Monday, August 27, 2007

Articles submitted - August 25, 2007

Welcome to the August 25, 2007 edition of real estate investment.

Bryan C. Fleming presents Buying into a Down Stock Market posted at Bryan C. Fleming, saying, "Did you ever think of playing the stock market? Why not just watch me loose all my money instead. In this artile I talk about buying into a down stock market. Yes, it's just like gambling... only legal!"

Eric Hudin presents Protecting Your Finances and Assets Offshore posted at My Estate Planning Career Blog, saying, "If you’re self employed, you’re affluent, you’re married, you have direct clients, business partners or you’re just concerned that you’re overpaying your taxes, there’s a strong possibility that you should be protecting your finances and assets offshore."

Allen Taylor presents What is a Charitable Trust? posted at Investing World Today, saying, "A charitable trust is designed to create a path whereby your assets may be converted into a life long stream of income and not a source of governmental revenue though taxes. Your taxes are lowered, what you pay now is lessened and what your heirs or your children pay will be lessened too when the time comes to pay estate taxes."

Tim Ramsey presents You Are Not Alone In The World Of Debt posted at My Debt Relief Blog, saying, "The first seven years of the “new millennium”, has seen the birth of more millionaires than every prior generation, but also created a generation more in debt that any generation that has come before."

Eric Stanley presents The Lure of Low Interest Rates posted at Personal Finance Blog Articles, saying, "Many of the financial decisions people make today are completely based on the current level of interest rates and have little consideration of long-term impact. Rates are so low it just makes sense to refinance or purchase now. We might as well do it or buy it now while rates are so low. Everyone has some debt no big deal rates are low."

Thomas Humes presents Baron Five-Step Action Plan for Building Wealth posted at Wealth Building World, saying, "It is important to learn disciplined strategies of sound money management, investing, and business administration. The more you learn about these areas, the more confident you will be in selecting advisors, making investments, and handling your business and financial affairs. You can easily move forward on your journey to financial success by taking these five simple actions-"

Home Financing

Ryan presents The Dirty Dozen Credit Card Traps posted at Care on Credit, saying, "Overview of the hidden traps in the terms and conditions for your credit cards. Learn how creditors juice you for extra dollars, and how to evaluate credit cards when you are trying to decide which one is right for you."

Matthew Paulson presents How to Qualify for Mortgage without a Credit Score posted at Getting Green.

housing bubble

Ian Welsh presents Reaping What You Sow: Hedge Fund and Housing Bubble Edition posted at The Agonist, saying, "To understand what's happening to the US housing and financial markets right now you need to understand the past policy decisions by the Fed and the Bush administration."

Ian Welsh presents How Bad Will the Housing Bubble Hangover Be? posted at The Agonist, saying, "Parallels with the Japanese housing bubble suggest the housing market will be in for years and years of pain."

Real estate investment

Johnny Wednesday presents Renting vs. Buying Real Estate posted at Johnny Wednesday.

Logan Flatt, CFA presents You Don't Own Real Estate. Real Estate Owns You. posted at PowerWealth.com, saying, "Many Americans believe that real estate can do no wrong as an asset class upon which they can build wealth. I disagree. Building wealth through real estate depends on your ability to distinguish among the three types of real estate ownership – investment, speculative, and personal. If you don’t know the differences, you may soon discover that you don’t own real estate, real estate owns you."

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of real estate investment using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

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Saturday, August 18, 2007

Articles: Real estate and mortgage investment

A Blog hosted by Vancouver Home Mortgage:

Welcome to the August 18, 2007 edition of real estate and mortgage investment.

finance

John Crenshaw presents Top 3 Reasons Mortgage Rate Shopping Will Kill You posted at Truthful Lending dot Com, saying, "It's true...you will cause yourself nothing but pain by shopping for a mortgage based on rate alone. Read on to find out what I mean."

Larry Russell presents The Biggest Personal Finance Story of the Past 30 Years (Part 2) posted at THE SKILLED INVESTOR Blog, saying, "The biggest personal finance story of the past 30 years has been the dramatic growth of the market capitalization of financial services firms within the U.S. equity markets. The reason that this is so important to your personal finances is pretty straightforward. Simply put, most individuals pay far too much for financial products and services. Their continuing over payments show up in the increasing value of financial services company stocks. People have paid far too much for years, and the industry's excessive charges have been increasing for years."

edithyeung presents The Money Series – Steps to Create Passive Income posted at Edith Yeung.Com: Dream. Think. Act..

money

Warren Wong presents How To Pick A Good Stock posted at Personal Development for INTJs, saying, "Do you know how to pick a good stock? Here's how to find a good long term investment!"

real estate

Amanda Harris presents Colorado Real Estate posted at Pajama Mommy.

real estate investment

Chris presents Why it doesn't necessarily pay off to buy your own house in the US, Australia or Europe posted at nomad4ever.

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of real estate and mortgage investment using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

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Sunday, August 12, 2007

Will US$323B injection cure market flu?

As I see it by Vancouver home Mortgage:

Published: Saturday, August 11, 2007 by Paul Vieira, Financial Post

The International Monetary Fund said the global financial market turmoil and related credit crunch should be "manageable."

In recent days rates on the overnight market had climbed well above targets set by central banks.

The widespread credit crunch is the result of mounting defaults in the U.S. subprime mortgage market, where individuals with higher-risk credit ratings are able to obtain financing for home purchases. This spilled over to banks and investment funds, which had exposure to this market.

Click here to read the full report.

There are great concerns by the world financial markets that the credit sqeeze and lack of liquidity as a result of mounting U.S. subprime mortgage defaults may result in widespread economic slowdown.

The market is concerned that the U.S. subprime mortgage meltdown will spread to the general economy. As reported by Newsweek Business article A Widening Credit Squeeze? is spilling over to America’s credit-card debt.

The danger in the credit crunch and shifting of credit usage bu consumers to high interest credit cards will have a significant impact on consumer spending. And with consumer spending accounting for about 72 percent of gross domestic product, any slowdown in spending could have a big impact on the U.S. and Canada.

In view of this week's worldwide market turmoil, market analysts are giving it a even chance that Bank of Canada governor, David Dodge, would defer raising interest rates next month.

Hopefully, the credit crunch in the world financial markets will ease off, and the U.S. subprime woes will be contained. And,the excesses in the housing and mortgage markets will be resolved over time.

Thursday, August 2, 2007

Who will be hurt?

In today's Financial Post, Reuters Published: Thursday, August 02, 2007 reported "Canadian, U.S. banks face limited subprime shocks"

NEW YORK -- U.S. and Canadian banks face limited exposure to subprime mortgage losses and future rating downgrades, bond rating company DBRS said on Thursday.

Healthy earnings should insulate financial institutions, DBRS analysts said on a conference call.

"We do not expect wholesale downgrades of banks with exposure to subprime."

Brenda Lum, who covers Canadian banks for DBRS, reiterated remarks made in a report on Wednesday that said Canada's five largest banks also face limited losses from their exposure to U.S. subprime loans.

"There are no credit rating implications for the five largest Canadian banks," Lum said.


But, home owners who bought their homes recently will not be so lucky. The reason being these home owners paid a lot more for their homes than those that bought their homes a few years earlier. Many home owners in the U.S are already facing serious problems with deteriorating house values and higher mortgage payments.

In Canada, we will not be immuned to the price correction when the housing market turn south. It's not unreasonable to expect prices to correct 15% to 20% considering house prices have gone up almost 100% over the past 6 years.

In the hot housing markets in Vancouver, Victoria, Calgary and Edmonton. there are not much up-side potential in house prices continuing to increase without a correction. The down-side risk could be devastating for many home buyers who only bought their homes in the recent months.

It's already in the news that there are likely to be another interest rate hike in September, possibly follow by another one before the end of 2007.

You are welcome to post your comments here.

Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Markets in meltdown

Growing housing crisis fraying consumers' nerves; sales plunge and credit turmoil spark stocks rout

Jacqueline Thorpe, Financial Post

Published: Friday, July 27, 2007

"We have had the most pronounced credit market cycle in U.S. economic history," said David Rosenberg, chief North American economist at Merrill Lynch. "It has powered the bull market in equities and the prosperity in the economy. Sales of new homes plummeted 6.6% in June to an annual rate of 834,000. That followed news on Wednesday that existing-home sales dropped 3.8% to 5.73-million units.

The figures, combined with ongoing turmoil in the credit market, led to a global stock market rout. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 2.3%, or 311.50 points. The United States now has 4.73 million houses on the block, an inventory of a near-record 7.5 months, said Michael Gregory, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets.

The oversupply in the condo market in Miami is now so intense that Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy. Consumer confidence is lower now than in the months immediately preceding each of the previous two recessions, Mr. Rosenberg said.
With more than half the mortgage equity withdrawal from the housing boom going toward purchases of big-ticket items, sales activity is bound to slow as prices fall.

"One of the key things that has driven consumer spending all along has been mortgage equity withdrawal," Mr. Gregory said.

Credit conditions for consumers are only likely to get tighter as a whole wave of mortgages are reset at higher rates.

Meanwhile, the credit woes in the subprime market are causing credit conditions to tighten in the corporate world. Mr. Rosenberg notes there has been a 100-basis point widening in the spread between high-yield bonds and government debt and the pain is starting to spread to better quality credit.

Financial sector gave early warning

David Berman, Financial Post Published: Friday, July 27, 2007:

The stock market is convulsing this week on a bad diet of defaulting subprime mortgages, postponed debt offerings and a sudden shift in investor sentiment. The collection of mostly Canadian banks and insurance companies has been selling off over the past couple of months, foreshadowing the mess hitting the current market and giving investors their first glimpse of a battered sector within a roaring bull market.

The S&P/TSX financials index hit a peak in mid-May, when the mergers-and-acquisitions boom was in full swing, private-equity buyouts were a snap to finance with high-yield bonds, the Bank of Canada looked as though it had put interest rates on hold and some observers thought the U.S. housing market was near a bottom -- all of which are fine conditions for bank stocks.

Now, investors are growing increasingly concerned about the credit markets and rising interest rates, months after these concerns first affected bank stocks.
After yesterday's stock market bash-up -- its third wallop in the past four days -- the financial index is under water this year with a loss of 0.7% and is 6.5% below its peak. In particular, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce shares are down 13.5% from their highs and Royal Bank of Canada shares are down 9.3%. Meanwhile, the rest of the S&P/TSX composite index is up 7.3% this year and is just 5.5% off its record high.

Financial stocks are not far behind over the same period.

Yes, investors are concerned over the extent to which Canadian banks are exposed to the deteriorating U.S. housing market, but early indications point to a rather limited exposure.

The way the market is headed, that buying opportunity may arrive considerably sooner.