Deadline Newsroom Update 2/29/08

Deadline Newsroom Update -- Like we say, all the news that really hits home and this week you really need these hits: Tax breaks, on the house; Karma: My Name Is REO; Selling strategies you may have overlooked; Indoor air quality; Equity sharing; Foreclosure bussing; More 'Hope Now'; Luxury housing booming on; Marin County hasn't quite gone to The Birds; Architect choosing tips and more.

Compiled by the Deadline Newsroom
© 2008 DeadlineNews.Com

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FROM THE DEADLINE NEWSROOM

• Top Story: Dozen Tax Breaks, On The House (The Original)

• Just as important: Banking Karma: California Foreclosures Outpace Sales

Market News

Time For A Major Homeowner Bailout?

Echo Boomers Invade West, Urban Cores

Update 2008: Marin County, CA

Consumer News

Selling Strategies To Ease The Squeeze

Get On The Bus, Take The 'F' Line

Indoor Air Quality Management At Home

Blueprint For Choosing The Right Architect

Second Home Front

Luxury Housing Booms On

Finance News

Ins, Outs Of Equity Sharing

Mortgage 'Lifeline' For More 'Hope Now'

© 2008 DeadlineNews.Com

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NEWS FROM ELSEWHERE THAT ALSO HITS HOME

Consumer
Will Bargain Hunters Lift Spring Market
23 Million TV Sets May Go Dark In DTV Switchover
Pitching Boomers Housing That Is Green As Their Hair Goes Gray
The Real Price Of Going Green With Your House

Finance, Credit
Mortgages: 40 Is The New 30
Bush To Mortgage Relief Bill...Who Voted For This Guy?
1031 Tax Exchanges To Apply To Variety of Second Homes
One In 10 Home Loans Under Water
FHASecure Helps 100,000 Americans Stay In Their Homes
Treasury Secretary Dismisses Mortgage Rescue Plans
U.S. Mortgage Rates Erase Three Months Of Declines
Fewer Consumers Get Mortgage
Urban Forelcosures Up
Fannie Mae Combats Appraisal Fraud

MARKETS (Who said the market would turn around in 2008?)
This House Was A Steal
Rural Iowa's Foreclosure Problems
Subprime Ghost Town
Bets Off In All But 5 of 61 Vegas ZIP Codes
How Bad Is It, Really?
Case Shiller Reveals Across-the-Board Housing Market Declines
Declining Home Prices, Rising Mortgage Rates

DeadlineNews.Com: 'Best Repurposing Of A Realty Journalist'
"Fun, credible, astute and up to date."

TRENDS/COMMENTARY
Mortgage Crisis A '50-state Katrina'
Credit Panic
NAHB Condemns Domestic Terrorism Near Seattle
So Many Empty Homes, So Few Solultions
Investment Firms Buying Mortgages

BUSINESS/COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE
Fannie, Freddie To New York: No More Loaded Appraisals
Why Don't Realtors Use Better Photos?
Fed Wants Report On Loan Modifications
Banks To Provide Data On Mortgages
Foreclosure Bus Tours Deemed 'Negative News'
Christ Almighty! Wasn't the whole idea to get marketing publicity? What do real estate people WANT?

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Time For A Major Homeowner Bailout?

With some 9 million homeowners holding an incentive to dump their homes, a real homeowner bailout is beginning to look a lot better than what's in store otherwise.

by Broderick Perkins
© 2008 DeadlineNews.Com

Deadline Newsroom - It may not be such a bad idea to bailout millions homeowners who are in over their heads with mortgage debt.

Sure, many homeowners are to blame for their housing lust -- developed with a little boost from their friendly neighborhood real estate dealers -- but there's a bigger picture.

The economy is at stake.

Housing has long been considered an economic cornerstone. People buy homes. Homes gain value. People cash in on that value and buy stuff. As we all know, consumer spending is what really fuels the economy. Housing, after the dot com bust, carried the economy on its rooftop for years.

Unfortunately, the cycle is done. The trend is down. Home values are falling, faster and faster. Falling home prices are leaving consumers short of that extra home-based, economy-boosting, discretionary cash.

Mortgage lenders, who once poured mortgage money into the streets, now cover their assets and are reluctant to finance homes with falling values or to help the vast majority of homeowners facing falling fortunes.

Toss more foreclosures, short sales, auction sales and other homes with weakened values into an already over-supplied housing market and you get prices squeezed even more.

It's a vicious circle.

Take California.

The year got off to a rousing start in January when for the first time in documented history, there were more homes sold at foreclosure auctions than condos and single-family homes on the open resale market, according to data mash from ForeclosureRadar.com and DataQuick.

Meanwhile, January home sales in the Golden State were in the tank and prices were whipped, down a whopping 22 percent from a year ago, according to the California Association of Realtors (CAR).

California will always have Paris and celebrity stars gone wild, the Steve Jobses and the industries of nerds, so-real vacation playlands that serve as backdrops for Hollywood movies, and its own produce to eat, but most markets won't be so lucky.

They may follow California into a market of doom. Coming out is going to be tough.

Right now, without some sort of bailout (and most Americans want one), millions of homeowners have nothing but an incentive to dump their homes on the market. Their mortgages are larger than the value of their homes.

Moody's Economy.com recently reported that one in 10 homeowners, nearly 9 million of them, have homes that aren't worth the balance on their mortgage.

The threat of more depressed value homes on the market recently prompted Mark Zandi, Economy.com's chief economist to forecast a home price drop of 20 percent from peak price levels in 2006.

He says each foreclosure on a neighborhood block reduces the value of all homes on that block by almost 1.5 percent.

U.S. home prices were already down nearly 9 percent by the final quarter of 2007, compared to the same period in 2006, according to the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller Home Price Index.

That's the steepest decline in the index's 20-year history.

An unscientific poll running for months now on the news-that-really-hits-home Deadline Newsroom blog is leaning toward a "later than 2010" recovery for the housing market.

Experts at the Center for American Progress say, even if the credit market improved, a freefall in home prices due to excess inventories is likely to push the housing market bottom way out beyond the horizon of 2009.

And that's just the bottom. A real recovery will take much longer.

Market conditions today are a lot like the homeowner who waits until the last minute to try to escape foreclosure.

If there isn't a bail out now, options leave the table and prolonged distress could force a really costly bailout years down the road.

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© 2008 DeadlineNews.Com

Broderick Perkins, an award-winning consumer journalist of 30 years, is publisher and executive editor of San Jose, CA-based DeadlineNews.Com, a real estate news and consulting service, and the new Deadline Newsroom, DeadlineNews.Com's new backshop. In both cases, it's where all the news really hits home.

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Echo Boomers Invade West, Urban Cores

A group of brash, smart, high-performance twenty-somethings are taking over our nation's urban centers. They populate nearly half of Dallas' urban core.

by Broderick Perkins
© 2008 DeadlineNews.Com

Deadline Newsroom - They are brash, smart, high-performance twenty-somethings and they may be taking over our nation's urban centers.

But that's a good thing, because this young demographic group is in position to do for the next housing boom what their parents did for the last one.

Call them "Gen-Yers," "Echo Boomers" or maybe even "You Tubers" or "iPod Accessories." They are the grown-up kids of baby boomers, born as early as 1977, they are 76 million strong and, most significantly, they are ready to leave the nest.

Officially called "Generation Y," the demographic is shedding its "slacker" image, each year earning more than $210 billion and pumping some $170 billion of those earnings back into the economy.

Newport Beach, CA-based The Concord Group, a boutique real estate consulting firm, says when these boomer babies choose a crib, home is often in the hip urban habitats of the southwest.

Emma Tyaransen, a principal and director at the Concord Group, says Generation Y has created a ground zero in Dallas where they make up nearly half the city's urban core population.

They are forcing real estate developers, city planners and business owners to sit up and take notice.

Don't try to spoon feed them cookie-cutter tract homes or suburban sprawl. They are 30 percent more likely to live within three miles of a city center.

They prefer condos, lofts and townhomes with character, distinctive architecture, and style. Think urban density, infill, transit oriented development and the kind of adaptive reuse of existing properties that typically comes with today's downtown redevelopment efforts.

Tyaransen says their mall rat days are over and they prefer retail close in, right outside their door, as part of mixed use housing developments. They like the concentrated live-work-play environments of today's' inner city condo, loft and townhome developments.

And luckily for the planet, their housing choice comes with a bonus.

Tyaransen says when Gen-Yers set up house, as a consequence of where they choose to live, they have a higher "green" profile and a smaller carbon footprint than their parents who live in larger, less energy-efficient homes outside the city core.

Advertise on DeadlineNews.Com
© 2008 DeadlineNews.Com

Broderick Perkins, an award-winning consumer journalist of 30 years, is publisher and executive editor of San Jose, CA-based DeadlineNews.Com, a real estate news and consulting service, and the new Deadline Newsroom, DeadlineNews.Com's new backshop. In both cases, it's where all the news really hits home.

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DeadlineNews.Com's Editorial Content Is Intellectual Property • Unauthorized Use Is A Federal Crime

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