KeNo's Housing and Economic Portal: Monday September 12 Housing and Economic stories

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In Baltimore, houses for $10,000 and less - (www.baltimoresun.com) Andrew Wells is hoping to buy a Baltimore home for around the cost of an old car: Less than $10,000. Turns out he's in good company. One of every 10 city homes sold during the first half of the year — about 275 in all — fell in that price range. Twice as many sold for under $20,000. Often foreclosures, these properties are usually in bad shape but seem like deals to real estate investors and the occasional hopeful owner-occupier — such as Wells. "I don't have to worry about trying to get a loan," said Wells, 40, a bill-processing technician who works in Annapolis. "That was the purpose of me searching in that price range. I could buy something, pay cash, and I could live in it and renovate at the same time." Almost exclusively a city phenomenon — very few homes in Baltimore's suburbs sold for less than $10,000 — it's a market that has expanded rapidly. More city homes sold for less than $10,000 between January and June than in all of 2009 and 2010 combined. Dozens of city neighborhoods had at least one such sale this year. As very cheap homes change hands, average sale prices in Baltimore have plummeted. Seventy city neighborhoods saw average prices drop more than 20 percent versus a year ago, according to a Baltimore Sun analysis of data from Metropolitan Regional Information Systems. That's half of the neighborhoods with enough sales to allow for comparison.

Lenders delay market bottom, extend squatting benefits - (www.irvinehousingblog.com) It appears that the foreclosure processing delays, combined with the smorgasbord of national and state-level foreclosure prevention efforts -- including loan modifications, lender-borrower mediations and mortgage payment assistance for the unemployed --may be allowing more distressed homeowners to stave off foreclosure. No, it is allowing more delinquent mortgage squatters to stay in homes that should be resold to those who are willing and able to pay for them. "Unfortunately, the falloff in foreclosures is not based on a robust recovery in the housing market but on short-term interventions and delays that will extend the current housing market woes into 2012 and beyond," Saccacio continued. Yes, the slowdown in foreclosure activity will delay the bottom and allow more squatting.

Wild swings in stock market knock out IPOs - (www.yahoo.com) Companies have withdrawn initial public offerings this month at a pace not seen since December 2008. Only four have dared go public during three weeks marked by wild price swings and more than 10 percent declines in the major stock indexes. Prior to the recent slowdown in IPOs, many market watchers had predicted this year would be the strongest for public debuts since before the recession began. They expected more than 200 IPOs. It's become "a little ambitious" to expect that many debuts this year in light of what's happened to markets in August, said David Menlow of research firm IPO Financial. The Dow Jones industrial average has dropped 13 percent, while the S&P 500 is off 15 percent. And companies have likely noticed the nearly 20 percent drop in Pandora Media Inc. and the 26 percent decline in LinkedIn Corp., two wildly popular IPOs from earlier this year.

Republican Congressman Can't Explain How Bush Tax Cuts Created Jobs - (www.thinkprogress.org) Last week, Rep. Randy Hultgren (R-IL) held a town hall meeting in Geneva, Illinois where he was peppered with questions about the Bush tax cuts. A woman stood up and asked him to explain how the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy created jobs for Americans. Hultgren repeatedly avoided answering the question, instead choosing to bash the stimulus or claim Illinois’ economy was hurt by higher taxes. Members of the audience continually asked him “Where’s the evidence?” but he avoided providing any answer:

We're in a Bubble and It's Not the Internet. It's Higher Education. - (www.techcrunch.com) Instead, for Thiel, the bubble that has taken the place of housing is the higher education bubble. “A true bubble is when something is overvalued and intensely believed,” he says. “Education may be the only thing people still believe in in the United States. To question education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It’s like telling the world there’s no Santa Claus.” Like the housing bubble, the education bubble is about security and insurance against the future. Both whisper a seductive promise into the ears of worried Americans: Do this and you will be safe. The excesses of both were always excused by a core national belief that no matter what happens in the world, these were the best investments you could make. Housing prices would always go up, and you will always make more money if you are college educated. Like any good bubble, this belief– while rooted in truth– gets pushed to unhealthy levels. Thiel talks about consumption masquerading as investment during the housing bubble, as people would take out speculative interest-only loans to get a bigger house with a pool and tell themselves they were being frugal and saving for retirement. Similarly, the idea that attending Harvard is all about learning? Yeah. No one pays a quarter of a million dollars just to read Chaucer. The implicit promise is that you work hard to get there, and then you are set for life. It can lead to an unhealthy sense of entitlement. “It’s what you’ve been told all your life, and it’s how schools rationalize a quarter of a million dollars in debt,” Thiel says.