by Calculated Risk on 10/10/2009 08:48:00 AM

From Peter Goodman at the NY Times: Panel Says Obama Plan Won’t Slow Foreclosures

In a report mild in language but pointed in substance, the Congressional Oversight Panel — a watchdog created last year to keep tabs on taxpayer bailout funds — said the administration’s program would, “in the best case,” prevent “fewer than half of the predicted foreclosures.”
...
When the Obama administration began its $75 billion Making Home Affordable program in March, it said the plan would spare as many as four million households from foreclosure. On Thursday, Treasury announced that 500,000 homeowners had since had their payments lowered on a trial basis, celebrating this as a milestone.

But the report from the oversight panel directly challenged the administration’s characterizations.

Most prominently, the panel had grave uncertainty about whether large numbers of the trial loan modifications — which typically run for three months — would successfully be converted to permanent terms.

As of the beginning of September, only 1.26 percent of trial modifications that had made it through the three-month trial period had become permanent, the report found. Of course, very few of those trial loans had reached their three-month expiration because the program only recently began processing large numbers of applications. As of Sept. 1, the Obama plan had produced 1,711 permanent loan modifications.
emphasis added

The numbers that matter are the permanent loan modifications and the redefault rate. With the report next month we should know much more ...

by Calculated Risk on 10/09/2009 11:15:00 PM

Since this was a busy week for commercial real estate data. Here is a summary:

From Bloomberg: U.S. Office Vacancies Reach Five-Year High of 16.5%, Reis Says

Click on graph for larger image in new window.

This graph shows the office vacancy rate starting in 1991.

Reis is reporting the vacancy rate rose to 16.5% in Q3 from 15.9% in Q2. The peak following the previous recession was 17%.

From Reuters: US apartment vacancy rate hits 23-year high-report

Note: the Reis numbers are for cities. The overall vacancy rate from the Census Bureau was at a record 10.6% in Q2 2009.

From Reuters: Shopping center vacancy rate hits 17-year high: report

Reis reports the strip mall vacancy rate hit 10.3% in Q3 2009; the highest vacancy rate since 1992.

And rents are cliff diving ...

"[W]e do not foresee a recovery in the retail sector until late 2012 at the earliest."
Victor Calanog, Reis director of research

Hotel Occupancy: Two Year Slump

And a couple of articles:

From the LA Times: Hotel defaults, foreclosures rise in California

From the WSJ: Fed Frets About Commercial Real Estate

by Calculated Risk on 10/09/2009 08:11:00 PM

This is an unofficial list of Problem Banks.

Changes and comments from surferdude808:

Since last week, the Unofficial Problem Bank List shrank by a net three institutions to 460. Aggregate assets decreased slightly to $297.8 billion from $298.6 billion.

New additions include two Cease & Desist orders issued by the OTS against Lincoln FSB of Nebraska, Lincoln ($371.3m) and Waterfield Bank, Germantown, MD ($217.3m). Also, the Federal Reserve issued a Prompt Corrective Action order against San Joaquin Bank, Bakersfield, CA ($832.8m) on October 5th, which was has been operating under a Cease & Desist order since April 9, 2009.

The removals include the failures last Friday – Warren Bank, Jennings State Bank, and Southern Colorado National Bank. The OCC terminated a Formal Agreement against Pacific National Bank, Miami, FL on September 29th.

The other deletion was Venture Bank which was misidentified with the bank of the same name based out of Washington that failed on September 11th. We were notified of the error by a reader and greatly appreciate the assistance in maintaining the accuracy of this list.

The list is compiled from regulator press releases or from public news sources (see Enforcement Action Type link for source). The FDIC data is released monthly with a delay, and the Fed and OTC data is more timely. The OCC data is a little lagged. Credit: surferdude808.

See description below table for Class and Cert (and a link to FDIC ID system).

For a full screen version of the table click here.

The table is wide - use scroll bars to see all information!

NOTE: Columns are sortable - click on column header (Assets, State, Bank Name, Date, etc.)





Class: from FDIC

The FDIC assigns classification codes indicating an institution's charter type (commercial bank, savings bank, or savings association), its chartering agent (state or federal government), its Federal Reserve membership status (member or nonmember), and its primary federal regulator (state-chartered institutions are subject to both federal and state supervision). These codes are:

N National chartered commercial bank supervised by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency

SM State charter Fed member commercial bank supervised by the Federal Reserve

NM State charter Fed nonmember commercial bank supervised by the FDIC

SA State or federal charter savings association supervised by the Office of Thrift Supervision

SB State charter savings bank supervised by the FDIC

Cert: This is the certificate number assigned by the FDIC used to identify institutions and for the issuance of insurance certificates. Click on the number and the Institution Directory (ID) system "will provide the last demographic and financial data filed by the selected institution".

by Calculated Risk on 10/09/2009 05:23:00 PM

From California State Controller John Chiang: Controller Releases September 2009 Cash Report

State Controller John Chiang today released his monthly report covering California’s cash balance, receipts and disbursements in September. For the first three months of the fiscal year, total General Fund revenue was nearly $1.1 billion below the recently amended 2009-10 Budget Act estimates.

“Revenues more than $1 billion under estimates and recent adverse court rulings are dealing a major blow to a budget that is barely 10-weeks old,” said Controller Chiang. “While there are encouraging signs that California’s economy is preparing for a comeback, the recession continues to drag State revenues down. I urge lawmakers and the Governor to prepare for more difficult decisions ahead.”
emphasis added

Here are the September 2009 financial statement and summary analysis.

Just add this to the pile of state budgets falling short ...

From Bloomberg: New York Income Tax Revenue Falls 36% in Year, Paterson Says

From Reuters: Massachusetts government to announce emergency budget cuts

by Calculated Risk on 10/09/2009 04:02:00 PM

While we wait for the FDIC, from Rolfe Winkler at Reuters: TARP deadbeats

Thirty-three TARP recipients missed a scheduled dividend payment to taxpayers last month, according to the Treasury Department, including 18 banks that missed a payment for the first time.
...
The 33 banks that missed dividend payments in August have received $4.5 billion of TARP money. The biggest is CIT. Previously it paid $44 million of dividends, but with a bankruptcy filing looking likely, Treasury’s $2.3 billion investment seems headed toward zero.

Market update:

The second graph is from Doug Short of dshort.com (financial planner): "Four Bad Bears".

Note that the Great Depression crash is based on the DOW; the three others are for the S&P 500.