New Jersey Real Estate Report

From the Wall Street Journal:

Crisis Hits Europe’s Banks As U.S. Seals Bailout Deal

The White House and congressional leaders agreed on a deal to authorize the biggest banking rescue in U.S. history.

The $700 billion program would effectively nationalize an array of mortgages and securities backed by them — instruments whose deteriorating value has clogged the nation’s financial system.

Lawmakers finished writing the bill late Sunday, after which Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi declared it “frozen,” meaning no changes would be made. The bill leaves many mechanics of the operation up to the Treasury. Among these are the crucial issues of how the U.S. government would decide which assets it will buy and how it would decide what to pay for them. The legislation leaves the Treasury 45 days to issue guidelines on those procedures. The bill awaits votes in Congress starting on Monday.

From big Wall Street houses to small community banks, executives have expressed an interest in signing up for the bailout. But some have said the extent of their involvement will depend on critical details.

The political fallout from the bailout could be substantial, given the enormous expenditure of taxpayer money. Some polls show wide opposition. But the legislation includes provisions designed to guard against ultimate losses for the government. And it calls on the Treasury, as an owner of mortgage securities, to “encourage the servicers of the underlying mortgages” to minimize foreclosures.

The deal came after tension-filled weekend negotiations, where the specter of a faltering economy collided with the politics of a presidential election to create one of the biggest congressional dramas of recent years. Saturday included a high-decibel exchange between Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and congressional Democrats, a ban on handheld email devices to forestall news leaks, and a battery of lobbying calls from the president and the presidential candidates.

From Bloomberg:

European Lenders Rescued by Authorities as U.S. Crisis Spreads

European governments stepped in to rescue Bradford & Bingley Plc, Fortis, and Hypo Real Estate Holding AG as tremors from the U.S. credit crisis reverberated around the world.

The U.K. Treasury seized Bradford & Bingley, Britain’s biggest lender to landlords, while governments in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg threw an 11.2 billion-euro ($16.3 billion) lifeline to Fortis. Germany guaranteed a loan to Hypo.

The interventions exposed how fallout from the crisis that drove Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. into bankruptcy and prompted a $700 billion U.S. bank-rescue package has gone global. It also added urgency to negotiations among European policy makers as to how they deal with banking collapses.

“The precarious global environment means the weakest links in Europe are now falling,” said Mamoun Tazi, an analyst at MF Global Securities Ltd. in London. “If banks continue not to lend to each other we’ll see more failures.”
…
Tightening credit is casting a pall over the European economy with U.K. growth the weakest since the early 1990s and the 15-nation euro-area on the edge of its first recession. The risk is of a spiral in which the credit crisis and the economy begin to feed off each other, resulting in costlier borrowing and even weaker expansion.

“The extreme dislocations in European money markets are both a symptom and a source of serious stress in the financial sector, exacerbated by the rapidly deteriorating growth environment,” said Marco Annunziata, chief economist at Unicredit MIB in London.

To head off the collapse of its biggest bank, Belgium agreed to buy 49 percent of Fortis’s Belgian banking unit for 4.7 billion euros, while the Netherlands will pay 4 billion euros for a similar stake in the Dutch business, the governments said in a statement late yesterday. Luxembourg will provide a 2.5 billion-euro loan convertible into 49 percent of Fortis’s banking division in that country.

From Reuters:

Housing grim as financial rescue debate rages

Prices of U.S. existing homes suffered a record drop in August and the rate of sales tumbled, offering little sign of improvement in the source of the financial crisis in the United States.

The pace of existing home sales decreased 2.2 percent to an annual pace of 4.91 million units while the median national home price declined a record 9.5 percent to $203,100, the National Association of Realtors said on Wednesday.

In what would normally be a potentially bright spot, the overstock of homes for sale shrank. However, the trade group said as many as 2 in 5 home sales were by borrowers who have seen their property lose value or are facing foreclosure.

“The NAR estimates that 35-to-40 percent of all sales are of distressed property, so underlying private activity is weaker than the headlines (imply) and there is little sign of imminent improvement,” Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics.

Economists polled by Reuters were expecting home resales to fall to a 4.93 million-unit pace from the 5.00 million unit rate initially reported for July, which was revised to a 5.02 million unit pace.

The inventory of existing homes for sale fell 7.0 percent to 4.26 million from the record-high overstock reported in July.

From the AP:

US home sales, prices fall in August

A record decline in U.S. home prices in August attracted more buyers in some areas and led to a sizable decline in the number of unsold homes on the market, the National Association of Realtors said Wednesday.

The median price fell 9.5 percent to $203,100, the largest price decline on records dating to 1999. As prices fall, buyers are taking advantage of steep discounts, especially in hard-hit markets like California, Nevada and Florida.

“Time and price are the real cures for the housing market slump,” said Mike Larson, an analyst at Weiss Research.

The inventory of unsold homes fell 7 percent to 4.3 million, down from the all-time record of 4.6 million in July. That’s a 10.4-month supply at the current sales pace.

The decline, however, merits only “a small round of applause” because around 5 months of inventory is a more typical level, wrote Global Insight economist Patrick Newport. Also, many homeowners who don’t have to sell are likely keeping their properties off the market. At the same time, thousands of foreclosed properties are tied up in court and are not for sale yet.

Lawrence Yun, the trade group’s chief economist, said he hopes the downward trend in inventories continues because, “home prices will not stabilize as long as inventories remain high.”

Inventories have been driven higher by a massive wave of mortgage foreclosures, especially on risky loans.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Lawmakers Battle Over Rescue Plan
By GREG HITT, DAMIAN PALETTA and DEBORAH SOLOMON
SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Lawmakers are scrambling to put their mark on the Bush administration’s $700 billion plan to save financial markets — a fast-moving test of wills that could reshape one of the biggest bailouts in U.S. history.

There’s no sign yet that Congress will delay or derail the proposal. Democrats are looking to add provisions that include beefed-up congressional oversight, aid for individual homeowners and changes to bankruptcy laws.

Some of the measures are opposed by the administration. Perhaps the biggest looming fight is over Democratic efforts to require the program’s participants to curb what they pay their executives.

Last week, as deep new fissures opened in global financial markets, the U.S. Treasury unveiled a plan to spend up to $700 billion to buy soured mortgages and mortgage-related securities from financial institutions. In many respects, the financial sector last week all but ceased to function.

In discussions with lawmakers late Sunday, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson prodded Congress to move forward, voicing worry about how financial markets will react Monday and whether those institutions still standing could be in for more turmoil, officials said. Since unveiling the plan, the administration has kept up pressure for rapid action, in hopes that relieving banks of their troublesome holdings will help lending markets to stabilize.

The bailout is raising thorny questions that could be tough to address as the bill speeds through Congress. Until this proposal, the government’s response to the worst financial crisis in 80 years had been led largely by the Treasury and the Federal Reserve, with Congress consulted often only after the fact. As a result, lawmakers view the bailout plan as a chance to reassert their authority. Many are unnerved by Treasury’s request for a blank check with few conditions.

The proposal has also stirred a populist backlash, with many members of Congress saying the bill needs to be better geared to Main Street than Wall Street.
…
Another likely area for compromise is aid for homeowners. The administration already believes its plan will provide relief to borrowers even though the specific legislative language doesn’t address the question. Because Treasury will own mortgage-backed securities and actual home loans, Mr. Paulson said on ABC’s “This Week” that the government will be able to exert pressure on mortgage servicers to modify terms.

The debate could expose a peculiar irony in the government’s rescue planning, because taxpayers are now both creditors and debtors in the housing mess. While some taxpayers would benefit from attempts to aid homeowners by modifying mortgages or easing the bankruptcy process, others could be hurt if those moves increase the overall cost of the bailout.

From the Wall Street Journal:

U.S. to Take Over AIG in $85 Billion Bailout; Central Banks Inject Cash as Credit Dries Up
Emergency Loan Effectively Gives Government Control of Insurer; Historic Move Would Cap 10 Days That Reshaped U.S. Finance
By MATTHEW KARNITSCHNIG, DEBORAH SOLOMON, LIAM PLEVEN and JON E. HILSENRATH

The U.S. government seized control of American International Group Inc. — one of the world’s biggest insurers — in an $85 billion deal that signaled the intensity of its concerns about the danger a collapse could pose to the financial system.

The step marks a dramatic turnabout for the federal government, which had been strongly resisting overtures from AIG for an emergency loan or some intervention that would prevent the insurer from falling into bankruptcy. Just last weekend, the government essentially pulled the plug on Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., allowing the big investment bank to go under instead of giving it financial support. This time, the government decided AIG truly was too big to fail.

The U.S. negotiators drove a hard bargain. Under terms hammered out Tuesday night, the Fed will lend up to $85 billion to AIG, and the U.S. government will effectively get a 79.9% equity stake in the insurer in the form of warrants called equity participation notes. The two-year loan will carry an interest rate of Libor plus 8.5 percentage points. (Libor, the London interbank offered rate, is a common short-term lending benchmark.)

The loan is secured by AIG’s assets, including its profitable insurance businesses, giving the Fed some protection even if markets continue to sink. And if AIG rebounds, taxpayers could reap a big profit through the government’s equity stake.

“This loan will facilitate a process under which AIG will sell certain of its businesses in an orderly manner, with the least possible disruption to the overall economy,” the Fed said in a statement.

It puts the government in control of a private insurer — a historic development, particularly considering that AIG isn’t directly regulated by the federal government. The Fed took the highly unusual step using legal authority granted in the Federal Reserve Act, which allows it to lend to nonbanks under “unusual and exigent” circumstances, something it invoked when Bear Stearns Cos. was rescued in March.