Bits Bucket for September 21, 2012

decline in U.S. life expectancy

This brings up two points often discussed on this blog. When people point out the top 10 “happiest” and healthiest countries in the world are Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Canada, Austria etc. - most all social democracies and all with universal health-care some say it’s because they’re small and white. Well here we have a large portion of whites dying earlier in America - and many because their health-care stinks. Just saying “my private health-care is great” doesn’t mean anything statistically. Statistically US health- care ranks well below America’s in many statistics and America spends about 50-60% more per person.

So poor American white’s life expectancy is declining rapidly while poor black and Hispanic’s life expectancy is rising. So much for the exceptionalism of being white and of the US health-care system. But I’m sure Romney cares a lot about these people.

Life expectancy is shrinking for some Americans NewYorkTimes 9/20/12

For generations of Americans, it was a given that children would live longer than their parents. But there is mounting evidence that this trend has reversed itself for the country’s least-educated whites…

….The reasons for the decline remain unclear, but researchers offered possible explanations, including a spike in prescription drug overdoses among young whites, higher rates of smoking among less educated white women, rising obesity and a steady increase in the number of the least educated Americans who lack health insurance.

The steepest declines were for white women without a high school diploma, who lost five years of life between 1990 and 2008…..life expectancy for black women without a high school diploma had surpassed that of white women of the same education level, the study found.

White men lacking a high school diploma lost three years of life. Life expectancy for both blacks and Hispanics of the same education level rose, the data showed.

“We’re used to looking at groups and complaining that their mortality rates haven’t improved fast enough, but to actually go backward is deeply troubling,”

The five-year decline for white women rivals the seven-year drop for Russian men in the years after the collapse of the Soviet Union…

…The latest estimate shows life expectancy for white women without a high school diploma was 73.5 years, compared with 83.9 years for white women with a college degree or more. For white men, the gap was even bigger: 67.5 years for the least educated white men compared with 80.4 for those with a college degree or better.

“There’s this enormous issue of why,”

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Tiny Apartments Set for Approval: Today the Board of Supervisors will...

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Tuesday, September 25, 2012, by Alex Bevk

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[Sand and Sales] 2Q 2012 Palm Beach Report

Posted by Jonathan Miller - Tuesday, July 31, 2012, 9:18 PM

We published our inaugural report on the Palm Beach, Florida sales market for 2Q 2012.   This is part of an evolving market report series I’ve been writing for Douglas Elliman since 1994.

Key Points

Palm Beach, Florida

-Condo sales were up sharply over year ago levels while single family sales slipped over the same period.
-Condo median sales price showed large increase as single family median sale price fell below year ago levels.
-Days on market fell from year ago levels for both condos, single family and luxury properties.
-North End sales edged higher as prices declined.
-South End sales were up sharply over year ago levels while median sales price edged higher.

Here’s an excerpt from the report:

CONDO/TOWNHOUSE Median sales price was $470,000, up 16% from $405,000 in the same period last year. Average sales price and average price per square foot increased 11.9% and 2.7% respectively over the same period. There were 119 sales this quarter, 22.7% more than in the prior year quarter…

SINGLE FAMILY There were 39 sales in the second quarter, 11.4% below the 44-sale total in the prior year quarter. The time to sell a property fell by more than two months over the same period. Days on market averaged 250 days, 67 days faster than 317 days in the same period last year…

You can build your own custom data tables on the market – now updated with 2Q 12 data. We’ll be adding a chart library for this market area soon!

The Elliman Report: 2Q 2012 Palm Beach [Miller Samuel]
The Elliman Report: 2Q 2012 Palm Beach [Douglas Elliman]
Aggregated Custom Market Data Tables [Miller Samuel]

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[More Sales] 2Q 2012 Hamptons & North Fork Report

Posted by Jonathan Miller - Friday, July 27, 2012, 10:36 AM

We published our report on the Hamptons & North Fork sales market for 2Q 2012.   This is part of an evolving market report series I’ve been writing for Douglas Elliman since 1994.

Key Points

Hamptons & North Fork

-Sales jumped above year ago levels reaching the second highest spring market total in 6 years.
-Median sales price slipped from year ago levels, although average sales price was at 3rd highest level since credit crunch began in 2008.
-Most sales over $5M since credit crunch began – tied with 4Q 2010.
-Listing inventory edged above year ago levels.

Here’s an excerpt from the report:

…The Hamptons and North Fork housing markets were characterized as having their most active spring markets in six years, but both with weaker price levels and modest upticks in listing inventory and marketing time. There were more sales in the second quarter spring market than there have been in any second quarter throughout the past six years. The second quarter total was 676 sales, 9.2% more than 619 sales in the prior year quarter. This total was sharply above the prior quarter result of 381 sales, an unusually light number, given the mild winter and early spring selling season, which suggests a timing issue at play. Listing inventory was 2,452, 5.3% above 2,329 in the same period last year. As a result, the monthly absorption rate was 10.9 months, faster than 11.3 months in the prior year quarter as well as the 12.9-month sixyear average…

You can build your own custom data tables on the market – now updated with 2Q 12 data. You can browse our chart library for the latest – updated for 2Q 2012.

The Elliman Report: 2Q 2012 Hamptons & North Fork Sales [Miller Samuel]
The Elliman Report: 2Q 2012 Hamptons & North Fork [Prudential Douglas Elliman]
Market Chart Library [Miller Samuel]
Aggregated Custom Market Data Tables [Miller Samuel]

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The Chicago Fed National Activity Index: August 2012

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[WSJ] The Crazy 8: Comparing Results of National Home Price Indices

Posted by Jonathan Miller - Saturday, June 9, 2012, 1:18 PM

Matthew Strozier over at WSJ with Column Five (a large producer of infographics) presented an interesting side by side of 8 national housing indices.

All but one index shows a year over year decline in housing. Trulia’s new Price Monitor by Jed Kolko would be a great addition once the year-over-year history is established. It was also interesting that NAR’s Existing Home Sales was omitted (I’m not advocating).

Beyond the obvious price decline, my takeaways were:

US indices are general in sync on the year-over-year. Our confusion in the monthly barrage of housing metric releases is that most push the month-over month.With the proliferation of these indices, data subscriptions must be getting cheaper. There are a few more out there as well.Of the indices presented, their data collection and methodologies vary significantly (where disclosed) yet their results were consistent perhaps suggesting the 7 for 8 result is coincidence as opposed to an aggregated trend.Sales prices are not something we should be obsessed with as an indicator of market health (think Las Vegas, mid decade). I’d much prefer seeing more attention paid to sales trends since they are a pre-cursor to price trends if you are trying to reasonably answer the question: Has the US housing market hit bottom?

It is interesting and my rough understanding that most of these indices were created and run by economists, scientists or data wonks, many for Wall Street purposes with virtually no real estate types. That’s obviously fine until you consider what is said in barrage of monthly press releases for some, citing things that are not empirically measured in their respective reports, i.e. weather, inventory, etc. that create further confusion.

I’d love to see a side by side comparison of the lag time from the point of “meeting of the minds” between buyer and seller for each index. The significant lag time reflected in this index genre is a practical one due to the massive scale of information, but I think it would give consumers (who were generally not the intended users of any of these indices at the time they were created) a better sense of reliability for each.

National housing indices provide useful tools for setting government economic policy but the consumer’s obsession with the idea of a national housing market and it’s relevance to their local markets is, well, crazy.

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How Does the Fed Help My House, My Mortgage?

For those of you who expected to wake up to a 30-year fixed rate mortgage below 3 percent, you may as well go back to sleep.

Yes, rates moved down, 0.125 percent, according to several sources, but that was not as low as some had predicted. Remember, we hit the low of 3.49 percent in July, but then we jumped back into the mid to high threes. (Read More: Fed Pulls Trigger, to Buy Mortgages in Effort to Lower Rates.)

“Short term, people who are thinking about moving really need to lock in,” says Craig Strent of Maryland-based Apex Home Loans. He is concerned that the strong consumer sentiment number that came in today could cause the Federal Reserve to pull back on its buying in the future. “When this thing turns, it’s going to be fast. Just pulling back a little sends a message,” adds Strent.

But others argue that the housing market is still on such shaky ground that that’s unlikely to happen. Mortgage applications to purchase a home have declined five of the last six months, according to Diane Swonk of Mesirow Financial.

“I think that this will be a trillion dollar commitment from the Fed,” said Swonk on CNBC’s "Squawk on the Street." “Home values appreciating, that’s something very important in this economy getting more legs and moving forward more rapidly.” (You can watch the interview here.)

So say mortgage rates could dip lower than the latest record, perhaps to around 3.25 percent. How does that help me? Does it boost my home price? (Read More: Will Fed's Mortgage Buying Juice the Housing Recovery?)

On the one hand, lower mortgage rates give potential buyers more purchasing power. “A 0.125 percent drop in rates adds 1.5 percent to your maximum purchase price (given all the other fees),” according to Dan Green at Waterstone Mortgage. “Assuming a mortgage payment of $1500, that’s the difference between $404,800 and $411,000-ish.” So that is how much more house you can buy. If people can buy more house, then perhaps home prices will rise.

But as we’ve noted so many times before, the great low rate doesn’t mean anything if you can’t qualify, if you don’t have the down payment or credit scores to get it.

“Instead, the underlying improvement in housing demand is still very reliant on cash buyers and investors,” notes Paul Diggle of Capital Economics, who does not believe mortgage rates will fall dramatically. “Admittedly, low bond yields and savings rates more generally are probably playing a part in the strength of investor demand for housing.”

Lower rates could cause a boost in refinances, but so many have already refied at record low rates that it would take a pretty large drop to lure more in, given the fees and hassle involved. And of course negative equity keeps millions of potential refinancers out of the game. The government’s refinance program for underwater borrowers (HARP) has helped over half a million borrowers get lower rates since the beginning of this year, but unless you have a Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac [FNMA  Loading...      ()   ] backed loan, you’re not eligible.

There is a push by Democrats in Congress to expand the government’s refi program, and lower mortgage rates could help more Republicans come on board, but that is unlikely to happen before election day. (Read More: Wealthiest Counties Rake In Government-Backed Mortgages)

“To ensure as many voters as possible can benefit from this, we believe there will be another push to enact HARP expansion legislation during the lame duck session that will start after the election,” says Jaret Seiberg of Guggenheim Partners. “Lower mortgage rates only matter if people can refinance and plow that extra cash into the economy. Given that as many as a quarter of borrowers may be underwater, the HARP is the way to translate the Federal Reserve’s effort into economic stimulus.”

It is hard to say now just how low rates will go and just who will be able to benefit from lower mortgage rates. In today’s tricky housing recovery, so dependent on investors and so sensitive to a still-swollen pipeline of foreclosed properties and delinquent loans, mortgage rates are just one piece of the recovery puzzle.

Sector Watch - Nation's Biggest Mortgage Lenders:

Questions?  Comments?  document.write("");document.write("RealtyCheck"+"@"+"cnbc.com");document.write('');And follow me on Twitter @Diana_Olick

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