KeNo's Housing and Economic Portal: Wednesday April 6 Housing and Economic stories

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Nearly 20% of Florida houses are vacant - (finance.yahoo.com) It's not always easy to feel sorry for sunny Florida. But it just got hit with another blow. On Thursday, the Census Bureau revealed that 18% -- or 1.6 million -- of the Sunshine State's homes are sitting vacant. That's a rise of more than 63% over the past 10 years. Having this amount of oversupply on the market will keep home prices depressed and slow any recovery. During the housing boom, Florida was among the hottest real estate markets in the nation. Homes were snapped up by the state's growing population as well as hordes of investors confident that prices would continue to soar. "You'd drive through downtown Miami and see 30 or 40 cranes sticking up in the air," said Michael Larson, a housing market analyst for Weiss Research. The bust brought an end to that. Development ground to a halt. Retirees stopped relocating. And prices started falling and vacancies rising. "Housing went from being the preeminent investment of choice to toxic waste," added Richard DeKaser, an economist with the Parthenon Group.

Ex-SDSU coach sells house for $518,000 loss - - (www.signonsandiego.com) Former San Diego State head football coach Chuck Long has avoided having his house auctioned off next week by selling it for a loss of $518,000.

His home in Poway entered the foreclosure process after Long had defaulted on his payments last year, according to county records. It was scheduled to be auctioned off in a trustee's sale next Wednesday in Oceanside, but the lender instead accepted a short sale – a transaction in which a house is sold for less than what the owner owes on a mortgage. Long bought the four-bedroom home in 2007 for $1.368 million. He recently sold it for $850,000, a 38 percent loss. As a result of the short sale, the auction was canceled this week.

Showdown in the Sunshine State - (www.theatlantic.com) Two of Wall Street's savviest value investors, Bruce Berkowitz and David Einhorn, pride themselves on their rigorous analysis. Now they're locked in a scorched-earth dispute over the value of some Florida real estate….. I had gone to the Florida Panhandle to find out more about an outfit named the St. Joe Company. It sounds like the sort of place that makes designer coffee cake or handcrafted pine furniture, but until recently it was the largest landowner in Florida, a former timber barony that has spent the past decade or so transforming itself into a real-estate developer. Its current roster of developments covers acres of some of the world’s most beautiful beachfront property: sugar-white sand and emerald-green waters unfolding along a pristine, undeveloped coastline. If heaven has beaches, this is what they look like. I was visiting the beaches because they seemed to hold the key to a very public dispute over the value of St. Joe Company’s assets, and its stock price, that was taking place between two money managers named David Einhorn and Bruce Berkowitz. Both are fairly famous “value investors” of the Warren Buffett school—that is, they rely on analyses of stocks’ fundamentals to reveal stocks that are exceptionally cheap, or outrageously expensive. Both had put rather a lot of money where their mouths were, and that money was talking, loudly. Einhorn’s money was shorting the stock, practically screaming that the company was way overvalued. Meanwhile, Berkowitz’s nearly 30 percent stake in St. Joe Company was proclaiming that the company’s best days were yet to come—and it was speaking not only for Berkowitz, but for all the individual investors who had poured billions into his Fairholme Funds.

Losing Big - $65,000 Big - On Our First House - (finance.yahoo.com) Let me preface this by saying that I never wanted to buy a home. I knew the financial risks, the fact that in most cases you have to stay in a home a long time to even have a chance of making it a profitable investment, and that a home can take a lot of effort and money to maintain. My wife, on the other hand, just couldn't fathom the idea of not purchasing a house once our son was born even though we had lived together happily in various apartments for almost 10 years. While I tried in vain to explain the many downsides to home ownership, I just couldn't break through to her, and therefore gave in as any good husband should. Big mistake! Three years after purchasing our home in the spring of 2008, my wife now sees the light and finds the idea of home ownership as repugnant as I always have. Due to a multitude of reasons and factors, we decided to put our home on the market. It's now been over a year and we've yet to sell, but when we do, we stand to lose a boatload of money. As hard as it is to believe at times, and while the two often correlate, sometimes happiness really is more important than money.

Foreclosure vote could rock the banks - (finance.fortune.cnn.com) The big banks face fresh scrutiny of their handling of the mortgage mess – from their own boards, no less. Shareholders at Bank of America (BAC), Citigroup (C) and Wells Fargo (WFC) could vote this spring to compel their audit committees to investigate the banks' mortgage and foreclosure practices, and report back by fall. The votes will come despite much eye-rolling from the banks, which have tended to be less than forthcoming on the subject. Bank of America and Citi petitioned regulators to keep shareholders from voting on the proposal, which is sponsored by the New York City pension funds led by city comptroller John C. Liu. But the Securities and Exchange Commission ruled this month that the votes must go on. "An independent examination of bank foreclosure practices is needed to reassure shareholders and protect pensioners and taxpayers," said Liu, a Democrat who has beenpushing since last fall for bank boards to wake up and investigate. "Regrettably, the banks have failed us on this and even went so far as to try and kick us off the ballot, but the shareholders have prevailed."