Scott Sambucci

Las Vegas Homeowners Lose Their Bets as Home Prices Fall

Mark - Really appreciate the research and numbers your put into your article. Your article prompted me to take a quick look at more recent numbers in Las Vegas as of May 1 to augment what you've written here:

seekingalpha.com/insta...

Nice work.

John Taylor Clears the Way for an Informed View of the Financial Crisis

Ira - Nice work on detailing Taylor's article. He's an important voice of reason when evaluating the current housing and mortgage situation. Hopefully policy-markers and market participants will understand that simply dropping interest rates will not be a panacea for the market.

His paper is one that I've referred to myself here on Seeking Alpha (seekingalpha.com/artic...) and your complete analysis of his paper is appreciated.

Has a Market Reversal Happened?

With regard to the housing and foreclosure market, there's also the activity on the existing home sales affected by the foreclosure rate. For example, check out Sacramento existing home prices vs. inventory levels:

Sacramento: tinyurl.com/Sacramento...

Even with a constant decrease in inventory, prices are still falling at a steady rate. We suspect that the fall in the weekly inventory numbers are simply properties going into foreclosure which then leave the existing home market's traditional channels (meaning represented on a one-on-one basis by agents/brokers). Once the banks take over the property, they're bundling and reselling at pennies on the dollar is asset packages.

Despite lower supply in the traditional resale channels, prices are STILL falling. Seems to illustrate the lack of buyers as the current price levels. More on this problem here:

scottsambucci.blogspot...