Disappointing home sales has caused Wall Street to suffer losses today, resulting in plummeting stock prices and closing the Dow industrials at more than 300 points down.
AP news snapped pictures of numerous traders rubbing their heads on the trading floor as a result of today’s catastrophe.
On the one hand, Countrywide Financial Corp. sees its second-quarter profit affected by mortgage delinquencies and defaults even among the borrowers with good credit, and the company prepares for even more people defaulting on their mortgage payments as time goes on. On the other hand, DataQuick Information Systems in La Jolla is reporting that lenders are filing over 50,000 notices of default during a 2 month period between April 2007 and June 2007 – staggering increase in 158% compared to the second quarter in 2006.
It looks like the current trend of increasing foreclosures and mortgage defaults is only going to continue – maybe even get worse.
Can Southern California learn from Miami’s “condo glut”? According to Bloomberg, Miami developers keep building condos and create an oversupply that will push housing prices more than 30 percent and risking the local economy into brink of recession. There is not enough demand to meet the oversupply even as developers keep on building new condos. What is happening right now in Florida is an example of housing industry problems. Florida’s governor even joked that the national state bird would be “the building crane”. This building boom in the middle of a housing bust is seeing new residents from foreign countries, including central America and even Russia.
While we won’t seen high rises in SoCal, we’re starting to see increasing development of multiunit condos. Population increases have contributed to worsening traffic conditions as residents migrate to affordable areas and commute to work.
I’ve been asked to review a website aimed to help consumers’ moving experience, called MyMovingQuote.com. You may ask, “Why don’t I just let my fingers do the walking and go through the Yellow Pages to find a mover?” MyMovingQuote.com makes the answer obvious: you can get quotes from many different companies from one place, by specifying your moving needs and clicking on the [Get Quote] button.
There are a couple of ways you get get free quotes for your move: you can either click on the Local Movers page, click on the state you live in (ex. California), and find your city to get a listing of all local movers – or you can use this quote screen from the main page: More »
CNBC is reporting a 90% jump in housing foreclosures in May 2007 when compared with May 2006. Nevada is leading the foreclosure trend, followed by Colorado and California. California is the largest state hit by high foreclosure rates, increasing more than 350% from May 2006. Statistically in California, there is 1 foreclosure filed for every 308 households. California also has the sad honor of harboring the nation’s top 3 metro area foreclosures, with Stockton leading the pack at 1 foreclosure per 88 households, Merced at 1 foreclosure per 100 households, and Modesto at 1 foreclosure at 118 households. Other California cities with high foreclosure rates included Riverside-San Bernardino (No. 5), Vallejo-Fairfield (No. 6), and Sacramento (No. 7). Source: CNBC.
