KeNo's Housing and Economic Portal: Sunday April 3 Housing and Economic stories

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Condo owners can't sell, can't rent - (www.lexisnexis.com) Condo associations limit number of leases; Georgians feel trapped. Kristen and Ben Hudgins feel stuck. The couple lives in an Atlanta studio condo Ben bought in 2005 while a grad student at Georgia Tech. With plans to start a family, they haven't been able to sell --- even after dropping the price. If they owned a single-family home, their choice would be a no-brainer: rent it out and move on. But like so many other metro Atlanta condo owners, they can't do that because of a condominium association rule that limits how many units in a development can be rented. Such rental caps, typically 25 percent, are intended to ensure mostly owner-occupied communities. Lenders often won't make loans for condos in communities where rental caps are exceeded. So in today's tough market, the caps can leave condo owners with no options. The Hudginses are No. 33 on a waiting list to rent their home, up from No. 45 three years ago. They tried to get a hardship approval from their condo board association to lease their space but were denied because they can pay their mortgage and aren't moving because of a job transfer. The Hudginses' dilemma is shared by Will and Jennifer Franklin, stuck in a Brookhaven condo they haven't been able to sell and can't rent under the rental cap rule.

The more loved you feel, the less you value material things - (www.sciencedaily.com) People who feel more secure in receiving love and acceptance from others place less monetary value on their possessions, according to new research from the University of New Hampshire. The research was conducted by Edward Lemay, assistant professor of psychology at UNH, and colleagues at Yale University. The research is published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. Lemay and his colleagues found that people who had heightened feelings of interpersonal security -- a sense of being loved and accepted by others -- placed a lower monetary value on their possession than people who did not. In their experiments, the researchers measured how much people valued specific items, such as a blanket and a pen. In some instances, people who did not feel secure placed a value on an item that was five times greater than the value placed on the same item by more secure people.

Jan Schakowsky Introduces Bill To Raise Taxes For Ultra-Rich Elite - (www.huffingtonpost.com) Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) announced legislation on Wednesday that would create new tax brackets for earners who make significantly more than the baseline for the current top income bracket. Currently, the top marginal tax rate of 35 percent applies to income starting at $373,650, and the tax code fails to distinguish between earners making a few hundred thousand dollars a year and those making a few hundred million dollars a year. "LeBron James and LeBron James’s dentist: same difference," New Yorker financial columnist James Surowiecki quipped last year during early debate over the extension of the tax cuts enacted under former President George W. Bush. Meanwhile, income inequality continues to soar, as Schakowsky, one of the 18 members of President Barack Obama’s debt commission, noted on Wednesday.

Shocking suggestion that downpayments be raised to 20% - (finance.fortune.cnn.com) In an attempt to fix some of the problems that caused the housing bubble and financial crisis, banking regulators are coming up with new mortgage lending rules that will address what lower-risk quality mortgages should look like. The goal is to let lenders sell so-called "qualified residential mortgages" to investors without having to retain the risks. The question the Treasury Department must now answer is what makes a qualified mortgage? Regulators including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency are pushing for a 20% down payment on such loans. While the big banks like Bank of America (BAC) and JP Morgan Chase (JPM) have not formally weighed in, their lobbyists at American Bankers Association and the Mortgage Bankers Association say that requirement is far too high and would price many buyers out of the housing market. The debate will have broad implications for how homebuyers finance their mortgages. During the housing boom, many Americans took out home loans with little to no money down. When prices fell steeply following their mid-2006 peak, many borrowers didn't have enough equity to cushion the blow, leading to record foreclosures nationwide. Meanwhile, the big banks and investors holding these risky loans suffered huge losses.

Marin house prices plummet 18% in February - (www.marinij.com) Single-family home sales edged up slightly in Marin in February but the median price was off sharply compared with the same month last year, according to new figures from the county assessor's office. It marked the second straight month of a year-to-year uptick in sales volume combined with a drop in prices. "I thought the market was going to pick up this year — that was the prediction — but I am not seeing that this year," said Connie Irwin, a real estate agent with Pacific Union International in Kentfield. The county recorded 112 single-family home sales in February, up slightly from 107 in February 2010. But the median price dropped 18.9 percent over the same period, from $749,000 to $607,500. The pattern was similar month to month, with sales bumping up 12 percent in February from 100 in January and the median price dropping slightly, from $630,000 in January.