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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: yard_man who wrote (5488)	8/30/2002 11:22:37 AM
From: Jim Willie CB	Respond to of 89467

Eric Fry on real estate: - The most popular means of consumption right now, of course, is to swap some of that "excess" home equity for a new car, a DVD player, a Stairmaster or whatever else consumers deem a necessity. We are smack in the middle of the fifth distinct mortgage-refinancing surge since 1997, and this current surge is by far the most spectacular. Refinancing activity is literally "soaring off the charts." - Is this, too, a bubble about to burst?..."Yes," is the implicit answer from the home-building industry. "Executives across the US home-building industry have been selling shares in their companies at a record pace this year," the Financial Times reports, "Corporate officers and board members in publicly traded US building companies sold a record $258 million-worth of shares more than they bought in the second quarter. Of the 16 homebuilders with the largest market capitalization, seven had reduced their executive shareholdings by the largest amount seen in individual records going back two decades." - So what's driving this housing-bubble-cum-insider- selling-opportunity? The Financial Times provides a handy summary: "Home values may be increasingly fuelled by excess credit, a subsequent deterioration in lending standards and unsustainable expectations among prospective home buyers for more double-digit percentage gains." - If it walks like a duck...