By JOSH BARBANEL

New York Times

Published: April 13, 2008

THE Salander-O’Reilly Galleries on East 71st Street near Madison Avenue provided a museumlike space to display old master paintings, tapestries and sculptures. Customers entered through the arched wrought-iron gates in the Italian Renaissance facade, up a few steps under a vaulted ceiling of coffered plaster. They stepped softly on the polished marble into a gallery with stone walls and a broad staircase designed by C. P. H. Gilbert in the 1920s.

22 East 71st Street

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WASHINGTON, April 01, 2008 -
As America celebrates the 40th anniversary of the passage of the Fair Housing Act this month, Realtors® continue to be outspoken advocates for fair housing, working with home buyers and sellers to ensure they receive equal access to affordable housing and homeownership. Read the rest of this entry »

The following is an excerpt of a CNBC article I ran across this morning. Here are a couple of questions to ponder.

1 – If investors get $7,000 for buying foreclosed properties, who pays the $7,000?

2 – If markets adjust based on supply and demand, what will happen when the government injects these artificial stimuli?

3 – What affect will this have on my personal real estate business?

Enjoy the excerpt! 

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CHICAGO (MarketWatch) — Mortgage application filings rose a seasonally adjusted 5.4% last week compared with the last week of March, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported on Wednesday.

Interest rates charged on fixed- and adjustable-rate mortgages increased across the board.

Applications for the week ended April 4 were up 10.9% compared with Read the rest of this entry »

An index of sales contracts on previously owned homes fell 1.9% in February from the prior month, the National Association of Realtors reported Tuesday.  The index, considered a leading indicator of existing home sales, was down 21.4% from the February 2007 level.

 There are a couple of ways you can look at this number. Read the rest of this entry »

Have you wondered how much longer this real estate downturn can last? Or how much further real estate prices can decline due to the credit crisis? I have; but I could not find any hard data to support Wall Street speculation so I did my own research and what I found is we still may have a ways to go. I believe that the housing bottom, which is obviously inevitable, may be close but I do not believe we are there just yet and I have compiled the data to support this theory. Read the rest of this entry »

Mortgage Rates Climb as Housing Grasps For Recovery

By Jeff Cox, Special to CNBC.com | 03 Apr 2008 | 11:33 AM ET

Mortgage rates edged upward over the past week, despite the Federal Reserve’s aggressive cost-cutting measures and Wall Street’s eagerness to get past the housing crisis.

AP

A 30-year fixed-rate mortgage now costs 5.88 percent, up slightly from last week’s 5.85 percent, according to Freddie Mac, the second-largest US provider of home loan financing.

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A friend of mine at Marketwatch.com, owned by CBS, wrote the following short article:

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Moody’s Investors Service said Thursday it may downgrade the ratings of Toll Brothers Inc., Toll Brothers Finance Corp., and Toll Corp. following a review. Moody’s has a Baa3 rating on Toll’s existing senior unsecured note issues and a Ba2 rating on the homebuilder’s subordinated note issues. “In the context of the further deterioration in the already weak outlook for the homebuilding industry due to substantially tighter lending standards, diminished consumer confidence, rising repossessions, and falling home prices, the review was prompted by Toll’s lower than industry average inventory reduction to date and its substantially greater than industry average exposure to the high density mid-rise and high-rise tower business,” Moody’s said in a statement. The rating agency plans to finish the review after Toll reports second-quarter results.

TRANSLATION: Toll Brothers, one of the largest builders of homes in the US, is going to have its credit rating downgraded due to a bad housing market.  This news confirms what we investors knew already. The market is starting to bottom out.  News reports like these should accelerate the overall housing market decline, which will provide many opportunities for huge profits for investors over the next 12 to 18 months.

NEW YORK 2:20pm EDT (AP) Housing stocks followed the broader markets higher after the government reported home building dropped for a record 24th straight month in February.

Ladies and Gentlemen – I think we are getting close to the bottom of this housing slump. My guess is, the correction should complete by October. Then it should be clear sailing for the next several months before prices dip again.  Prepare to make some SERIOUS money!