Weekend Economists Ring in the Old, Wring Out the New: Dec. 30, 2011 to Jan. 2, 2012

[Demeter]

146. Michael Olenick: Is Shadow Housing Inventory Vastly Larger Than Widely Believed?

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/01/michael-olenick-is-shadow-housing-inventory-vastly-larger-than-widely-believed.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29


The turn of the year is the time to make predictions and projections. I’m optimistic that the tide will finally turn for the American middle-class, suffering silently in a one-sided economic war. I don’t think this will be because of altruism, or even justice, but rather simple pragmatism. Specifically, I believe that parasitic financial institutions have pushed the boundaries so far that they’ve put their host, the middle-class itself, at risk. One new bit of information suggests the housing front is in more perilous shape than most pundits believe.

One challenge when performing any type of analysis is that information is scattered in many different places, and even when disseminated by the government its accuracy is oftentimes questionable. We’ve already seen existing home sales for recent years revised downward from their already dismal position, with barely a yawn from the public and no accountability whatsoever from government regulators who used that information when more reliable sources existed.

I don’t understand why accurate housing data, which is supposed to be open to the public, is so hard to come by. The housing crisis arguably rises to the level of a national emergency, one we can see and fee every day as it ripples through the economy. Despite that, government-owned Fannie Mae still keeps loan-level data away from the public, it’s extremely difficult to get data from Freddie Mac, and MERS’ database remains a black hole.

There is one piece of data only recently released — and, as far as I can tell, has gone unnoticed — that, if true, suggests the housing market is in such dire straits we’ve finally reached a critical mass where only radical out-of-the-box solutions will work. If this information, which comes of a highly suspect albeit well connected insider, is accurate, then extend and pretend has finally reached its natural end...

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FHFA reports that Fannie Mae’s share of total US mortgage debt, at the end of 2010, is 27.7%. If Fannie Mae really does have 600,000 homes they expect to foreclose upon we’d expect to see about 2,165,000 shadow inventory homes total .. in Florida.

It’s impossible to believe this figure is accurate. Let’s look at some data. First, the Census Bureau reports there are just under nine million housing units in the entire state at the end of 2010, 8,989,580, to be exact. According to court records between July, 2010 through December, 2011, inclusive, there were 1,044 foreclosure filings per month in Stern’s home county, Broward County, FL; 22,144 filings total. However, from January, 2009, through June, 2010, inclusive, there 2,544 monthly filings in the same county; 48,144 filings total.

If the number Stern relayed is accurate, that would put a theoretical backlog of filings, for that one county, at 26,000. If we extrapolate to the rest of this high foreclosure state it’s safe to say shadow inventory estimates for the US have been dramatically underestimated, in much the same way that existing home sales were overestimated, albeit to a much more severe degree...


ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER BIG LIE (YAWN)