The Blog of Author Mark MacKenzie: It's The Housing Market, Stupid!

CNNMoney.com is reportingthat the price tag and allocations for the current financial and economic crisis has already exceeded $10.5 trillion in spending, guarantees, and loans since December of 2007; and that number does not account for the latest legacy "don't call them toxic" asset plan that w...

Not that I am a proponent of using past appreciation to determine future performance, but if you are going to use appreciation as a barometer of the housing the two things you want to know are what was the year over year change, and is the trend improving or declining.  And it is with that unders...

According to article by Reuters, Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller is reporting that home values fell -19% in January from last year, this is the largest year over year decline on record.  In other words despite all of the efforts by the government, home value losses are actually accelerating. All 2...

As home values continue to decline and government efforts continue to grow in order to keep families in their homes, the landscape of homeowners is beginning to look more and more like zombies. According to wikipedia, the term zombie bank was originally coined by Edward Kane in 1987 and describes...

The AP is reporting thatBank of America is going to extend their sponsorship with the New York Yankees for another year...which I am sure when turn into a multi-year deal after the media scrutiny of banks and Wall St. firms fades away but probably before Bank of America has actually repaid all of...

Despite all of my and millions of Americans frustrations and disappointments with Congress over the past several months, as least logistically speaking, we had representation in Washington.  We may not have liked what they were doing, but it is our own fault, we voted for them. That was until the...

The Census Bureau is reporting that new home sales for February increased 4.7% from January to a seasonally adjusted pace of 337,000.   Additionally, the inventory of unsold new homes decreased -2.9% from last month to 330,000.  The result is that the month's supply of new homes decreased -5.4% f...

The Mortgage Bankers Association released their weekly mortgage purchase application which showed that despite the average 30-year fixed rate mortgage plunging from 4.89% to 4.63% (the lowest on record for the survey since 1990), the seasonally adjusted purchase application index only increased 4...

The NAR published their February existing home sales report today.  It showed that home sales were up 5.1% from last month to a seasonally adjusted rate of 4.72 million.  Listing inventory was also up 5.2% from last month to 3.798 million units.  The result is that the month's supply of housing c...

After weeks of anticipation and amid plenty of skepticism, Tim Geithner's and The Treasury's seven page public-private investment program has finally been published. I have three observations. 1.)  Is this program that could entail using up to $1 trillion worth of tax payer money in the form of g...