by Calculated Risk on 7/29/2009 10:33:00 AM

What if I wrote that U.S. payroll employment increased by 383 thousand jobs in May 2009 following an increase of 259 thousand jobs in April 2009?

Some readers would suspect CR had been captured by aliens or had visited crazytown.

But, in fact, those numbers are exactly what the BLS reported as the actual change in payroll employment in April and May. The economy added 643 thousand jobs over those two months. However no one reports those numbers because there is a strong seasonal pattern to employment.

Even in the best of years, 2.5 to 3.0 million people lose their jobs in January. It happens every year for a number of reasons such as retail cutting back on holiday hires. And just about every July the economy loses over 1 million jobs for seasonal reasons too.

The following graph shows this seasonal pattern:

Click on graph for larger image in new window.

The blue line is the seasonally adjusted (SA) change in net jobs as reported by the BLS, and the red columns are the actual not seasonally adjusted (NSA) data.

No one reports the NSA data because the swings are so wild and the pattern very consistent. Unless you follow the data closely, the NSA numbers are meaningless.

The model used by the BLS for seasonal adjustments is very good, and the SA number is the one to use.

For new home sales there is a strong seasonal pattern too, but in this case I think it is helpful to look at both the NSA and SA data.

Here is how I present monthly new home sales (NSA - Not Seasonally Adjusted).

This shows the seasonal pattern (Spring buying season), and it is easy to compare the pattern for the current year to the previous years.

Of course, for new home sales, I lead with the headline SA data.

And that brings us to the Case-Shiller data.

Yesterday I posted the following graph of the month-to-month change of the Case-Shiller index for both the NSA and SA data (annualized). Note that Case-Shiller uses a three-month moving average to smooth the data.

The Blue line is the NSA data and there is a clear seasonal pattern for house prices.

The red dashed line is the SA data as provided by Case-Shiller.

For this pattern, I'd expect the SA dashed line to run between the peaks and troughs as it did in the '90s.

However look at the last couple of years. The SA dashed line is very close to the NSA line, even with the wild NSA swings. This suggests to me that the seasonal adjustment is currently insufficient and I expect that the index will show steeper declines, especially starting in October and November.

Even with the wild NSA swings, most media reports used the NSA data and not the SA data (Streitfeld at the NY Times used both).

by Calculated Risk on 7/29/2009 09:06:00 AM

From David Streitfeld at the NY Times: Recovery Signs in Housing Market Stir Some Hope

After a plunge lasting three years, houses have finally become cheap enough to lure buyers. That, in turn, is stabilizing prices, generating hope that the real estate market is beginning to recover.

From Peter Hong at the LA Times: Home prices may be stabilizing, market tracker shows

Another sign emerged that the nation's struggling housing market may be nearing its bottom as a widely followed national home-price index posted its first gain in nearly three years.

The S&P/Case-Shiller index of home prices in 20 metropolitan areas was up slightly in May over its April level for the first time since 2006.

Now this is the same news as yesterday, but I just want to point out the widespread reporting of a possible bottom in housing prices. And because of the way Case-Shiller is constructed (with a three month moving average) there is a good chance prices will look positive for the June report too (to be released in August).

These are influential writers.

Streitfeld has been writing about the housing bubble and collapse for years. The Atlantic named him "The Bard of the Bubble" in 2006.

Hong has only been covering housing for a couple of years, but he has also done a very good job.

Of course I think house prices will continue to decline in the Fall, and that the May report was distorted by seasonal factors.

by Calculated Risk on 7/28/2009 10:45:00 PM

From the NY Times: Feds Push Mortgage Companies to Modify More Loans

The Obama administration, scrambling to get its main housing initiative on track, extracted a pledge from 25 mortgage company executives to improve their efforts to assist borrowers in danger of foreclosure.

In an all-day series of meetings Tuesday at the Treasury Department, government officials reached a verbal agreement with the executives for a new goal of about 500,000 loan modifications by Nov. 1 and stressed the program's urgency.

The sessions came amid concerns that the Obama administration will fall far short of its original goal of helping up to 3 million to 4 million troubled borrowers with modified loans.

As of this week, only about 200,000 borrowers were enrolled in three-month trial loan modifications ...

A "verbal agreement"?

Counting the number of mods might make for useful PR, but some mods are more effective than others. A capitalization of missed payments and fees, along with a rate reduction and/or extended term, are the most common modifications. But for homeowners with significant negative equity that is just "extend and pretend" and leads to a high redefault rate and just postpones foreclosure.

by Calculated Risk on 7/28/2009 07:30:00 PM

Nick Timiraos at the WSJ writes: Study Finds Underwater Borrowers Drowned Themselves with Refinancings (ht Jack)

Why are so many homeowners underwater on their mortgages?
...
Michael LaCour-Little, a finance professor at California State University at Fullerton, looked at 4,000 foreclosures in Southern California from 2006-08. He found that, at least in Southern California, borrowers who defaulted on their mortgages didn’t purchase their homes at the top of the market. Instead, the average acquisition was made in 2002 and many homes lost to foreclosure were bought in the 1990s. More than half of all borrowers who lost their homes had already refinanced at least once, and four out of five had a second mortgage.

Here is the study: Follow the Money: A Close Look at Recent Southern California Foreclosures

The conventional wisdom is that households who purchased at the top of the market during the recent housing bubble are those most at risk of default due to recent price declines, upward re-sets of adjustable rate mortgage instruments, the economic downturn, and other factors. Here we use public record data to study Southern California borrowers facing foreclosure in late 2006 and 2007. We estimate property values at the time of the scheduled foreclosure sale with the automated valuation model of a major financial institution and then track actual sales prices for those properties that actually sold, either at auction or as later as REO. We find that virtually all of the borrowers had taken large amounts of equity out of the property through refinancing and/or junior lien borrowing with total cash extracted exceeding $300 million. As a result, losses to lenders exceed those of borrowers by a substantial margin, calling into question policies aimed at protecting borrowers.
emphasis added

It may seem unfair that these homeowners receive help from the bank (or from the government), but as far as slowing foreclosures it really doesn't matter why the homeowner is underwater. I think the research from the Boston Fed suggesting the costs of foreclosure are less than the costs of modifications is a stronger argument against many mods.

by Calculated Risk on 7/28/2009 05:43:00 PM

To preface this post, here are my notes from the April 2008 Milken conference:

Sam Zell started by saying we need to separate commercial from residential. Commercial will be fine in his view (not my view). Also Zell thinks losses are overstated for investment banks and CDOs.

Zell isn't talking about new construction (CRE), rather he is talking about prices for existing CRE. He feels there is too much global demand ("liquidity") for prices to fall too far - especially for Class-A buildings.

A little over a year later several Class-A owners are just walking away.

Now today, from CNBC: Real Estate Bottom Will Turn Around Economy: Zell

After posting three straight months of positive data, the residential real estate market has reached an equilibrium where prices will stop falling, said Sam Zell, founder and chairman of Equity Group Investments. This, in turn, will spark stabilization throughout the rest of the economy.

If single family housing starts and new home sales have found a bottom, then that will remove a key drag from the economy and employment. That is a positive. But I think Zell is wrong on house prices. I think the pace of declines will slow, but that there will be a long tail for real prices.

I could be wrong ... and I think different areas will bottom at different times, and some lower priced areas with heavy foreclosure activity might be at or near a bottom (same with some non-bubble areas). But in general, I think prices will fall further.