Housing market looking for a bottom. Still.

No end in sight for the decline in the housing market:

The S&P/Case-Shiller index of property values in 20 cities fell 4 percent from April 2010, the biggest drop since November 2009, the group said today in New York. From March to April, prices fell 0.1 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis, the smallest decline since July 2010.

A backlog of foreclosures and falling sales raise the risk that prices will decline further, discouraging builders from taking on new projects. The drop in property values and a jobless rate hovering around 9 percent are holding back consumer sentiment and spending, which accounts for 70 percent of the economy.

“There’s no sign of any real recovery in housing yet,” Jim O’Sullivan, chief economist at MF Global Inc. in New York, said before the report. “There won’t be a significant turn until the labor market shows sustained improvement. The level of foreclosures is still high and a lot of people are delinquent on their mortgages.”

Anyone needing to sell their home right now is in a world of hurt.

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Obama’s housing market lies, chart edition

Here is your chart for the day:

Burn this chart into your brain.  Revert back to it whenever you hear the line of BS coming from the Obama administration, Democrats in general, and their propaganda stooges in the media, about how they and their policies “averted disaster” during the mortgage crisis, and how they saved our lives.

[Hat Tip: Zero Hedge]

Real estate market at double-dip levels

Remember when newly elected President Obama, with Democrats in full control of the government , were going to use their compassionate and virtuous liberal ways to reverse the housing crisis? 

Yeah, me too:

With foreclosures high and demand weak, home prices in a majority of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas posted fresh lows in December and pushed a widely watched index of real estate values close to a double-dip decline.

The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Index showed that prices in 20 major U.S. cities dropped an average of 2.4% in December from the same month a year earlier and 1% from November, the fifth straight month the index has fallen.

And experts said things could get worse.

“My intuition rates the probability of another 15%, 20%, even 25% real home price decline as substantial,” said Yale University economics professor Robert Shiller, co-creator of the index. “That is not a forecast, but it is a substantial risk.”

[…]

A recovery in housing prices seemed to be on track last year. But that improvement was fueled by federal home-buying tax credits that expired last summer, analysts said.

Without a stimulus, prices began to fall again. 

Is anyone willing to stand up and admit that big government solutions to just about anything are a complete waste of time?  Unfortunately for Democrats, the reality-based laws of economics don’t care about utopian fantasies.

Obama Administration drops the ball on Fannie, Freddy reform

Most efficient administration evah:

The Obama administration failed to release a report today on how Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae could be reformed, despite being required to do so by the Dodd-Frank law passed last summer.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R., Texas), who chairs the House Republican Conference, said in a statement that the White House’s failure to meet the deadline made it “crystal clear that the President is not serious about reforming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”

“The Obama Administration’s repeated inability to propose a plan to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac calls into question their commitment to taxpayer protection and their ability to effectively govern on this issue,” Hensarling added. “After more than $150 billion in Fannie and Freddie bailouts, we can no longer afford to allow the Administration to kick the can down the road.”

Kicking the can down the road is being kind.   One of the most egregious storylines of the whole financial crisis, was the implicit corruption of the GSEs.  Remember Franklin Raines?  The accounting scandals?  The royal screwing they gave to US taxpayers?

Yeah? Well, the administration would rather we didn’t.

The housing double-dip is here

Housing prices take a tumble:

A new bout of declining home prices is threatening to hamper the U.S. recovery, just as consumers and the overall economy have been showing signs of healing.

[…]

Home prices across 20 major metropolitan areas fell 1.3% in October from September, the third straight month-over-month drop, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index released Tuesday. Many economists expect the declines to continue into at least next spring, erasing most of the gains made since prices bottomed out in early 2009.

The housing market, which appeared poised for a recovery earlier in the year, now could be heading for a second downward drift.

“This looks like a double-dip [in housing] is pretty much on the way, if not already here,” said David Blitzer, chairman of the Standard & Poor’s index committee. “Somebody who thought last year that it’s going to be straight up from here was wrong.”

[…]

Homes remain a key part of Americans’ wealth. Households held $6.4 trillion of home equity at the end of the third quarter, alongside $12.2 trillion in stocks and mutual-fund shares, according to Federal Reserve data.

Wasn’t the government supposed to put an artificial floor in the real estate market financed by taxpayer dollars implement benevolent government programs designed to reverse evil George Bush’s real estate recession?  Isn’t that what we heard incessantly from the Obama Democrats in the early days of this administration?

Yeah, about that.

MA-4: Betrayed by Barney Frank

Along the lines of my earlier post about Barney Frank’s complicity in the Fannie Mae-Freddy Mac disaster, here is a new video ad on the same, which hits all the right notes:

Donate here to help run this ad in MA-7 for the home stretch.

(H/T: Nice Deb via Dave at Ace of Spades)

Sean Bielat for Congress

363 billion reasons to vote for Sean Bielat

Really big reasons:

The government’s bill for bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac might reach as high as $363 billion by 2013, the Federal Housing Finance Agency said Thursday.

The twin mortgage giants have already sucked in $148 billion in order to stay afloat, and according to the new projections, that number might reach $221 – $363 billion by 2013.

The Treasury Department has been supporting the foundering Fannie (FNMA) and Freddie (FMCC) since the twin mortgage giants entered financial difficulty following the implosion of the mortgage-backed securities market.

The two companies essentially have been given a blank check from the government since Treasury lifted the $200 billion funding limit for each late last year.

While the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress are more than willing to excoriate the private sector bankers and traders for whatever blame they share in the current economic crisis, not a word is spoken about Fannie and Freddy, and the looming disaster they pose for the nation’s balance sheet—-all at the expense of taxpayers.

One of the Congressional enablers of this mess is Barney Frank.  He needs to be voted out of office and the good people of Massachusetts’ 4th district have a clear alternative.

I’ll let Sean Bielat’s recent campaign ad speak on behalf of the arrogance and idiocy that is Barney Frank, who was minding the store while the housing market collapsed:

In any other year, the notion of being able to vote Barney Frank out of office would be insane.  But this is unlike any other year.  As with so many races across the country, if getting insane liberal Democrats out of their entrenched political ratholes was ever possible, now is the time.

Other bloggers have been pushing this race as a potential pick-up for the GOP and momentum is building.  We know about Frank lending his campaign $200K, and that doesn’t happen when you’re confident down the stretch.  And kudos to Stacy McCain who’s been pounding the table for Sean Bielat for weeks.

Voters in Massachusetts’ 4th Congressional district have a clear choice–more of the same, with $386 billion bailouts to GSEs that promote left-wing social engineering, or some real change.

Throw some shekels to the Sean Bielat campaign.

Sean Bielat for Congress