Housing Market

The foreclosure crisis is causing hardship, not just for homeowners but for an unknown number of renters. The Houston Chronicle today tells the story of a contractor who rebuilds Louisiana homes damaged by Hurricane Katrina, now facing eviction because the house he rents in Houston was foreclosed on.

Sapna Aiyer, a Houston legal aid attorney, told the Chronicle that new owners in Texas aren't required to continue leases that previous owners signed. Even tenants who are up-to-date on payments can be given just 30-days written notice to vacate.

The New York City real estate market -- though real estate tax revenues fell during the first nine months of the budget year.

Real property transfer taxes fell 12.7% and mortgage recording tax collections dropped 20.1%, Reuters reported. The New York City, which has already lost jobs on Wall Street in the wake of the subprime crisis, could lose another 36,000 jobs, the city's labor department reported last week.

Even in an economy as unsettled as we’re currently going through, people buy food and medication, and for Newport Beach, Calif.–based Marinita Development, that’s the engine that keeps this small but established company chugging along. 

The pace of housing rescue efforts slowed in the first quarter of the year, according to a new report, while the number of people losing their homes to foreclosure skyrocketed during the same period.

One out of every 194 U.S. households received a foreclosure filing in the first three months of 2008, according to the latest figures released Tuesday by RealtyTrac.

Snyder Langston reported that it has completed construction of a nine-story, 246,600-square-foot build-to-suit office tower for Newport Beach, Calif.-based Pacific Life Insurance Co.

Esopus Creek Value L.P., a shareholder that owns approximately 3.76 percent of Syms Corp., has announced that it sent a letter to the Syms Corp. demanding they disclose the development intentions for 42 Trinity Place in Lower Manhattan.

Eli Broad, the co-founder of KB Home, told Bloomberg TV yesterday that home prices could fall another 20%. Here's a link to the story. That is an absolutely enormous amount when you consider that prices have already fallen a bunch. Today the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller Home Price Index for February was released. It showed that the 20-city index fell 12.7% from a year earlier and is down 14.8% from its all-time high in July 2006.

I'm guessing that the execs at KB Home aren't real happy with Eli Broad, because who's going to buy a house now if they think that Broad is right about where prices are heading? I don't know how many shares of KB Home that Broad himself still owns, but it can't be too many because he doesn't appear on the list of holders of 5% or more of KB Home shares in the latest SEC filing.

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Trivia: KB Home was founded in 1957 in Detroit as Kaufman & Broad Building Company

Hawaii-based Colliers Monroe Friedlander and San Francisco-based PKF Capital have been selected by the owner of the Waikiki Beachside Hotel to market and sell the 12-story, 80-room, beachfront boutique hotel.

SL Green Realty Corp. and Hard Rock International have submitted a proposal to revitalize the Aqueduct Race Track in Queens, N.Y., by developing and operating a mixed-use entertainment complex that includes racing, gaming, restaurants, retail and hotels.