Housing Starts and Building Permits

Housing starts (well, technically, building permits) by US Metro areas can be found here.

I like how they include counties and smaller cities as well. Oh yeah - "they" are the US Census Bureau.

Here's the link to the main Census New Residential Construction Page. There is a helpful explanation of methodology and a few other categories like Quarterly Starts by Purpose and Design.

Real Estate Sales And Home Values

 Trulia gives you the number of homes for sale and their asking price. You enter in the zip code and it gives you a couple of graphs once you scroll down.

Simply Map gives you the average value of the homes in a certain location - zip code, county, metro area and more.

Apartment Rents in San Marcos (or elsewhere)

The US Census Factfinder can break down the distribution of monthly apartment rents for you as well by city or zip code. For example, find the distribution of rents in San Marcos here.

You have to scroll down a fair amount of text and then you'll see it.

Looting: The Economic Underworld of Bankruptcy for Fun and Profit

"Looting: The Economic Underworld of Bankruptcy for Fun and Profit" is a classic article that critiques traditional behavioral models of economics. 

If you're a bank or savings-and-loan, get your deposits insured, gamble the deposits in an unsustainable boom and bust cycle, take the profits, declare bankruptcy, wipe out the deposits, and make the Federal government pay for the lost deposits.

Inspired by the late eighties savings-and-loan debacle and real estate boom and bust cycle in Texas, and perhaps a sign of things to come.

Book Review: American Nightmare by Richard Lord

 
Before it was cool, Richard Lord's American Nightmare: Predatory Lending And The Foreclosure of the American Dream looked at the scourge of predatory home mortgages and lending programs aimed at fleecing the declining American lower middle class.

This is a slice of life book that examines the experiences of ordinary people in Lord's hometown of Pittsburgh in the 1990s. Each person needed a little money to live in retirement, start a business or pay medical expenses.

They ended with loans with impossible to pay off balances, opaque contracts that turned into something else, banks that turned a deaf ear, and ultimately lost their houses and went bankrupt.

There are two lessons here:

1) don't assume the financial system is safe or ethical. The country has recently stripped away of decades-worth of regulations designed to protect people. You can and will be taken to the cleaners and it's all legal.  

2) learn when to say no to money and loans. A lot of the people in this book really, really wanted a house or home improvements and let that cloud their judgement.

How Texas Avoided the Real Estate Meltdown

Less than 6% of Texas mortgages are in foreclosure: the national average is 10%. 19% of Texas subprime loans were bust - almost the lowest rate in the country (numbers taken from the article linked below)

True, Texas is relatively unscathed by the recent economic troubles. But what's really interesting is the WHY of how most mortgage holders stayed solvent.

According to this article in Slate, it has to do with sane state government regulation of cash-out and home equity loans. You can't borrow crazy amounts of money against your home equity.

In fact, this provision is in the state constitution.

Aw, who are we kidding. The answer is we have Chuck Norris!

Underwater Mortgages in Austin and Texas

Good question today: How many home mortgages in the Austin area are underwater (i.e. people owe more than the house is worth)?

The standard figures, from an organization called American CoreLogic, has come up with a report that is cited by several newspapers and business newspapers.

It includes the top 50 metropolitan areas by underwater status.

I would have put the report up in PDF form, but you must register for free beforehand, and I don't want to step on anybody's toes over at American CoreLogic.