Eli Broad, a philanthropist and co- founder of KB Home, the fifth-largest U.S. homebuilder by revenue, said he expects home prices to drop another 20 percent.”
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“We think the housing market has now hit bottom” - Lawrence Yun, NAR Chief Propagandist, January 2007 “The BubbleBloggers will someday bawl balefully in private, but they will never, ever admit that they have been very publicly very foolish.”
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LandSource Communities Development is expected to file for bankruptcy within two to three weeks, lenders said today following a private call. A filing would push the default rate in the S&P/LSTA Leveraged Loan Index to 1.25% by principal amount, and to 1.91% by number of issuers. We covered the default event itself yesterday.
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”In spite of government efforts to reduce the foreclosure rate in the U.S., the percentage of Americans going into foreclosure is accelerating: ”
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”About half of recent subprime and Alt-A borrowers may soon owe more on their mortgages than their houses are worth or hold minimal equity, putting $800 billion of debt at greater risk of default, according to Barclays Capital.”
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The Standard & Poors/Case Shiller 10-city index of single-family house prices contracted by 13.6 per cent year-on-year in February, the most since records began in 1987. The broader 20-city index fell 12.7 per cent compared with a year earlier, the biggest drop since the index’s inception in 2001.
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“RusAl wouldn’t risk billions of dollars to get into the company and get stuck because of a stubborn shareholder”
Oleg Deripaska’s United Company RusAl said Friday it would seek to combine with Norilsk Nickel, the country’s biggest mining company, in the next year and may buy shares on the open market. via The St. Petersburg Times
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The troubled mortgage lender, set to be acquired by Bank of America Corp. in the third quarter, reported a net loss of $893 million, or $1.60 a share, compared with prior-year net income of $434 million, or 72 cents a share. The results mark Countrywide’s third consecutive quarter of losses amid write-downs, credit deterioration and continued illiquidity in the secondary mortgage markets. … Delinquency rates of conventional loans, prime home-equity loans and subprime loans all rose from the fourth quarter and prior year. Countrywide said 35.9% of subprime loans were delinquent as of March 31, up from 33.6% in the fourth quarter. The delinquency rate of conventional loans rose to 6.48% from 5.76%. Net charge-offs, or loans the bank doesn’t think are collectible, surged from $39 million in the prior year to $606 million, representing 2.21% of average investment loans. Non-performing assets as a percentage of total assets soared to 4.16% from 0.95%. We would love to see the pay option ARM numbers.
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