Sunday, May 20, 2012

Monday May 21 Housing and Economic stories



TOP STORIES:

Dealing With Student Debt - (www.nytimes.com) FOR many recent college graduates, the dream of owning a home may have to be postponed awhile as they first grapple with repaying mounds of education loans. Outstanding student loan debt now totals over $1 trillion, according to areport last month from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That surpasses the amount owned on all credit cards in the United States. Student debt has become an issue in the presidential race, with both President Obama and Mitt Romney, the presumed Republican nominee, supporting efforts to extend loan subsidies set to expire in July. Last year alone, students took out $117 billion just in federal loans. And it’s no wonder: According to the College Board, the average annual cost of out-of-state tuition, room and board at a public institution is $29,657; at a private nonprofit, it is $38,589.

How Wall Street Layoffs Will Affect The Housing Market - (www.forbes.com) Investment banks including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan ChaseCitigroup and Morgan Stanley may  slash and burn dozens of jobs as soon as next month, as my colleague Halah Touryalai reports. And these positions may never be replaced. It’s the latest round of layoffs for Wall Street, which let thousands of workers, particularly traders, go in 2011. Wall Streeters have already suffered some discouraging news this year, as cash bonuses for work done in 2011 were cut and capped. A February report estimated that Wall Street bonuses dropped 14% from 2010 to 2011. For staffers at firms like Bank of America and Citigroup, the cuts were as high as 30% and bonuses at Morgan stanley were capped at $125,000. All that cost-cutting has had repercussions that fan out past that eight-block swath of downtown Manhattan street where smocked traders scream in pits and analysts calculate risk. In years past, Wall Street has always affected Main Street. Literally. “The finance sector plays a very large role in New York City and as a result of that, those people play an overall role in the residential real estate market,” explains Gary Malin, president of Citi Habitats, a New York City-based realty firm.

Smart Family Living in Tiny House to Build Their Future Now - (www.tinyhousetalk.com) A few days ago Anderson Cooper featured a family who is living in a tiny house. They’re still young with two small children who are getting to share a sleeping loft with each other. But don’t worry- the plan is to save up for a ‘small’ house in the very near future. They plan on paying for it in cash. When you take the tour I think some of you will agree with me that the home is tiny yet still luxurious with its tongue and groove pine walls and elegant simplicity. The family moved into this tiny house from a 1,500 square foot 3 bedroom home. A drastic change, but with pleasing results. Mom is able to save her entire paychecks. They used Craigslist to find salvaged/reclaimed materials to keep construction costs low and did most of the work themselves.

Strangling in Student Loan Debt, What to do? - (www.cnbc.com) What's a country to do? Fifteen percent of Americans owe $870 billion in student loans, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and about two-thirds who hold the loans are under age 30. President Barack Obama and GOP opponent Mitt Romney seem to agree on the answer. They are now on record for freezing the current interest rates on a popular federal loan for poorer and middle-class students. The issue is looming because the rate will double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent on July 1 without intervention by Congress, an expiration date chosen in 2007 when a Democratic Congress voted to chop the rate in half.

U.S. Homeownership Hits Decade Low - (www.gallup.com) The 62% of Americans who say they own their own home marks a new low since Gallup began tracking self-reported homeownership in 2001. The current level of homeownership marks a decline from 68% in 2011. For most of the prior decade, roughly seven in 10 Americans reported owning their own home. While the recession and financial crisis took place in 2008-2009, homeownership rates didn't begin to reflect the bursting of the housing bubble until 2010, when 65% of Americans reported owning their own home -- the lowest level recorded before this year. Record-Low 53% of Americans Say Their Home's Value Has Increased





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