No, instead they just created an even bigger housing bubble. Now that housing bubble is beginning to burst, and that is going to have very serious implications for all of us.
One thing that we learned during the Great Recession is that home values really matter.
When home values get low enough, many borrowers simply decide to walk away from their mortgages, and so the fact that U.S. home values have plummeted by 108.4 billion dollars should deeply alarm all of us…
Homeowners are sitting on a negative equity timebomb after losing $108.4 billion on their property values this year, experts say.
The average borrower saw their home equity plummet by $5,400 in the first quarter of 2023 compared to last year – with households in Washington, California and Utah worst affected.
The west coast is being hit particularly hard. For example, home values in Washington state have dropped by an average of more than $74,000 over the past year…
The cooling housing market is stripping more equity from homeowners in Washington than in any other state in the country.
On average over the last year, Washington homeowners lost about $74,300 in equity, a measure of the difference between how much a home is worth and how much the owner owes on the mortgage, according to the real estate data company CoreLogic. That 18% decline marked the largest drop in the country from the first quarter of last year to the first quarter of 2023.
Some homeowners in Washington state that bought their homes at the peak of the market now have mortgages that are underwater.
And according to an expert that was interviewed by the Daily Mail, this is starting to happen in certain areas all over the nation…
Zackary Smigel, founder of Real Estate License Wizard, told DailyMail.com: ‘The decline in property values across the US is posing significant challenges to homeowners – and it’s becoming a bigger issue in the real estate sector.
‘We are indeed witnessing some worrying signs of negative equity, especially in certain regions.’
The good news is that this is not happening everywhere.
So many people have been relocating to Florida that home prices have actually gone up substantially in that state. If you want to get an idea of what has been happening where you live, you can check out this map.
Moving forward, I think that home prices will not move uniformly.
In major cities and in blue states, I believe that home prices will tend to fall. In rural areas and in red states, I believe that home prices will be more stable.
Meanwhile, many commercial real estate loans all over the U.S. are already deeply underwater, and we are starting to see delinquency rates rise at a startling pace.
If you doubt this, just check out these numbers which come from Wolf Richter…
After blowing through the pandemic with no more than a squiggle, the delinquency rate of Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities (CMBS) backed by office properties jumped to 4.5% by loan balance in June, up from 1.6% just six months ago in December 2022, according to Trepp, which tracks and analyses CMBS.
Office mortgages that had been packaged into CMBS went through a horrendous default cycle following the Financial Crisis, with the delinquency rate topping out at over 10% in 2012/2013.
But this current six-month 2.9-percentage-point spike from 1.6% to 4.5% is the fastest six-month spike in Trepp’s data going back to 2000.
We are still in the early chapters of this crisis, but it is definitely eerily similar to what we witnessed in 2008.
Corporate bankruptcies are also surging.
In fact, it is being reported that they were up 93 percent during the first six months of this year compared to the same time period of time in 2022…
In the first six months of 2023, there were 340 corporate bankruptcies, topping every other comparable span in 13 years, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. This is up 93 percent from the same time a year ago and higher than in 2020, when there was a spike during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.
When we keep getting numbers like this, I honestly don’t know how anyone can claim that the U.S. economy is moving in the right direction. There are so many signs of trouble all around us. For example, the number of searches for “pawn shop near me” just soared to an all-time record high…
Cash-strapped Americans are panic-searching “pawn shop near me.” The search trend spiked to a record high at the start of July and is an ominous sign the consumer might be pawning items or selling things that were possibly bought during the Covid boom to raise quick money amid the worst inflation storm in a generation.
Needless to say, people don’t pawn their possessions when they are doing well.
Searches for the phrase “is dumpster diving illegal” also just reached an all-time record high.
All over the nation, people are literally rummaging through dumpsters behind grocery stores because food has become so oppressively expensive. But don’t worry. Joe Biden says that everything is going to be okay.
If you have been following my articles on a regular basis, nothing that I have shared in this piece should come as a surprise to you. It was clear way in advance that the economy was heading into enormous trouble, and the long-term outlook is exceedingly bleak.
But that doesn’t mean that you should crawl into a corner and cry like a baby because things are going to get so bad. It is when times are the darkest that the greatest courage is needed.
You were born for such a time as this, and you can make a difference even in the midst of all the chaos that is starting to erupt all around us.
Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.
Article cross-posted from The Economic Collapse Blog.
]]>US bank lending contracted by the most on record in the last two weeks of March, indicating a tightening of credit conditions in the wake of several high-profile bank collapses that risks damaging the economy.
In other words, we have never seen bank lending shrink faster than it did during the second half of March.
Wow. And it turns out that small banks are getting particularly tight with their money…
Commercial bank lending dropped nearly $105 billion in the two weeks ended March 29, the most in Federal Reserve data back to 1973. The more than $45 billion decrease in the latest week was primarily due to a a drop in loans by small banks.
The pullback in total lending in the last half of March was broad and included fewer real estate loans, as well as commercial and industrial loans.
As I have noted previously, small and mid-size banks provide the bulk of the commercial real estate loans in this country.
We are already starting to see prices for commercial real estate plunge, and now Morgan Stanley is warning that the drop that we will ultimately see could rival “the decline during the 2008 financial crisis”…
Investors have sharpened their focus on this sector, given regional banks’ significant share in CRE lending. Even before the banking-industry turmoil, however, CRE was facing risks from long-term trends, with remote work threatening the office sub-sector.
What’s more, the sector is now facing a huge “refinancing wall”: More than half of the $2.9 trillion in commercial mortgages will be up for refinancing in the next couple of years. Even if current rates stay where they are, new lending rates are likely to be 3.5 to 4.5 percentage points higher than they are for many of CRE’s existing mortgages.
Commercial property prices have already turned down, and Morgan Stanley analysts forecast prices could fall as much as 40%, rivaling the decline during the 2008 financial crisis. These kinds of challenges can hurt not only the real estate industry, but also entire business communities related to it.
A lot of people thought that I was exaggerating when I stated that we are heading into the worst commercial real estate crisis in our history. But I was not exaggerating one bit.
Of course the credit crunch that we are now experiencing will have enormous ramifications for the entire economy.
When consumers have access to less credit, they spend less money. And when consumers spend less money, businesses bring in less revenue and they start laying off workers. And when workers get laid off, they get behind on their debts. And that creates even more stress on the banks.
This new credit crisis threatens to spiral out of control, but Fed officials insist that everything is just fine. In fact, James Bullard seems convinced that interest rates should go even higher…
“Financial stress seems to be abated, at least for now,” Bullard told reporters Thursday after speaking at an event in Little Rock, Arkansas. “And so it’s a good moment to continue to fight inflation and try to get on that disinflationary path.”
The St. Louis Fed chief said he doesn’t think tighter credit conditions stemming from the recent banking turmoil will be substantial enough to tip the US economy into recession, noting that demand for loans is still strong.
Demand for loans may be strong, but the supply of credit is starting to dry up really quick.
Meanwhile, Americans continue to pull money out of the banks at a staggering rate…
Friday’s report also showed commercial bank deposits dropped $64.7 billion in the latest week, marking the 10th-straight decrease that mainly reflected a decline at large firms.
Every week that this happens, it is just going to cause banks to get even tighter with their money.
And bank economists surveyed by the American Bankers Association expect credit conditions to continue to tighten during the months ahead…
Just look at those numbers.
Any figure under 50 is bad, and those numbers are in the single digits.
In all the years that I have been writing, I have never seen anything like this.
So I am encouraging all of my readers to brace themselves for a massive economic avalanche.
A major credit crunch is already here, but most Americans still don’t understand that severe economic pain is dead ahead.
Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here. Article cross-posted from The Economic Collapse Blog.
]]>Business Insider reported U.S. stocks fell on the last day of trading, ending a “tough year.”
The S&P 500 was down 20% for the year, a result that hasn’t been that bad since the 2008 year. Meanwhile the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 9% in 2022, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq tumbled 33%.
The last trading day of the year ended “with a thud,” the report said, after consumers were confronted with high inflation, up to 9.1%, high interest rates, high costs for energy and fuel, and more. The report said the housing market “is still gloomy as ever as mortgage rates turned higher again, and Jeff Bezos’ fortune was overtaken by Warren Buffett’s.
At CNBC a report said stocks on Friday ended “a brutal 2022 with a whimper.”
It said, “Friday marked the final day of trading in what has been a painful year for stocks. All three of the major averages suffered their worst year since 2008 and snapped a three-year win streak. The Dow fared the best of the indexes in 2022, down about 8.8%. The S&P 500 sank 19.4%, and is more than 20% below its record high, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq tumbled 33.1%.”
“We’ve had everything from COVID problems in China to the invasion of Ukraine. They’ve all been very serious. But for investors, it is what the Fed is doing,” said Art Cashin, director of floor operations for UBS.
That organization has been exploding interest rates by advances of up to three quarters of a point monthly – in its attempt to bring Biden’s inflation under control. The CNBC report also warned it’s not over.
“As the calendar turns to a new year, some investors think the pain is far from over. They expect the bear market to persist until a recession hits or the Fed pivots. Some also project stocks will hit new lows before rebounding in the second half of 2023,” the report said.
Cashin pointed out, “I would love to tell you that it is going to be like the ‘Wizard of Oz’ and everything is going to be in glorious color in a moment or two. I think we may have a bumpy first quarter, and depending on the Fed it may last a little longer than that.”
Joe Biden’s administration, meanwhile, posted online a document boasting about how good things are.
“We end the year with clear evidence that President Biden’s economic strategy of growing the economy from the bottom up and the middle out is working…”
Biden, in fact, has orchestrated the spending of trillions of dollars that are being added to the national debt, even though his agenda has produced that high inflation, high interest, stagnant wages, mediocre job growth and more.
It brags about 10.5 million jobs added under Biden, without mentioning that many of those were restored following mandated shutdowns during the COVID pandemic. Even that analysis, while advising it will “take time” to reach desired results, conceded there will be “setbacks along the way.”
It boasted that gas prices are down more than $1.75 per gallon, but they still remain higher than when Biden took office when they exploded to levels as high as $5 and $6 a gallon in some states.
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]]>The Biden administration keeps insisting that the U.S. economy is in good condition, but if that is the case why are so many large companies now laying off workers?
On Wednesday, we learned that Snap Inc. will be laying off approximately 20 percent of their entire global workforce…
Snap Inc., the parent company of the popular app Snapchat, announced plans to lay off some 20% of its more than 6,400 global employees.
The news will impact the jobs of more than 1,200 staffers at the tech giant, and comes as broader economic conditions have deteriorated in recent months amid rising inflation and the Federal Reserve’s interest rates hikes. The recent market downturn has especially pummeled the tech sector, where news of hiring freezes, layoffs, and other cost-cutting measures have dominated headlines for months.
Of course it isn’t just the tech industry that is getting monkey-hammered these days.
It was also just announced that Bed Bath & Beyond will be permanently closing 150 stories and will be getting rid of about 20 percent of their corporate employees…
Bed Bath & Beyond is in deep turmoil. The company is trying to rescue itself and stay out of bankruptcy by shrinking.
The chain said Wednesday that it will lay off approximately 20% of corporate employees, close around 150 stores and slash several of its in-house home goods’ brands.
Crucially, the company also said it secured more than $500 million in financing to shore up its ailing financial straits.
Normally, retailers wait until after the lucrative holiday season before announcing store closings.
So this move seems highly unusual.
Sadly, this is all part of a “layoff tsunami” that has now started. As I discussed the other day, approximately half of all U.S. companies anticipate that they will be eliminating jobs over the next 12 months.
Needless to say, a “tsunami of layoffs” is only going to accelerate the new housing crash that we are now witnessing.
Last week, total mortgage application volume was 63 percent lower than it was during the same week in 2021…
After falling back earlier this month, mortgage rates began rising sharply again to the highest level since mid-July. That caused mortgage demand to pull back even further.
Total mortgage application volume fell 3.7% last week compared with the previous week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s seasonally adjusted index. Volume was 63% lower than the same week one year ago.
63 percent!
What a catastrophe.
And many other recent numbers confirm the fact that we are now past the peak of the housing bubble and are now on the way down…
Sales volume of existing homes plunged by 20% from a year ago across the US, and by 31% in California, and by 41% in San Diego. Median prices in the West have begun to drop, and in the San Francisco Bay Area fell below year-ago-levels, including by 8% in San Francisco. Sales of new houses plunged by nearly 30% year-over-year across the US, and in the West by 50%, as the supply of new houses has exploded to 11 months, the highest since the peak of Housing Bust 1. And big institutional buyers have started to pull out of this market because they don’t want to overpay. This has been going on for months.
Home prices have only just begun to drop.
They could potentially go down a lot further, because soaring mortgage rates have put home ownership out of reach for a huge chunk of the population at this point.
What we really need is for the Federal Reserve to stop hiking interest rates.
But Fed officials have already told us that they aren’t going to do that.
So the housing crash that we are currently experiencing is only going to get worse.
Meanwhile, an increasing number of renters are getting behind on their rent payments. In fact, it is being reported that 3.8 million renters believe that it is likely that they will be evicted within the next two months…
For the first time ever, the median rent in the U.S. topped $2,000 a month in June — and the increases show no sign of stopping.
Those rising rents mean that households representing a total of 8.5 million people were behind on their rent at the end of August, according to Census Bureau figures. And 3.8 million of those renters say they’re somewhat or very likely to be evicted in the next two months.
If things are this bad already, what will conditions look like once millions more Americans have lost their jobs?
Just like we saw in 2008, huge numbers of evictions and foreclosures are on the horizon, and the middle class is going to be absolutely eviscerated by this crisis.
Last time around, the Fed was able to reduce the severity of the crisis by pushing interest rates to the floor and by pumping trillions of fresh dollars into the financial system.
This time around they are unlikely to implement such measures because they are deathly afraid of causing even more inflation.
So the stage is set for an economic meltdown of absolutely epic proportions, and there is no hero that is going to come riding to the rescue.
We are about to experience the consequences of literally decades of exceedingly foolish decisions.
Enjoy the rest of the summer while you still can, because the U.S. economy is only going to go downhill from here.
***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***
About the Author: My name is Michael and my brand new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available on Amazon.com. In addition to my new book I have written five other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, “Get Prepared Now”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. (#CommissionsEarned) When you purchase any of these books you help to support the work that I am doing, and one way that you can really help is by sending digital copies as gifts through Amazon to family and friends. Time is short, and I need help getting these warnings into the hands of as many people as possible.
I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article. The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.
I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help. These are such troubled times, and people need hope. John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” If you have not already done so, I strongly urge you to ask Jesus to be your Lord and Savior today.
Article cross-posted from The Economic Collapse Blog.
]]>Property prices have fallen by up to 20 percent across parts of the US as buyers shun the market amid ‘Bidenflation’ and spiking interest rates.
Asking prices have plummeted by up to $400,000 in wealthy areas while poorer neighborhoods have seen house values nosedive by as much as $115,000.
Do you remember last time around when millions of homeowners ended up “underwater” on their mortgages?
If we continue on this current trajectory, it is going to happen again.
Last year at this time, the housing market was extremely hot, but now a new report from Redfin is telling us that things have dramatically changed…
A May study by Redfin found that about 19 percent of sellers dropped the prices on their homes in a four week period between April and May. The outlet said that the report indicated an end to the country’s pandemic-era housing boom.
Their report found that Google searches for ‘homes for sale’ were down 13 percent from the same time last year.
It also found that requests for home tours were down 12 percent, and that mortgage applications dropped 16 percent from a year prior.
And the higher mortgage rates go, the worse things are going to get.
Unfortunately, mortgage rates are spiking at a rate that is absolutely breathtaking this month…
Mortgage rates jumped sharply this week, as fears of a potentially more aggressive rate hike from the Federal Reserve upset financial markets.
The average rate on the popular 30-year fixed mortgage rose 10 basis points to 6.28% Tuesday, according to Mortgage News Daily. That followed a 33 basis point jump Monday. The rate was 5.55% one week ago.
The last time we saw mortgage rates this high was during the last housing crash.
Unfortunately, they are only going to go higher because the Federal Reserve wants interest rates throughout our economy to rise in order to fight inflation.
But as I have warned repeatedly in recent months, a high rate environment is going to absolutely eviscerate the housing market. Already, higher rates have had a colossal impact on home affordability…
Higher home prices and rates have crushed home affordability.
For instance, on a $400,000 home, with a 20% down payment, the monthly mortgage payment went from $1,399 at the start of January to $1,976 today, a difference of $577. That does not include homeowners insurance nor property taxes.
It also does not include the fact that the home is about 20% more expensive than it was a year ago.
Vast multitudes of potential home buyers will be forced out of the market until home prices comes down dramatically.
If you are one of those people, you could try to rent a place while you wait, but apartment rents are 15 percent higher than they were a year ago…
A new report from Redfin shows that nationally listed rents for available apartments rose 15% from a year ago. And the median listed rent for an available apartment rose above $2,000 a month for the first time.
Rents are up more than 30% in Austin, Seattle, and Cincinnati. In Los Angeles the median asking rent is $3,400. Even in formerly affordable cities such as Nashville it’s now $2,140, up 32% from last year.
I am so thankful that Redfin gives us these numbers, but it turns out that Redfin is in deep trouble too.
In fact, Redfin just announced that they will be laying off 8 percent of their workers…
Real estate firms Redfin and Compass are laying off workers, as mortgage rates rise sharply and home sales drop.
In filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Compass announced a 10% cut to its workforce, and Redfin announced an 8% cut.
Shares of both companies fell Tuesday. Redfin’s stock touched a new 52-week low.
So many of the exact same things that we witnessed back in 2008 are happening again.
The economy is slowing down.
Big corporations are starting to lay off workers.
Home prices are starting to collapse.
And there is a tremendous amount of pessimism about what is ahead. In fact, one new survey has found that small business owners are “feeling their gloomiest in nearly five decades”…
Small business owners in America are feeling their gloomiest in nearly five decades, a survey released Tuesday morning showed.
The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) said its gauge of businesses expecting better business conditions over the next six months fell to the worst reading in the 48-year history of the survey.
When things got really bad in 2008 and 2009, the Federal Reserve responded by pushing interest rates all the way to the floor, and that certainly helped.
But now the Federal Reserve doesn’t have that option.
In fact, the Federal Reserve seems quite determined to dramatically raise rates in a desperate attempt to fight the inflation monster that they had a major role in helping to create.
And the higher that rates go, the worse things will get for the housing market and for the economy as a whole.
If we would have learned some lessons from the last crisis, all of this could have been avoided. But instead we are now moving into a future which is going to be extraordinarily painful.
At this point, the Federal Reserve is stuck between a rock and a hard place. If they don’t raise rates, inflation will continue to spiral out of control.
But if they do raise rates, they will crush the housing market and make the coming recession far worse.
For years, they assured all of us that they had everything under control and that they knew exactly what they were doing.
Now everyone can see the truth, but unfortunately it is too late to reverse course.
***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***
Image by Nicolas DEBRAY from Pixabay. Article cross-posted from Michael’s blog.
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