I'm Coming Up For Air

I'm buried right now but I'm feeling embarrassed at not having posted in over a month. As a compromise, more news, less comment.

Here's a story about a couple cancelled DC condo projects. One of the projects is outright finished and the other is going to be an apartment complex instead of a condo complex. As I discussed a while back, when monthly mortgages are significantly higher than monthly rents for similar units, consumers of housing shift away from buying in favor of renting. A closely related phenomenon is the reduced interest among developers in building sellable units in favor of building rentable units. Why? Obviously, as demand for condos shrinks and demand for apartments increases, developers move quickly to divert resources appropriately. Just one more way in which the natural order of things is slowly restored after a hot market.

OK, seriously, less comment. Closely related to the above, an article about rents heading higher, seeing the biggest jump since 2000.

An article about sketchy mortgage lending practices. I've discussed non-traditional financing devices before.

Finally, after I pointed to a story in April that homes were less overvalued (huh?), here's a story saying overpriced housing is getting more overpriced. Apparently, this is one group's (or possibly just some dude's) opinion and I didn't look at the numbers really closely or examine where they came from. But I'm always skeptical when someone comes up with their own metric for evaluating a market and then makes a radical proclamation based on their findings.