Moral Hazard

High End Dallas-Fort Worth Real Estate Could Get Crushed

As I detailed yesterday, the Dallas-Fort Worth real estate market fell out of bed last month. With pending home sales registered to post some of the worst numbers in years and inventory marching higher across the Dallas Fort Worth area, it is painfully clear that that the real economy in the DFW area is more fragile than the sell-side pundits would have us believe. I'm not surprised, because I cover the hype and spin in the real estate sector regularly on this blog. In a recent interview with Bloomberg, 'Black Swan' author Nassim Taleb specifically [...]

October Swoon Suggests Denton County Real Estate Market Correction Just Getting Started

Denton County's real estate market is going to post some very soft numbers again for October. Both closed and pending home sales are going to be down year-over-year while pending home sales are likely going to post a double-digit decline not just in Denton County, but for the entire Dallas-Fort Worth housing market. OUCH! Available home inventory is shooting higher across the DFW area. While notable economists at the Federal Reserve, local real estate "professionals" and even the "experts" at the RECenter at Texas A&M have been dismissing recent developments as just a cooling off [...]

LGI Homes’ Beaver Creek In Denton TX A Haven For Wall Street Landlord

The quiet little community of Beaver Creek on the north side of Denton Texas offers a perfect portrait of what's wrong with the current housing market in the United states. Beaver Creek is an LGI Homes community that specializes in affordable starter homes priced in the mid to upper $200's. Having viewed the community earlier this year, I was interested to see how sales would progress since Denton Texas is a popular destination for DFW home shoppers looking for affordable homes. Denton home prices are generally more affordable than the average prices in the Dallas-Fort [...]

10 Years After The Housing Crash, Dallas-Fort Worth Experiencing Consequences Of Policy Failures

10 years after the housing crash and the Great Recession that nearly brought the world economy to its knees, the adults in the room are still pretending that everything is normal. If you read the Dallas Morning News and the spin of many professional economists, the DFW real estate market has emerged from the wreckage 10 years ago relatively unscathed. With DFW home prices at record highs, most housing pundits are eager to suggest everything is awesome. Apparently the recent rise in home inventories is just blip in an otherwise normalization of the formerly red [...]

Denton County Home Inventory Climbs 17% As Sales Stagnate

The supply of homes for sale in Denton County TX continues to climb, even as area home sales stagnate. Recent data point to a 17 percent increase in the number of homes available for sale in Denton County compared to this time last year.  Home inventory in nearby Collin County is 21 percent higher than August of last year. Other major metro U.S. markets are seeing home inventory increase by as much as 90 percent. This was an inevitable point in the latest housing market cycle, for reasons that were obvious to anyone paying attention. [...]

Dallas Morning News Real Estate Desk Still Missing The Boat

Dallas Morning News' real estate editor, Steve Brown, seems to be waking up to the fact that the DFW real estate market is cooling. He's still off the mark when it comes to the recent peak in DFW home sales, but at least he acknowledged the sales decline last month.  DFW home sales fell for the month of June. See, that wasn't so hard. After successive years of abnormal price growth, the DFW area saw a reported 3 percent decline in home sales in June. I say "reported", because as I detailed in a previous [...]

Markets Wobbling As Fed Normalization Hits $30 Billion Per Month In Q2

The markets were wobbling again this week, but regardless, the Fed normalization will hit $30 billion per month in April. I must confess that I get a good laugh when I hear market apologists and real estate pundits talk up the magnificent economy and housing market we are blessed with in Texas. Yes, things are pretty good here in the Lone Star State, and the DFW housing market still seems to have legs. Unfortunately the real economy is not nearly as robust as many talking heads and sell-side practitioners would have you believe. The March employment [...]

Why Is The Fed Protecting The Stock Market?

The $11 billion increase in the System Open Market Account Holdings report for February 14 has caught the attention of a number of intelligent market watchers for obvious reasons. The Federal Reserve is purportedly in the midst of a significant balance sheet normalization process whereby they are (and plan to to continue) selling large amounts of Treasuries and agency mortgage-backed securities. After amassing a portfolio of over $4.4 trillion, the Fed has used that massive hedge fund to artificially suppress interest rates and foster some serious asset inflation. The Fed was not alone in this [...]

Federal Reserve Sowed The Seeds Of The Next Housing Downturn

The Federal Reserve is poised to cause yet another housing downturn in the U.S. I'm not talking about a spectacular Lehman style apocalypse mind you, but an honest downturn that will be unavoidable. Today's S&P Case-Shiller home price index showed another rise in Dallas home prices in November. This is essentially lagged data confirming what most prospective DFW home buyers already knew, namely that Dallas area home prices are pretty damn high. The national index showed that U.S. home prices were up 6.2 percent, or roughly three times average U.S. hourly income growth. The BEA [...]

Fed Adds $705 Million Agency MBS With Un-Unwind

The Federal Reserve's balance sheet unwind was MIA again this week as agency MBS increased with latest System Open Market Account Account Holdings report. SOMA January 24 holdings reflected a magical $705 million INCREASE in agency mortgage-backed securities. This is rather strange behavior indeed for what was advertised as a balance sheet "unwind". It's looking more like the un-unwind, at least for the past two weeks. Much like the crony capitalist elite dining in Davos, the fine purveyors of bogus economic theory inhabiting the halls of the Marriner Eccles building are probably a tad bit [...]

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