Thursday, April 29, 2010

Path Dependence?

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I am currently in Minneapolis. It is, to me, a great city. My feelings may reflect that it was the large city nearest to me when I was gro...
6 comments:
Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Did Arizona just help California's Housing Market?

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My colleague Dowell Myers points out that for the housing market in the US to remain healthy, we must "cultivate new immigrant resident...
6 comments:
Monday, April 26, 2010

Should Berkshire Hathaway be required to post collateral on underwater positions?

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Yes. (BTW, I own a few Class B shares and am a big fan of Warren Buffett).
2 comments:
Thursday, April 22, 2010

A simple financial reform

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If an investment instrument has never been through a down-cycle, rating agencies should be forbidden from giving the instrument a grade of B...
3 comments:
Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Trying to figure out whether synthetic CDOS add value

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In principle, I think they could, because they allow investors to invest in a combination of mortgages that are not actually available in th...
Friday, April 16, 2010

Bill Wheaton says housing is a sleeping giant that is about to wake up

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He says so in a short paper . I think he is right.
1 comment:
Wednesday, April 14, 2010

What people don't know about household income

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I spoke at a Hanley-Wood Conference in Ft.Lauderdale today to a group of Apartment operators. It was a very nice audience. I asked members...
2 comments:
Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Thoughts from 37,000 Feet

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I am on a Virgin America flight that includes, among other things, Wifi. The plane is nicely lit and very clean (because it is new). And i...
1 comment:
Sunday, April 11, 2010

How many loans are non-recourse?

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In California (and other states), purchase money home mortgages are non-recourse loans--if a bank accepts the keys from a borrower, it canno...

Is it better to model or to converse?

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It amuses me when on occasion someone in the real estate business complains that I am "too academic." For starters, given the car...
1 comment:
Tuesday, April 06, 2010

Small Ironies

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I was culling my books over the weekend, and decided to pitch out Milton and Rose Friedman's Free to Choose . This is striking me today...
1 comment:
Monday, April 05, 2010

Good Reading

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Yannis Ioannides Journal of Economic Literature review of Scott Page's T he Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Group...
1 comment:
Thursday, April 01, 2010

My disappointment with Ted Koppel

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I was listening to NPR's Talk of the Nation while driving home tonight: the topic was the federal deficit. They brought in Ted Koppel t...
Wednesday, March 31, 2010

I wonder if we will see a discontinuity in mortgage rates tomorrow

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It should only happen if the market didn't believe the Fed would stop buying. Otherwise expectations should have already been built int...
Tuesday, March 30, 2010

A little more on Mortgage Debt and Aging

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I did a quick comparison of average household income for 1989 and 2007 (using the census) and average mortgage debt for those that has mortg...
7 comments:
Saturday, March 27, 2010

The long-term impact of the mortgage crisis--and why it keeps me awake

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My parent's generation behaved differently than mine in all sorts of ways. A paper of mine with Hendershott shows that they spent less...
13 comments:
Tuesday, March 23, 2010

My Colleague Gary Painter writes about the Impact of Immigration on Midsize City Housing Markets

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The abstract : The recent trend of immigrants arriving in mid-size metropolitan areas has received growing attention in the literature. Th...
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Those who thought the housing tax credit would simply shift sales forward....

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...rather than increase sales are probably being vindicated. February was another bad month for existing home sales.
1 comment:
Monday, March 22, 2010

The ultimate in branding?

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I was recently at a meeting where all were instructed to turn off their Blackberries. Not iphones. Not cell phones. Blackberries. Everyo...
Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Clarification on Sprawl and Zoning

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Zoning is not the only reason we are spreading out --as my colleague Peter Gordon shows (go to minute 50), people are spreading out around ...
2 comments: