Worries about the sorry state of the U.S. economy have officials from the Obama administration digging deep into their bag of tricks to stop the skid before it slips into a double-dip recession.

Their latest move was announced Sunday when Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan said the White House plans in the next few weeks to set up an emergency loan program for the unemployed and a government mortgage refinancing effort.

Despite all the monetary and fiscal firepower the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Treasury have deployed, economic growth has slowed to an agonizing pace. The slowdown has hit the housing market particularly hard, as evidenced by home sales that dropped to record lows in July.

Full story is available on Money Morning

The U.S. housing sector received some good news Tuesday — home prices in 20 major cities rose a better-than-expected 4.2% in June  on a year-on-year basis, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price survey. Prices also rose a non-seasonally adjusted 1% in June, from May.

But June’s bright spark may represent brief relief for the troubled residential real estate sector — the data probably reflects some effects of the home buyer tax credit, an expired program that benefited residential buyers who signed contracts before the end of April. Meanwhile, reports show July existing-home sales plunged 27.2% and July new-home sales plummeted 12.4%, the latter hitting a 47-year low.

Full story is available on Daily Finance

Is the great American dream over?

Is the housing market on the verge of collapse?

These very questions are now being echoed around the nation by financial experts, authorities in Government and the common person alike.

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke recently attended an annual conference of global central bankers in Wyoming. At this meeting of financial minds, he stated that the U.S. economy is not recovering as quickly as it had been expected to.

The Government originally predicted that for the months covering April to June the economy would grow by around 2.4 percent. In reality it only managed a meager 1.6 percent which was slightly better than the dire predictions of some financial economists.

Full story is available on News4US

Tuesday’s dramatic plunge in home resales for July begs the question: Were the tax credits worth up to $8,000 for home purchases bad policy?

Sales of previously-owned homes, after a good run in March and April, slid in June before crashing in July. Sales last month were down 26% from one year earlier and 27% from June.

Clearly, temporary tax credits succeeded in getting buyers to change their behavior. But once the tax credits disappeared, so did the buyers. “Why would you have signed a contract in May and not in April when you could have gotten an $8,000 tax credit?” says John Burns, a housing consultant based in Irvine, Calif.

What’s less clear is whether stimulus has done anything else to change demand. While mortgage rates continue to fall every week into record territory, the expiration of tax credits shows that housing demand is not much better than it was 18 months ago, when the market was in freefall.

Full story is available on The Wall Street Journal

As Gomer Pyle would say, “Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!” (search that on YouTube, kids). The U.S.  housing market has taken a frightening dive following the withdrawal of market-distorting federal government incentives. Sales of existing homes have dropped 27 percent in July over June levels, and new homes at an annual rate of 12 percent, the lowest rate since the government began tracking sales in 1963. Prices are sure to follow.

Buyers who snapped up overpriced inventory in order to grab a bit of that ever-popular OPM (other people’s money) will shortly find themselves underwater on their mortgage. Many of these new buyers will walk away from homes they suddenly have found to be bad investments.

Well-meaning tax credits have transformed a stabilizing, albeit depressed, real estate market into one engulfed by a full-blown economic panic that again threatens the entire U.S. economy. Worse, the fleeting illusion of demand created by the credits spurred construction of even more homes, the one thing this market absolutely did not need. The ratio of sales to excess inventory is now worse than it was when the last economic bubble burst.

Full story is available on SF Gate

Another dismal report on the housing market is adding to worries about the economy.

We talked to local real estate agents to see how those numbers reflect our east Tennessee housing market.
Here’s what they had to say.

Sales of previously owned homes fell 27 percent last month to the lowest level in 15 years.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says, “Fixing this system is one of the most consequential and complicated economic policy problems we face as a country.”

The 27 percent drop is despite the lowest mortgage rates in decades and bargain home prices in many areas.

Like in Knox County, Realtor Don Canter says buy if you have a secure job because interest rates are so low.
If you’re buying he recommends to think foreclosures first.

In Blount County, Dwight Price, broker of Price and Associates, says do not sell because already the market is inventory heavy.
You won’t get a good price.
If you plan on selling your home, it needs to be necessary.
He says if you’re going to buy, you need to have a high credit score.

Full story is available on volunteertv.com

Earlier this month, talking about a housing market unsupported by Uncle Sam’s billions, I said that “the entire housing-finance business in the U.S. would come to a screeching halt. No one could buy, no one could sell, and home values would be entirely hypothetical.” What I didn’t realize was that we were plunging towards that state of affairs even with the vigorous and active involvement of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The National Association of Realtors said sales dropped a record 27.2 percent from June to an annual rate of 3.83 million units, the lowest level since May 1995.

This number is the lowest that the NAR has ever reported, and I can see why it spooked the markets, sending 10-year Treasuries breaking through the 2.5% level: we’re seeing less housing market activity now than we were even during the depths of the crisis. According to the NAR, there were 4.94 million existing homes sold in 2007, 4.34 million sold in 2008, and 4.57 million sold in 2009. The latest annualized number in that series, for July 2010, is just 3.37 million. That’s a 26% fall from last year’s rate.

Full story is available on Financial Post

The end of a popular government stimulus program drove home sales in July to their lowest levels in more than a decade, fueling fresh concerns about the economic recovery.

Home sales fell 27.2% nationwide from a month earlier, the National Assn. of Realtors reported. That was a much bigger drop than expected, as the boost evaporated from a now-expired federal tax credit that had been driving sales this spring. The plunge came despite rock-bottom rates on home loans.

Concern over the summer swoon reverberated from Wall Street to the White House. The Dow Jones industrial average briefly slid below the 10,000 benchmark and was down 1.3% on the day.

“You are seeing the sales drop off a cliff again, and that is really starting to scare people,” C.J. Jones, head of institutional trading at Nollenberger Capital Markets, said Tuesday. “Are we going to have a double dip? Nobody knows.”

Full story is available on Los Angeles Times

The market eased steadily throughout the day to finish 1.4 per cent lower after some awful US home sales figures.

Sales of existing homes in the US plummeted 27 per cent in July, to their lowest level in a decade.

Those renewed concerns about US housing and growth led to a 1.3 per cent fall in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

They also fed into a big fall for Australia’s major banks, which are very exposed to movements in the Australian housing market.

The nation’s largest home lender, the Commonwealth Bank, closed down 2.3 per cent at $48.30, NAB was down 1.8 per cent, ANZ lost 2 per cent, and Westpac eased 1.7 per cent.

But Australia’s fifth biggest bank, and one of the nation’s major insurers, Suncorp was up more than 2.4 per cent to $7.97 after recording a full-year profit of $780 million, more than double last year’s result.

Telstra shares touched a fresh record low at $2.75, only a couple of days after it plunged 19 cents after going ex-dividend on Monday.

Full story is available on ABC Online

Sales of existing homes fell by 27% last month even with the record low mortgage interest rates.  Mortgage interest rates for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 4.42% this week, which was down from last week’s 4.44% and from it’s level one year-ago of 5.12 % according to the survey from Freddie Mac.

June and July saw the highest month to month drop in existing home sales in 15 years according to the National Association of Realtors.

Home owners trying to sell  in the hardest hit areas of the country are waiting on average 5 months or more to sell their homes.  Palm Beach, Florida is on record as being the slowest in the country with an average time on the market of nearly 6 months.

Full story is available on Gamut News