by Calculated Risk on 2/20/2006 06:52:00 PM

Forbes reports: Trichet says market expectations for ECB rate hike are 'reasonable'

European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet reiterated that market expectations for an ECB interest rate hike are 'reasonable'.

The ECB is widely expected to raise its main refinancing rate to 2.50 pct from 2.25 pct at its next meeting on March 2.
...
He also said that house price rises in some euro zone countries are 'not normal'.
...
In its February monthly bulletin, the European Central Bank said it sees tentative signs that the euro zone housing market is becoming overvalued following recent sharp price rises in some countries.

Some recent house price rises in some euro zone regions may be unsustainable, it said.

Trichet told the committee that the real estate sector is important for the ECB and one of the parameters that it considers when taking interest rate decisions.

And he said it is important to 'avoid further inflation of the bubble' in some euro zone housing markets.

Its interesting that Trichet commented on real estate being important with regards to interest rate decisions. I'm not sure if he is talking about targeting asset prices, or just that the real estate sector is an important part of the economy.

by Calculated Risk on 2/17/2006 08:59:00 PM

The Financial Times' Jim Pickard has lunch with Dr. Robert Shiller: The man and the bubble. A few excerpts:

What I really want to know, not least as a homeowner, is when and how the property market will crash. So I ask him.

For a man whose written predictions seem so definite - and dire - he appears loath to be nailed as an inveterate doomster. "I really don’t know what prices will do," he says hesitantly, playing with his cutlery.

But hasn’t he predicted a huge drop in US house prices? Only in some specific cities and states, he clarifies.

The professor is no doubt aware that the history of economic forecasting is littered with the names of those who made the right forecasts at the wrong time.

And more:

What, exactly, can Ben Bernanke, Greenspan’s successor, do to rescue the US economy if the property market crashes? Has the Fed already used up its one silver bullet - that of interest rate cuts?

"Bernanke thinks there is no housing bubble," says Shiller. "According to the White House website, he said recently that the fundamentals explained house price movements except in some speculative markets." The new chairman of the Fed is a "brilliant man", Shiller continues, but he has not shown any interest in behavioural economics.

And this is where he has underestimated the danger posed by real estate speculation. "He is not attuned to one of the great innovations of our time, that is, bringing psychology back into economics."

Here we come to the crux of Shiller’s theories about asset bubbles, whether tulips, shares or property: people get excited as they see the price of an asset rising, so they buy more, which pushes the prices up further until they are unsustainable. "The bubble is made by a ‘story’, by excitement and glamour," he says. And then, once a market loses that momentum, it will experience negative feedback, where people rush to sell before things worsen further.

I'm disappointed that Shiller didn't offer a suggestion as to what Bernanke could do.

Last year I provided some supply-demand diagrams to model the market dynamics of speculation that might be of interest to some readers: Speculation is the Key

by Calculated Risk on 2/16/2006 08:58:00 PM

From Barron's Online: Is It Crunch Time for Housing? (hat tip: Gary Evans for the link)

Bear markets, be they in stocks, housing or commodities, go through certain identifiable phases, like Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's famed five stages of dealing with dying -- denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance.

"It's a three- to five-year cycle on the downside," says Kenneth Rosen, chairman of the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics at UC Berkeley.

Rosen calls himself a real-estate bear who endorses the doom-and-gloom scenario of Yale University professor Robert Shiller (see Barron's, "The Bubble's New Home," June 20, 2005)."

We've already passed stage one, characterized by "a falloff in new sales and orders," says Rosen, and are just entering stage two, in which unsold inventories build up.

That may be where the crunch begins.

Prospective sellers, of course, can just take their homes off the market and live in them until they think they can get a better price.

But speculators don't have that luxury: At some point they can no longer carry a money-losing investment, so they may throw in the towel and unload their once-promising albatross.

That's stage three, says Rosen, and it usually finishes about three years from the beginning of the downturn.

The final phase is when we see massive defaults or delinquencies on mortgage loans. That's several years away, he says, and this time the damage could be worse because of the large number of exotic loans giddy lenders extended to desperate home buyers (see Barron's, "Coming Home to Roost," Feb. 13)."

There is more in the article. I think the sequence is more like:

1) A surge in inventories as sellers try to get out at today's high prices.

2) followed by a drop in orders as buyers become leery of buying at the top. Historically house prices tend to be sticky as sellers want prices close to those of recent sales in their neighborhood. And buyers want a discount from recent sales. The result is a drop in orders.

3) Then prices start falling as some sellers (speculators and homeowners in distress) need to get out.

There are other economic impacts:

1) as prices stagnate or fall, homeowners will withdraw less equity from their homes and that will impact retail sales.

2) as transactions decline, housing related employment will fall.

3) and finally, as mentioned in Barron's, there will be defaults or delinquencies on mortgage loans.

Already inventories are rising rapidly. And I believe sales are just starting to decline. The next few months will be interesting.

by Calculated Risk on 2/16/2006 07:26:00 PM

Click on image for full cartoon.

David Horsey is a cartoonist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

And for more on the National Debt, please see pgl's post on Snow's actions today: Snow Withholds Checks to the Retirement Accounts of Federal Workers

As of February 15, 2006, the National Debt is $8.238 Trillion.

by Calculated Risk on 2/16/2006 05:15:00 PM

The Financial Times reports: Bernanke upbeat about housing effect

... Ben Bernanke suggested that the discussion around the Federal Reserve’s boardroom table in coming months may focus on ... house prices.

The outlook ... Bernanke presented ... were based on the assumption that the US housing market is slowing after the sizzling growth ... in recent years.

Mr Bernanke’s remarks ... suggested that the Fed expects the housing market to cool but not to undergo a dramatic slowdown ...

"Low mortgage rates, together with expanding payrolls and incomes and the need to rebuild after the hurricanes, should continue to support the housing market. Thus, at this point, a levelling out or a modest softening of housing activity seems more likely than a sharp contraction," Mr Bernanke said.
...
Since rising household wealth and home equity withdrawal have supported consumer spending, there may be an impact on spending. But it is not expected to be dramatic. The Fed expects households to raise their savings rate from near zero, but only gradually. Residential investment is expected to slow, but business investment is expected to take up the slack.

... It is quite likely that policymakers may not know how much further they need to raise rates. Policy will be data-driven – and one of the key questions will be the course of, and the spillover effects from, the housing market.
...
But the housing market presents both upside as well as downside risks for growth and the federal funds rate. If low long-term rates mean the housing market continues to soar, then the FOMC may have to raise rates by more than what is currently expected, to prevent the economy from overheating.

"On the one hand, some observers believe that home values have moved above levels that can be supported by fundamentals and that ... a realignment - if abrupt – could materially sap household wealth and confidence and, in turn, depress consumer spending," the monetary report to Congress said.

"On the other hand, if home values continue to register outsized increases, the accompanying increment to household wealth would stimulate aggregate demand and raise resource utilisation further ... adding to inflation pressures."

At least Bernanke is being open about the problem, even if he is more optimistic than I am.

by Calculated Risk on 2/15/2006 08:27:00 PM

MarketWatch reports: Washington Mutual to cut 2,500 jobs

Washington Mutual announced 2,500 job cuts at its home-loan business late Wednesday, another sign of a cooling real-estate market.

The bank, one of the largest mortgage lenders in the U.S., said its network of processing offices that provide administrative support to its home-loan businesses will be reduced to 16 from 26.

The job cuts represent more than 4% of Washington Mutual's total workforce of about 60,000.

...the bank also said in a statement on Wednesday that it's cutting costs at its home-loan business to "better match current and anticipated mortgage-market conditions."

Signs that the once-hot housing market is beginning to cool have accumulated this year.

U.S. banks reported weaker demand for mortgages in the past three months, a Federal Reserve survey of senior loan officers found in January.

by Calculated Risk on 2/15/2006 03:12:00 PM

Last March, I excerpted a quote from an OC Register article: Loan rates on the rise by Orange County "real-estate broker and economist" Gary Watts:

"There's too much emphasis on interest rates in the marketplace," Watts said. "Who wouldn't trade $1,200 for $70,000?"

Last March the median home price in OC was $555,000. Today the median home price is $582,000, an increase of $27K or just under 5%. Mr. Watts has two months for the median prices to hit his prediction.

And now Mr. Watts is being quoted in Fortune's A tale of two markets

"Fifteen percent is pretty much in the bag for Orange County in 2006," [Gary Watts] says. "It's impossible for prices to go down this year."

I'm going to have to disagree with Mr. Watts again!

by Calculated Risk on 2/15/2006 03:04:00 PM

DataQuick reports: Five-year low for Southland home sales

The number of Southern California homes sold in January edged down to the lowest level in five years ...

A total of 20,085 new and resale homes were sold in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, Ventura, San Bernardino and Orange counties last month. That was ... down 7.4 percent from 21,680 for January last year, according to DataQuick Information Systems.

Prices were down too (a typical seasonal pattern), but still up 13% from last January.

In Orange County, the Register reports: Housing prices slip 6% in January

DataQuick reported today that the median sale price for all residences sold in January was $582,000 – down more than 6 percent from December's record $621,000 but still up 9 percent from January 2005. Sales volume was weak, too, as 2,594 homes sold – down 11 percent in a year. This was the slowest January since 1997.

by Calculated Risk on 2/15/2006 10:47:00 AM

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) reports that mortgage applications declined for the week ending Feb 10th.

Click on graph for larger image.

The Market Composite Index — a measure of mortgage loan application volume was 574.1 – a decrease of 7.3 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from 619.3 one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index decreased 4.4 percent compared with the previous week and was down 21.7 percent compared with the same week one year earlier.

The seasonally-adjusted Purchase Index decreased by 7.9 percent to 391.7 from 425.1 the previous week, whereas the Refinance Index decreased by 6.5 percent to 1636.7 from 1751.0 one week earlier.

Mortgage rates were steady:

The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages remained at 6.25 percent ...

The average contract interest rate for one-year ARMs increased to 5.52 percent from 5.48 percent...

Activity continues to fall and mortgage rates are expected to rise again this week. The unadjusted Purchase Index is 401.9, off from 437.2 for the same week last year.

by Calculated Risk on 2/14/2006 01:20:00 PM

Bloomberg reports: Retail Sales May Spur Faster Expansion

Retailers rang up their biggest sales gains since May 2004 last month, more than doubling forecasts and helping the U.S. economy snap back from its worst quarter in three years.

The 2.3 percent rise came as the warmest January in more than a century encouraged Americans to buy more cars and redeem holiday gift cards. The gain followed a 0.4 percent increase in December, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. Excluding autos, sales rose 2.2 percent, the most in six years.

The fifth straight increase in sales reflects the higher wages U.S. workers are enjoying as the economy adds more jobs and unemployment declines. Treasury notes fell on speculation the economic rebound will give Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke more reason to raise interest rates next month.

"We're definitely going to see a very strong first quarter," said Brian Bethune, an economist at Global Insight Inc., a forecasting firm in Lexington, Massachusetts. "It looked like consumers were hibernating in December, and all they needed was an excuse to go on a spending spree. The weather provided that."

Economists expected sales to rise 0.9 percent, after an originally reported 0.7 percent gain in December, according to the median of 71 forecasts in a Bloomberg News survey. The rise exceeded the highest estimate of 1.5 percent.

"There's no question it's exaggerated by the record mild temperatures in January," said Jim O'Sullivan, a senior economist at UBS Securities LLC in Stamford, Connecticut. "We expect some payback" for February, he said.

I'm not really surprised. The weather has been nice and mortgage activity is still robust. With the recent increases in the Ten Year yield, I expect mortgage rates to increase this week. It will be interesting to see if higher rates slow mortgage activity (the MBA report is due tomorrow).

And it looks like rates are even going higher. Based on the FED funds futures, the market is now expecting at least two more rate hikes (See Macroblog: Betting On Ben, Market Version)

For more on retail, see Kash's Consumption: Full Steam Ahead