by Calculated Risk on 6/22/2009 10:18:00 PM

Note: For visitors of many Google hosted blogs, the redirect feature from a blogspot address to a custom URL failed for six days (from late Tuesday June 16th until Monday afternoon June 22nd). This is now resolved. Welcome back! I apologize for any inconvenience.

Here are a few posts and links that might interest you:

Over the weekend, I looked at some historical data for house prices and the unemployment rate. Here is the national data, and for several cities: Miami, Chicago, Dallas, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, and Detroit.

On Saturday, Matt Padilla of Mortgage Insider posted a guest book review of Jim Grant's book: Mr. Market Miscalculates: The Bubble Years and Beyond: The Greenspan Problem (all views are Matt's)

A quote via Bloomberg:

“I am not particularly of the green shoots group yet,” [General Electric Co. Vice Chairman John] Rice said ... “I have not seen it in our order patterns yet. At the macro level, there may be statistics suggesting the economy is starting to turn. I am not seeing it yet. ... We are preparing for 12 or 18 months of tough sledding.”

From the BLS: Record Unemployment Rates in Eight States

State Personal Income Tax Cliff Diving and More on State Income Taxes

Once again, welcome back!

by Calculated Risk on 6/22/2009 08:00:00 PM

From the WSJ: Three Banks Suspend Their TARP Dividends (ht jb)

Treasury spokeswoman Meg Reilly said Monday that "a number of banks" that got taxpayer-funded capital under TARP are no longer paying dividends to the government.
...
"Here the government has given the banks money at great terms, but the fact that they can't keep up with it is worrisome," said Michael Shemi, an investor at New York hedge-fund firm Christofferson, Robb & Co. "It tells you of the deep problems of community and regional banks."

The article mentions three banks by name: Pacific Capital Bancorp, of Santa Barbara, Seacoast Banking Corp. of Florida, of Stuart, and Midwest Banc Holdings Inc., of Melrose Park, Ill.

These banks received the funds in December.

Note: missing up to six dividend payments was allowed under the TARP agreement, so this isn't a default.

by Calculated Risk on 6/22/2009 06:00:00 PM

Michael sent me this photo of the halted Waterview Tower project in Chicago.

Click on image for larger graph in new window.

Photo Credit: Michael C.

The development was halted at 26 stories - the plan was for a 90 story building with a combination of condos and a hotel.

Every CRE bust leaves what Crain's Chicago Business calls the Waterview: "a 26-story concrete monument symbolizing the excesses of the real estate boom" ... here are couple of recent stories on the Waterview.

From Crain's Chicago Business: Waterview Hotel project on the market

CB Richard Ellis Inc. is taking on one of the toughest jobs in today’s languishing downtown real estate market: finding a buyer for the stalled Waterview Tower and Shangri-La Hotel project on Wacker Drive.
...
The developer is tangling in court with the Bank of America, which is trying to collect on a $20-million loan, and construction firms that claim they’re owed a combined $85 million.

And from the Chicago Sun-Times: City wants high-rise crane removed

Impatient about the stillborn construction site on Wacker Drive, city officials are demanding the removal of the high-rise crane at the proposed Waterview Tower. No work has been done on the planned 90-story building since last year, and now it stands as a shell about 27 stories tall at the southwest corner of Wacker and Clark.

A spokesman for the city's Buildings Department said it is worried that an unused crane can pose a safety hazard.

Another CRE eyesore.

by Calculated Risk on 6/22/2009 04:00:00 PM

The AP reports that White House spokesman Robert Gibbs says Obama expects "10 percent unemployment within the next few months".

By popular demand ...

Click on graph for larger image in new window.

The first graph shows the S&P 500 since 1990.

The dashed line is the closing price today.

The S&P 500 is up almost 32% from the bottom (235 points), and still off almost 43% from the peak (672 points below the max).

The second graph is from Doug Short of dshort.com (financial planner): "Four Bad Bears".

Note that the Great Depression crash is based on the DOW; the three others are for the S&P 500.

by Calculated Risk on 6/22/2009 02:17:00 PM

From Dow Jones: Commercial Real-Estate Prices Fall 8.6% On Month In April

Commercial real-estate prices fell 8.6% in April ... which leaves prices down one-quarter from a year earlier ...

"The size of April's decline, following a 5.5% decline in January, also suggests that sellers are beginning to capitulate to the realities of commercial real-estate markets," says Moody's Managing Director Nick Levidy. ...

Prices in the CRE market are not as sticky as the residential market, so prices fall much quicker. We've seen plenty of half off sales for distressed CRE, and this report suggests the average decline is about 25% over the last year.