The federal government will disburse just $432 million from a $1
billion program to help unemployed homeowners avoid foreclosure,
a government official said. The rest of the money will return to
the US Treasury because the Emergency Homeowners' Loan Program
has ended, and not enough people were approved in time to receive
aid. The funding provided forgivable loans up to $50,000 to
temporarily help unemployed or underemployed people avoid
foreclosure in 32 states and Puerto Rico. Out of 100,000
applicants, 11,832 were conditionally approved for the program
that the government initially said could help up to 30,000
people. Assistance will average $35,000 to $45,000 a homeowner,
said Brian Sullivan, a spokesman for the Department of Housing
and Urban Development.
The program's failure to reach or process enough applicants in
time is "sad and shameful," says Lewis Finfer, executive director
of the Massachusetts Communities Action Network. It worked to
pass the legislation to make the program possible. HUD started
taking applications in June — almost a year after the program
was made possible by Wall Street reform legislation — and six
months later than HUD first intended. The deadline for HUD to
commit the funds was Sept. 30. Of the 32 states, five had
similar programs, so they ran their own while HUD administered
the program in the other 27 states. Pennsylvania, one of the
five, spent its entire allocation of $106 million and approved
3,056 homeowners — 26% of the US total. Only Texas and New York
got more funds than Pennsylvania. The HUD loans are to be
forgiven if homeowners keep their homes for five years.
Recession over, incomes still falling
Between June 2009, when the recession officially ended, and June
2011, inflation-adjusted median household income fell 6.7%, to
$49,909, according to a study by two former Census Bureau
officials. During the recession — from December 2007 to June
2009 — household income fell 3.2%. The finding helps explain
why Americans’ attitudes toward the economy, the country’s
direction and its political leaders have continued to sour even
as the economy has been growing. Unhappiness and anger have come
to dominate the political scene, including the early stages of
the 2012 presidential campaign. The full 9.8% drop in income
from the start of the recession to this June — the most recent
month in the study — appears to be the largest in several
decades, according to other Census Bureau data. Gordon W. Green
Jr., who wrote the report with John F. Coder, called the decline
“a significant reduction in the American standard of living.”
That reduction occurred even though the unemployment rate fell
slightly, to 9.2% in June compared with 9.5% two years earlier.
Two main forces appear to have held down pay: the number of
people outside the labor force — neither working nor looking
for work — has risen; and the hourly pay of employed people has
failed to keep pace with inflation, as the prices of oil products
and many foods have jumped. The new study by Mr. Green and Mr.
Coder is based on monthly census surveys, rather than the annual
data that appeared in last month’s census report on income. The
monthly figures allow researchers to measure income changes more
precisely during a recession or a recovery and provide more
current information.
In their new study, Mr. Green and Mr. Coder found that income
dropped more, in percentage terms, for some groups already making
less, a factor that they say may have contributed to rising
income inequality. From June 2007 to June of this year, they
said, median annual household income declined by 7.8% for
non-Hispanic whites, to $56,320, and by 6.8% for Hispanics, to
$39,901. For blacks, household income declined 9.2%, to $31,784.
Income, after adjustment for inflation, declined fairly
substantially for households headed by people under age 62, but
it rose 4.7% for those headed by people 65 to 74, many of whom
are not in the labor force. The change was negligible for those
62 to 64. The type of employment also made a difference. Real
median annual income declined to a similar degree for households
headed by private-sector wage workers (4.3%) and
government-sector workers (3.9%), but fell much more for the
self-employed (12.3%). Family households generally had larger
declines in real income than other households. Men living alone
showed a bigger decline than women living alone. Education
levels were also a factor. Median annual income declined most for
households headed by someone with an associate’s degree,
dropping 14%, to $53,195, in the four-year period that ended in
June 2011, the report said. For households headed by people who
had not completed high school, median income declined by 7.9%, to
$25,157. For those with a bachelor’s degree or more, income
declined by 6.8%, to $82,846.
Republicans blame Mr. Obama for the slump, saying he has issued a
blizzard of regulations and promised future tax increases that
have hurt business and consumer confidence. Those arguments may
be heard repeatedly this week, as the Senate begins debating the
jobs bill. The full bill — a mix of tax cuts, public works,
unemployment benefits and other items, costing $447 billion —
is unlikely to pass, but individual parts seem to have a
significant chance.
Housing industry jobs down
The housing industry lost 5,700 jobs in September, marking its
fourth consecutive month of employment shrinkage, preliminary
figures from the Department of Labor show. Residential building
employment rose by 1,800, but was offset by 7,500 job losses in
the real estate industry, according to seasonally adjusted data
from the Labor Department. Given the housing crash and the
market's current anemic performance, it's hard to expect industry
employment to do anything but move sideways for a while, said
Paul Dales, senior US economist with Capital Economics, a
Toronto-based research consultancy.
The numbers bear out his point, as housing industry employment
started to flatten out last year and has remained fairly steady
since then. "If you go back and look at how many people were
employed in those sectors two years or even four years ago, there
would have been a hell of a lot more people employed," Dales
said. "Any industry that’s been exposed to the housing market
has really seen a lot of job losses over the last few years."
The ranks of mortgage brokers are also continuing to thin out.
Employment among mortgage and non-mortgage loan brokers declined
by 1,500 in September, although that data was not adjusted for
seasonal variations, which are substantial in the housing
industry. The trend, though, is clear. The mortgage loan
brokerage industry has lost more than 100,000 jobs since
employment peaked at 148,200 in April 2006, Labor Department data
shows. Employment in September was 47,400, according to the
Department's preliminary estimate. "These industries have
suffered a lot and they’ll probably continue to suffer," said
Dales.
Debt supercommittee deadlocked?
While the panel members themselves aren't doing much talking,
other lawmakers, aides and lobbyists closely tracking the
so-called "supercommittee" are increasingly skeptical, even
pessimistic, that the panel will be able to meet its assigned
goal of at least $1.2 trillion in deficit savings over the next
10 years. The reason? A familiar deadlock over taxes and cuts to
major programs like the Medicare and Medicaid health care
programs for the elderly, poor and disabled. Democrats won't go
for an agreement that doesn't include lots of new tax revenue;
Republicans are just as ardently anti-tax. The impasse over
revenues means that Democrats won't agree to cost curbs on
popular entitlement programs like Medicare. Democrats are
insistent on taxes. "There's been no movement on revenues and
I'm not sure the Democrats will agree to anything without
revenues," added a Democratic lobbyist who required anonymity to
speak candidly.
Asked last week whether she is confident that the panel can hit
its $1.2 trillion goal, co-chairman Sen. Patty Murray, a
Washington state Democrat, sidestepped the question. "I am
confident that the public is watching us very closely to see if
we can show this country that this democracy can work," Murray
told reporters. "I carry that weight on my shoulders every day
and so does every member of this committee." The two parties
have equal strength on the panel, which has until the
Thanksgiving holiday at the end of November to come up with a
plan to submit for up-or-down House and Senate votes in
December.
DSNews.com - slow recovery but slower prices declines
Veros has released its market forecast for the 12-month period
ending September 1, 2012. Nationally, Veros’ own home price
index continues to show stability in its quarterly results,
holding fairly constant at -1.7%. The company says recent
performance in home prices indicates slight depreciation over the
next 12 months. With no significant drags on the national index
and few markets showing strong appreciation, a very slow recovery
for housing prices is anticipated, according to Veros.
Unemployment and housing supply continue to be key discriminators
between the strongest and weakest housing markets, according to
Veros.
The company explained that areas of North Dakota are showing
strength due to a notably low unemployment rate at 3.5% and a
growing economy and population fueled by an oil boom and strong
demand for agriculture. Honolulu attributes its strength to an
unemployment rate of 5.7%, its lowest housing supply in the past
five years, and a high rate of affordability. According to
Veros, Pittsburgh, Washington D.C., and Boston remain the
strongest big city markets, with visible strength also returning
to the Denver housing market. Additionally, regions in Alaska
and Hawaii continue to maintain a strong housing market due to
affordability, lower interest rates and unemployment, as well as
an increasing population.
By Veros’ assessment, the nation’s weakest housing markets
can be found in Nevada and the inland areas of California. Beyond
the five bottom-rung markets listed above, the company also sees
weakness in Washington and Oregon housing markets. While some
markets in Arizona and Florida are still pointedly weak, Veros
has seen notable improvements in such areas as Miami, Tampa, and
Fort Myers, Florida. According to Eric Fox, VP of statistical
and economic modeling for Veros, some of the hardest hit markets
during the downturn are continuing to show some surprising
strengths, although they are not out of negative territory. For
example, Miami is forecast to see a slight one to two%
depreciation versus the 10% depreciation of the recent past.
“Overall, the recovery in the housing market is limited to just
a few markets and is taking a long time to occur, Fox said.
“The encouraging news is that many markets are no longer
expected to be rapidly declining.” Veros’ 12-month forecast
indicates that there will not be a return to double-digit
declines in home prices. The company anticipates a maximum of
five% appreciation for growing housing markets and five to six%
decline for weaker markets.
billion program to help unemployed homeowners avoid foreclosure,
a government official said. The rest of the money will return to
the US Treasury because the Emergency Homeowners' Loan Program
has ended, and not enough people were approved in time to receive
aid. The funding provided forgivable loans up to $50,000 to
temporarily help unemployed or underemployed people avoid
foreclosure in 32 states and Puerto Rico. Out of 100,000
applicants, 11,832 were conditionally approved for the program
that the government initially said could help up to 30,000
people. Assistance will average $35,000 to $45,000 a homeowner,
said Brian Sullivan, a spokesman for the Department of Housing
and Urban Development.
The program's failure to reach or process enough applicants in
time is "sad and shameful," says Lewis Finfer, executive director
of the Massachusetts Communities Action Network. It worked to
pass the legislation to make the program possible. HUD started
taking applications in June — almost a year after the program
was made possible by Wall Street reform legislation — and six
months later than HUD first intended. The deadline for HUD to
commit the funds was Sept. 30. Of the 32 states, five had
similar programs, so they ran their own while HUD administered
the program in the other 27 states. Pennsylvania, one of the
five, spent its entire allocation of $106 million and approved
3,056 homeowners — 26% of the US total. Only Texas and New York
got more funds than Pennsylvania. The HUD loans are to be
forgiven if homeowners keep their homes for five years.
Recession over, incomes still falling
Between June 2009, when the recession officially ended, and June
2011, inflation-adjusted median household income fell 6.7%, to
$49,909, according to a study by two former Census Bureau
officials. During the recession — from December 2007 to June
2009 — household income fell 3.2%. The finding helps explain
why Americans’ attitudes toward the economy, the country’s
direction and its political leaders have continued to sour even
as the economy has been growing. Unhappiness and anger have come
to dominate the political scene, including the early stages of
the 2012 presidential campaign. The full 9.8% drop in income
from the start of the recession to this June — the most recent
month in the study — appears to be the largest in several
decades, according to other Census Bureau data. Gordon W. Green
Jr., who wrote the report with John F. Coder, called the decline
“a significant reduction in the American standard of living.”
That reduction occurred even though the unemployment rate fell
slightly, to 9.2% in June compared with 9.5% two years earlier.
Two main forces appear to have held down pay: the number of
people outside the labor force — neither working nor looking
for work — has risen; and the hourly pay of employed people has
failed to keep pace with inflation, as the prices of oil products
and many foods have jumped. The new study by Mr. Green and Mr.
Coder is based on monthly census surveys, rather than the annual
data that appeared in last month’s census report on income. The
monthly figures allow researchers to measure income changes more
precisely during a recession or a recovery and provide more
current information.
In their new study, Mr. Green and Mr. Coder found that income
dropped more, in percentage terms, for some groups already making
less, a factor that they say may have contributed to rising
income inequality. From June 2007 to June of this year, they
said, median annual household income declined by 7.8% for
non-Hispanic whites, to $56,320, and by 6.8% for Hispanics, to
$39,901. For blacks, household income declined 9.2%, to $31,784.
Income, after adjustment for inflation, declined fairly
substantially for households headed by people under age 62, but
it rose 4.7% for those headed by people 65 to 74, many of whom
are not in the labor force. The change was negligible for those
62 to 64. The type of employment also made a difference. Real
median annual income declined to a similar degree for households
headed by private-sector wage workers (4.3%) and
government-sector workers (3.9%), but fell much more for the
self-employed (12.3%). Family households generally had larger
declines in real income than other households. Men living alone
showed a bigger decline than women living alone. Education
levels were also a factor. Median annual income declined most for
households headed by someone with an associate’s degree,
dropping 14%, to $53,195, in the four-year period that ended in
June 2011, the report said. For households headed by people who
had not completed high school, median income declined by 7.9%, to
$25,157. For those with a bachelor’s degree or more, income
declined by 6.8%, to $82,846.
Republicans blame Mr. Obama for the slump, saying he has issued a
blizzard of regulations and promised future tax increases that
have hurt business and consumer confidence. Those arguments may
be heard repeatedly this week, as the Senate begins debating the
jobs bill. The full bill — a mix of tax cuts, public works,
unemployment benefits and other items, costing $447 billion —
is unlikely to pass, but individual parts seem to have a
significant chance.
Housing industry jobs down
The housing industry lost 5,700 jobs in September, marking its
fourth consecutive month of employment shrinkage, preliminary
figures from the Department of Labor show. Residential building
employment rose by 1,800, but was offset by 7,500 job losses in
the real estate industry, according to seasonally adjusted data
from the Labor Department. Given the housing crash and the
market's current anemic performance, it's hard to expect industry
employment to do anything but move sideways for a while, said
Paul Dales, senior US economist with Capital Economics, a
Toronto-based research consultancy.
The numbers bear out his point, as housing industry employment
started to flatten out last year and has remained fairly steady
since then. "If you go back and look at how many people were
employed in those sectors two years or even four years ago, there
would have been a hell of a lot more people employed," Dales
said. "Any industry that’s been exposed to the housing market
has really seen a lot of job losses over the last few years."
The ranks of mortgage brokers are also continuing to thin out.
Employment among mortgage and non-mortgage loan brokers declined
by 1,500 in September, although that data was not adjusted for
seasonal variations, which are substantial in the housing
industry. The trend, though, is clear. The mortgage loan
brokerage industry has lost more than 100,000 jobs since
employment peaked at 148,200 in April 2006, Labor Department data
shows. Employment in September was 47,400, according to the
Department's preliminary estimate. "These industries have
suffered a lot and they’ll probably continue to suffer," said
Dales.
Debt supercommittee deadlocked?
While the panel members themselves aren't doing much talking,
other lawmakers, aides and lobbyists closely tracking the
so-called "supercommittee" are increasingly skeptical, even
pessimistic, that the panel will be able to meet its assigned
goal of at least $1.2 trillion in deficit savings over the next
10 years. The reason? A familiar deadlock over taxes and cuts to
major programs like the Medicare and Medicaid health care
programs for the elderly, poor and disabled. Democrats won't go
for an agreement that doesn't include lots of new tax revenue;
Republicans are just as ardently anti-tax. The impasse over
revenues means that Democrats won't agree to cost curbs on
popular entitlement programs like Medicare. Democrats are
insistent on taxes. "There's been no movement on revenues and
I'm not sure the Democrats will agree to anything without
revenues," added a Democratic lobbyist who required anonymity to
speak candidly.
Asked last week whether she is confident that the panel can hit
its $1.2 trillion goal, co-chairman Sen. Patty Murray, a
Washington state Democrat, sidestepped the question. "I am
confident that the public is watching us very closely to see if
we can show this country that this democracy can work," Murray
told reporters. "I carry that weight on my shoulders every day
and so does every member of this committee." The two parties
have equal strength on the panel, which has until the
Thanksgiving holiday at the end of November to come up with a
plan to submit for up-or-down House and Senate votes in
December.
DSNews.com - slow recovery but slower prices declines
Veros has released its market forecast for the 12-month period
ending September 1, 2012. Nationally, Veros’ own home price
index continues to show stability in its quarterly results,
holding fairly constant at -1.7%. The company says recent
performance in home prices indicates slight depreciation over the
next 12 months. With no significant drags on the national index
and few markets showing strong appreciation, a very slow recovery
for housing prices is anticipated, according to Veros.
Unemployment and housing supply continue to be key discriminators
between the strongest and weakest housing markets, according to
Veros.
The company explained that areas of North Dakota are showing
strength due to a notably low unemployment rate at 3.5% and a
growing economy and population fueled by an oil boom and strong
demand for agriculture. Honolulu attributes its strength to an
unemployment rate of 5.7%, its lowest housing supply in the past
five years, and a high rate of affordability. According to
Veros, Pittsburgh, Washington D.C., and Boston remain the
strongest big city markets, with visible strength also returning
to the Denver housing market. Additionally, regions in Alaska
and Hawaii continue to maintain a strong housing market due to
affordability, lower interest rates and unemployment, as well as
an increasing population.
By Veros’ assessment, the nation’s weakest housing markets
can be found in Nevada and the inland areas of California. Beyond
the five bottom-rung markets listed above, the company also sees
weakness in Washington and Oregon housing markets. While some
markets in Arizona and Florida are still pointedly weak, Veros
has seen notable improvements in such areas as Miami, Tampa, and
Fort Myers, Florida. According to Eric Fox, VP of statistical
and economic modeling for Veros, some of the hardest hit markets
during the downturn are continuing to show some surprising
strengths, although they are not out of negative territory. For
example, Miami is forecast to see a slight one to two%
depreciation versus the 10% depreciation of the recent past.
“Overall, the recovery in the housing market is limited to just
a few markets and is taking a long time to occur, Fox said.
“The encouraging news is that many markets are no longer
expected to be rapidly declining.” Veros’ 12-month forecast
indicates that there will not be a return to double-digit
declines in home prices. The company anticipates a maximum of
five% appreciation for growing housing markets and five to six%
decline for weaker markets.
