While both the media and stock investors believe that housing has bottomed, they are unaware of the massive supply of homes that are already in the foreclosure process that will certainly drive home prices down even further when they are sold. We have been projecting a "W"-shaped recovery for some time, and we are becoming even more convinced that we are right. The shape of the second leg down is almost completely dependent on the level of government intervention that will take place.
- 13.54 percent of the 44.7 million mortgages tracked by the Mortgage Bankers Association are delinquent.
- 7.57 million homeowners are delinquent, applying the same percentage to the 11.2 million mortgages not tracked by the MBA (55.9 million total mortgages in the U.S.). That means that 10 percent of all homeowners in the country are delinquent.
- Based on historical trend analysis by Amherst Securities, 6.94 million homes that are already delinquent will be liquidated, which is more than a one-year supply of distressed sales poised to hit the market sometime in 2010 and 2011. During first-quarter 2005 that figure was only 1.27 million.
- Defaults continue to grow at the rate of approximately 300,000 per month, assuring that the number of distressed sales will grow and will continue through 2012.
Government intervention to date has been extremely helpful in preventing an even more dramatic decline in home prices. As shown in the chart below, housing demand has fallen only to "normal" levels and stabilized there. Without historically low mortgage rates, support for Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and FHA, and an $8,000 tax credit, how far would sales have fallen this year and what would that decline in demand have done to pricing?
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