KeNo's Housing and Economic Portal: Friday March 11 Housing and Economic stories

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Friday March 11 Housing and Economic stories

KeNosHousingPortal.blogspot.com

TOP STORIES:

Chicago-area home prices fall again, reach lowest point since 2002 - (www.chicagorealestatedaily.com) An index of local home prices fell in December for the fourth straight month, hitting its lowest point in nearly nine years. The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller index of Chicago-area single-family home prices declined 1.4% from November to December and was down about 7.4% from year-earlier levels, according to a report released Tuesday. Chicago’s monthly decline was the fifth-biggest of 20 U.S. metropolitan areas tracked by Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller. The city's 1.4% drop was more severe than a 20-city index, which fell 1% from November to December. Prices fell on a month-over-month basis in 18 of the 20 cities, the report said. Chicago's index number of 117.86 was the lowest for the area since it was 117.66 in March 2002, according to S&P data. The local index was nearly as low, at 119.71, in March 2010.

Freddie Single Family Chief Gets a 'Wells Notice' - (www.nationalmortgagenews.com) Freddie Mac late Thursday said Donald J. Bisenius, executive vice president of its single-family credit guarantee business, received a 'Wells Notice,' which means the Securities and Exchange Commission is considering filing civil charges against him. The Wells notice stems from an SEC inquiry dating back to 2008. At press time no further details were available. The company had no comment except to say that Bisenius is retiring from the company. Bisenius was named executive vice president of single-family credit in May 2009. He has been with the government controlled GSE since 1992 when he joined as director of portfolio quality. Two weeks ago CoreLogic revealed that its chief financial officer, Anthony 'Buddy' Piszel, had resigned because he received a Wells notice related to his tenure at Freddie Mac. Piszel served as CFO of Freddie from November 2006 to September 2008.

An Email from Vegas - (www.wallstreetexaminer.com) I was listing and selling a lot of REO's and now the banks want to hold back on the inventory ( they say that only 30% of foreclosed properties are on the market) because of fear of further declines in the market. Yes more inventory may cause lower prices, but we would certainly have a lot more sales. What does this really mean at the bottom of the food chain...More jobs...How? Every foreclosure that I have sold in the past 4 years needed lots of work just to be made barely livable. So what does a new owner of one of these homes do...spend lots of money on sinks, bathtubs, paint carpets, landscaping, roofing, appliances etc. Where do they go to get this stuff....Home Depot, Lowes and their local lumber yards and appliance stores.

The Foreclosure Of Patricia Kluge's Once $100 Million Estate - (blogs.forbes.com) In 1990 self-made media billionaire,John Kluge, and his third wife, Patricia, called their marriage quits. The divorce settlement broke records, which perhaps is not all that surprising since Kluge was, with a$5 billion empire, the world’s wealthiest man that year. (For more on Kluge, check out my colleague Clare O’Connor’s coverage here) Patricia Kluge walked away with alimony payments of $1.6 million per week (the interest accrued on one billion dollars per year at the time). But she also snagged some prime real estate: a hunting lodge in the Scottish Highlands valued then at $20 million and an opulent 45-room Virginia estate called Albemarle. Last week a new owner took possession of the grand Virginia estate: Bank of America. The bank giant “bought” the eight bedroom, 13 bath, 19th century-inspired mansion Wednesday morning on the Charlottesville courthouse steps. It was the top bidder in a foreclosure auction.

In Defense Of A Little Class Warfare - (www.tnr.com) The Tax Policy Center's Rachel Johnson looks at how much you'd have to jack up tax rates on the rich in order to meet President Obama's deficit-reduction goals: If Washington is going to need new tax revenues to bring the deficit under control—which it inevitably will– I increasingly wonder where the cash is going to come from. If you listen to what President Obama has been saying in recent days, it appears that while corporations and nearly all individuals and families would avoid any tax hit at all, a handful of high-income households would get socked with major increases. These tax hikes would be so big, in fact, that top-bracket taxpayers might end up paying a rate of 67 percent on ordinary income and nearly 50 percent on capital gains. TPC colleague Howard Gleckman notes that it will never happen. Andrew Sullivan comments, "Really? Go read Chait. He's almost drooling at the prospect."