Is Collapse of Home Prices About To Hit the Bottom?

An end to the fall in housing prices came into sight yesterday, and with it, relief for those caught in the subprime mortgage mess, as the number of new single-family homes beginning construction slowed to the lowest number in more than 16 years.The number of new single-family homes started in November dropped 5.4% from the month prior to 829,000, the lowest such figure since 1991. Overall, new home starts fell 3.7% from October, to just 1.187 million, a 24% housing starts rather than face growing stocks of unsold homes. This is good news for homeowners, because as supply becomes constrained, prices will eventually rise.Still, a recovery in home prices depends not only on the falling supply of new homes but whether homebuyers find it easy to get access to affordable credit. According to Federal Reserve figures, mortgage borrowing reached a nine-year low in the third quarter of this year.“The big wild card is whether otherwise financially sound households will be able to access mortgage credit at reasonable costs,” the chief economist at Moody’s Investor Service, John Lonski, told The New York Sun.The speed with which the housing market is adjusting to the unfavorable conditions for homebuilders and those seeking loans suggests it will be some time before home prices begin to level out.“Homebuilding activity will probably continue to sink until we have formed a definitive bottom for home buying,” Mr. Lonski said. “This is not a bottom here. We have returned almost to the levels we saw in September. We are still not looking for a bottom in starts until the middle of 2008, probably another 100,000 to 200,000 down from here,” an economist at Wachovia Securities in North Carolina, Adam York, said in a statement.Other experts were more optimistic. “If we are not at the bottom, we are very close. We have seen the unsold inventory of new homes falling in the past year. The level of housing construction level is consistent with the drawdown of overhang of unsold properties,” the chief economist at National City Corp., Richard Dekaser, told Reuters.The housing construction figures came as the Federal Reserve Board voted unanimously on several proposals regarding mortgage lending, placing the burden on lenders to ensure that borrowers could afford to continue payments.“Mortgage market discipline has in some cases broken down and the incentives to follow prudent lending procedures have, at times, eroded,” the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Ben Bernanke, said.Among the proposals are plans to restrict prepayment penalties, where lenders penalize risky borrowers from paying off their loan early, require that borrowers set aside in escrow enough money to pay taxes and insurance costs, and prevent lenders from making loans without proof that the borrower can afford the payments.Before taking effect, there will be a public comment period, after which the Fed will vote again, possibly revising the rules. Any new regulations are unlikely to be passed until later next year.“We want consumers to make decisions about home mortgage options confidently, with assurance that unscrupulous home mortgage practices will not be tolerated,” Mr. Bernanke said. “Unfair and deceptive acts and practices hurt not just borrowers and their families, but entire communities, and, indeed, the economy as a whole.”Critics of the Fed’s proposals suggested that action had come too late to be of much use. “We always lock the barn door after the horse has gone,” the chief economist at Standard & Poor’s, David Wyss, told Bloomberg News.The Fed’s belated action was “deeply disappointing” and increased the likelihood of new laws to regulate borrowing, according to a statement issued by the Senate Banking Committee chairman, Christopher Dodd, a Democratic presidential hopeful of Connecticut.“It raises serious questions as to whether the Federal Reserve is the appropriate institution to house consumer protection functions. This is a clear signal that legislation is necessary,” he said.

Is Collapse of Home Prices About To Hit the Bottom?

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