July to 10-Year Low

Aug. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Builders in the U.S. started work on the fewest homes in a decade in July as the industry showed no sign of recovering from an 18-month recession.

The greater-than-forecast 6.1 percent decrease to an annual rate of 1.381 million followed a 1.47 million pace in June, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. Building permits also fell to a 10-year low.

Stock markets worldwide have tumbled on concern subprime mortgage defaults will bankrupt more lenders and destabilize the financial system. U.S. consumer spending, which makes up more than two-thirds of the economy, may weaken as falling real- estate prices and limits on borrowing prevent owners from tapping home equity, economists said.

``Even the most ambitious homebuilders will think twice about initiating new projects,'' said Lindsey Piegza, an analyst at FTN Financial in New York. ``Falling prices, sluggish demand, and dwindling mortgage credit availability will continue to weigh heavily on residential construction.''

Economists had forecast a decline in housing starts to a 1.4 million unit pace, from an originally reported 1.467 million in June, according to the median of 75 forecasts in a Bloomberg News survey. Estimates ranged from 1.35 million to 1.47 million. Construction was down 21 percent from July 2006.

Permits, a sign of future construction, decreased 2.8 percent to a 1.373 million annual pace, the lowest since October 1996. They were also forecast to drop to a 1.4 million rate, according to the survey median, with projections ranging from 1.375 million to 1.441 million.

Toll Brothers Inc., the largest U.S. luxury-home builder, said Aug. 8 that third-quarter revenue dropped 21 percent as the new credit restrictions reduced the pool of potential buyers.

``With the uncertainties roiling the mortgage markets right now, the pace of home sales could slow further until the credit markets settle down and sort themselves out,'' Robert Toll, chief executive officer of the Horsham, Pennsylvania-based company, said in a conference call with analysts. ``If the economy gets worse, I think that you could see a much lengthier downturn for housing.''

Fleckenstein (and others) State the Deflation Case

SPOT GOLD DOWN $7.00+ THIS MORNING?

DEFLATION?

"....Given all our problems related to debt, I thought it might be worthwhile, particularly for new readers, to provide a brief history leading up to where we are now.

Taking a big step back, the Bank of Japan acted foolishly throughout the 1980s, which caused that country to experience enormous real-estate and stock bubbles. Japan's stock bubble was really a residue of its real-estate bubble -- actually a credit bubble, as the banks lent money to any corporation with a pulse. (Does that sound familiar?)

Then the institutions that lent the money took forever to write off the bad loans. That's why Japan's real-estate market, stock market and economy did so poorly for more than a decade.

Free money exacts a price

After [the dotcom] bubble, Greenspan took a page out of the Bank of Japan's book and lowered rates to 1%. That helped precipitate the housing bubble here that ended in 2005.

As to why the unwinding has taken so long to commence, only recently has the cause become clear: the mark-to-model fantasy employed by those who have bought the sliced-and-diced mortgage paper.

But the fantasy is unraveling as these structured-credit products are now slowly being marked to market. Just as virtually every subprime-mortgage lender has blown up, Alt-A lenders (the next rung up the ladder creditwise) will blow up -- and, ultimately, many hedge funds will blow up, though we're in the early days of that process.

In the years since our equity bubble peaked, trillions of dollars' worth of debt have piled up throughout corporate America. So now, as we enter recession, we will experience not just a weak economy, real-estate market and stock market, but the exacerbating effect of a mountain of bad debt, completing the analogy to Japan of the 1990s.

Like it or not (and I suspect he might not because he did not use the D-Word itself) Fleckenstein described how and why a Japanese style deflation is headed for the US.

This explains in part why it feels so treacherous right now. If the markets have decided that too much credit is too easily available, as it appears they already have, then the Fed can simply lower rates to make credit more available. Problem solved. But what if there are two separate but related forces at work: tightening lending standards and reduced credit appetites? Then the Fed has something more serious on their hands.

The key in all of this is not inflation, as most believe. The Fed says they are most worried about inflation risks, but the reality is that they are most worried about deflation risks. Always. Always deflation. The Fed has no choice but to always remind us that the risks are tilted toward inflation, just as the Treasury Secretary, whichever one happens to be in office at the time, must always say that the U.S. maintains a strong dollar policy, even if monetary policy and fiscal policy are conspiring to devalue the dollar.

As for equities, when the dollar begins to rise, and it appears the Fed finally will begin to cut rates, as they inevitably must to try and sustain credit consumption, then it's time to worry. That means deflation is winning.

Addendum

My friend who posts on Kitco under the alias "Trotsky" just pinged me with this comment: "absolutely correct - this at the root of the misunderstandings out there. because credit is used as a money substitute in the financial markets, it acts as an inflationary force in the asset markets (and this spills over into the real world as the imaginary wealth thus created leads to overconsumption and malinvestments), but it is all ephemeral - in the end, it is still credit, not money. as soon as money is needed in lieu of credit, such as has now happened in the CMO and CDO markets, it becomes clear that the money simply isn't there."

Aug 8, 2007
Mike Shedlock / Mish
email: Mish
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/