BREAKING NEWS
June 18, 2006
Heartbreak Along Mockingbird Lane
Foreclosing on the American Dream
The two Brighton homes in the duplex at 836 and 838 Mockingbird Lane, center, were among 23 foreclosed in the neighborhood since 2001. Margie Ibarra worried about paying $160,500 for half a duplex. She knew she was buying it with no money down and a pair of home loans, one carrying a double-digit interest rate.
But she dreamed of spending her life on a peaceful street at the edge of Brighton - and of owning 710 Mockingbird Lane free and clear when she retired. Instead, two years after she moved in, she lost the first home she ever bought to a foreclosure.
A Hard Time Getting Out
At a glance, Mockingbird Lane hardly seems a place where numerous families lost their homes. There are tricycles in yards, welcome signs on front doors, flags waving on porches. Yet in a 7-year-old neighborhood, there are less welcome signs. Dead lawns. Chiquita banana boxes left on the steps of an abandoned home. A no-entry warning on another locked up since December. A month-old auction sign in front of another.
Around the loop from Mockingbird Street to Mockingbird Lane, eight homes are for sale. Six others have been foreclosed in the past year. Renters occupy a growing share of duplexes built for homeowners.
Heather and Brian Lollar have lived here since the neighborhood was built. Ibarra once lived next door. "It was such a nice neighborhood when we moved in," Heather Lollar said. "It still is." But with three growing boys, she and her husband are trying to leave. They're nervous about all the foreclosures. They're asking $160,000 for a meticulously maintained half-duplex with a sprinkler system and custom gazebo.
She quizzed crews brought in to fix up foreclosed homes down the street. How soon are they hitting the market? she asked. Anytime, they told her. "I came home and said we need to get our house on the market," she said, "before all these foreclosed homes go up for sale."
Tom Dory, another resident who may sell, shares their concern. "It's not going to be easy to dump," he said of the home he bought six years ago.
The Denver Post
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American Dream Dashed: Outlook is 'Stable'
By: Pete Kendall, July 7, 2006 |
A Grand Supercycle version of the Supercycle real estate busts of the 1830s and 1930s is underway.
The Elliott Wave Financial Forecast, May 2006
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I wanted to follow up [yestersay's] post on Sociotimes.com. Today I saw an unusual billboard collection close to my home in Fort Collins, Colorado. The first billboard said, "Foreclosure Problems?" in HUGE block letters. Then “call” xyz real estate and we will save the day, or something along those lines. The next billboard was for a mortgage broker and Countrywide's most recent lending innovation and how you could borrow a HUGE sum and consolidate ALL of your debt into this new fangled loan product Countrywide is calling a “Combo Loan” that reduces your payments (temporarily) significantly!
Not far after that came the home builder, KB Homes, promising the world in incentives if you buy TODAY! They (KB) have hit my town hard with entry level homes that are falling apart. In less then five years, these homes are all ready dilapidated. My guess on how these subdivisions will look in five more years is frightening as many of them will be abandoned in the coming years. The Denver Post article {[at left] is about one particular neighborhood to the south of where I live. One home out has been foreclosed on three times and two others twice in the last five years. I can only guess as to the condition of these homes. 30-40% of the homes just on one street are for sale. Everybody has their balloons and banners out, it’s quit a festive scene, if Remax and Keller William “For Sale” signs are your idea of party decorations. Upon closer inspection things aren't so great, most of these homes are in some stage of foreclosure. Values are dropping, rates are rising, and a flood of homes are for sale on the market with more being built everyday.
--Ryan Gordon
Thanks for the update, and for directing us to another article that points to the “contradiction” we talked about here yesterday:
June 21, 2006
Home Sales Drop, Prices Reach New Peak
Sales of Bay Area homes declined for the fourteenth month in a row in May as prices continued to slowly edge up, a real estate information service reported.
DQNews.com
Today’s Denver Post confirms that Denver is experiencing the same manic interplay of record high home prices amidst an unprecedented rise in supply and foreclosures. "The average price and median price of a single family home just jumped dramatically to a record high of $335,000. Meanwhile, the number of unsold homes rose to 31,900, also a record. Foreclosures are also near record territory. This fits perfectly with the scenario Conquer the Crash described as the initial step in the big decline. In addition to the deadly combination of an upward spike in prices and foreclosures accompanied by a downward spike in volume, we find the same upbeat sentiment we talked about yesterday. The market is “rebalancing itself after several boom years,” says a cited expert. “Core demand” is stable says DQNews account above. Such complacency in the face of a record high oversupply and so many rapid reversals of housing fortune is a sure sign that core demand is actually melting down.
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