Housing Market

It is one thing for Bank of America's chief credit strategist Hans Mikkelsen to be wrong on his long-term strategic call about a "Great Rotation" out of bonds and into stocks year... after year... after year (somewhat ironic that the credit guy gets the equity call right, and is dead wrong on the credit side). After all, it has gotten to the point where the buyside bets how long it takes until the latest vintage of said "great" call blows up in his face. These are, after all, "strategic" call, and as everyone knows, when the sellside says one thing strategically, it is time to do the other. However, not even the most jaded and cynical of market observers had any clue just how spectacular Mikkelsen's "tactical" call implosion would be.  Apparently, neither did he. And judging by his language, his clients - if there are any left of course - most certainly did not either.  "We wrote last Friday that this week would be crunch time for our challenged tactical (short term) short stance on the market, expressed by buying protection on the CDX.IG. We got crushed. Thus we remove our tactical view and cover the short."

Following last week's macro fireworks, the coming week will be an absolute snoozer with virtually nothing on the calendar until Thursday's Initial claims, which is the key event of the week, as well as much Fed president jawboning again, including both good and bad cops talking QE4EVA either up or down. And with earnings season basically over, at least coffee consumption will be higher than average.

If there is any market that demonstrates the complete and total misallocation of capital that results from Banana Ben Bernanke’s money printing and artificially low interest rate policy, it the latest phony American housing bubble. With a record numbers of citizens on the food stamp electronic breadline, with unemployment stubbornly high no matter what data you use, billionaire financial oligarchs are running around bidding up “homes for rent” and pricing out the random average person that actually has the capacity or desire to bid. What follows below demonstrates the degree of insanity that has now been unleashed upon the streets of Las Vegas - in their QE-forever induced delirium, homebuilders have gone Chinese and in Las Vegas "permits for new home construction are up 50 percent, twice the national average."

“Labor market conditions are affected by a variety of factors outside a central bank’s control,” admitted the Fed's Jeffrey Lacker after the employment report bounced around the world.

As is well known, Goldman's Mark Carney is leaving the Bank of Canada on June 1 to take over the UK money printer in a few months, at which point he will proceed to create about GBP25 billion per month out of thin air, pushing the total monthly G-7 liquidity injection to a healthy $200 billion (an annualized rate of $2.5 trillion). Which meant that a successor had to be found. Moments ago we learned just who that is, and surprisingly it does not appear to be yet another Goldman Sachs Partner, MD or even Vice President. Carney's replacement is Stephen Poloz, the former head of Export Development Canada. Promptly upon the announcement Poloz noted that flexible inflation targeting no threat to credibility, and Canada's monetary policy has helped through crisis, and that experience at EDC gives him a feel for Canada's economy. If nothing else, at least he has held a real job. Unlike those mandarins in the Marriner Eccles building. Either way, his monetary stance is largely unknown, although it will hardly be a hurdle to the other lunatics who have taken over the money printing asylum.

Tuesday's Case Shiller update index showed something very troubling: as a whole, the US housing market in its broadest sense, has barely budged in the past four years (chart). And yet, what is unmistakable, and what has given many the impression that there is a "recovery" (despite clear recent signals to the contrary) are media attempts to spark a buying frenzy in several of the key markets that were responsible for the prior housing bubble, such as Florida, California, Nevada and Arizona. And how do we know they are succeeding, if only until the Bernanke liquidity bubble pops again? Courtesy of articles such as this: "25 markets where flipping homes is most profitable." Nuff said.

...  Until His Iron Deficiency Goes Away

The highlights from Bill Gross' monthly letter: "The past decade has proved that houses were merely homes and not ATM machines. They were not “good as money.” Likewise, the Fed’s modern day liquid wealth creations such as bonds and stocks may suffer a similar fate at a future bubbled price whether it be 1.50% for a 10-year Treasury or Dow 16,000.... if there are no spending cuts or asset price write-offs, then it’s hard to see how deficits and outstanding debt as a percentage of GDP can ever be reduced....  Current policies come with a cost even as they act to magically float asset prices higher, making many of them to appear “good as money”. And the take away: "PIMCO’s advice is to continue to participate in an obviously central-bank-generated bubble but to gradually reduce risk positions in 2013 and perhaps beyond. While this Outlook has indeed claimed that Treasuries are money good but not “good money,” they are better than the alternative (cash) as long as central banks and dollar reserve countries (China, Japan) continue to participate....a bond and equity investor can choose to play with historically high risk to principal or quit the game and earn nothing."

Way back in 2006 at the height of the housing bubble, we prepared this chart proposing the housing bubble might exhibit symmetry, i.e. the decline would mirror the rise. We also proposed that the decline would be characterized by phase shifts that corresponded to the decay of whatever reason was being given for the "recovery" in housing, for example, "this must be the bottom." Perhaps all the trillions of dollars of intervention has accomplished is extend Phase 2. Central bank and state manipulation distorted the symmetry of housing's decline, but did they stave off Phase 3 permanently? If bubbles eventually revert to their starting level, Phase 3--capitulation and a return to pre-bubble prices--still lies ahead.

When it comes to the US housing market there appear to be three groups of people: those who who have either unlimited cash and/or access to credit, and like the most rabid of bubble-chasing speculators, are perfectly happy to engage in a game of Flip That House for a short-term profit pending the discovery of a greater fool (often times converting the house into rental properties as numerous hedge funds have been doing on cost-free basis courtesy of the government's REO-To-Rent program) - they are the vast minority of speculators; then there are those who currently rent and are opportunistically looking at home prices, willing to dip their toe at the right price - these too are few and far between and mostly represent a function of the natural growth of the US household offset by the availability of jobs; and then there is everyone else. Sadly, it is the "everyone else" that is the vast majority of the US population. It is this "everyone else" who comprises the bulk of those who have been kicked out of the American Dream, whose core pillar has always been owning your own home (with or without a massive mortgage attached), not renting. As the US Census Bureau reported earlier today, the US homeownership rates in the first quarter of 2013 dropped by another 0.4% to a fresh 18 years low, or 65% - the lowest since 1995!

The President will take questions from the White House reporters at 1015ET. Will he mention the equity market at all-time highs? The strength of the housing market? The 'rising' unemployment rate? The 'falling' macro economy?

It was just seven short years ago that the prices at the epicenter of the housing bubble, Los Angeles, CA rose by 50% every six months as the nation experienced its first parabolic move higher in home prices courtesy of Alan Greenspan's disastrous policies: a time when everyone knew intuitively the housing market was in an epic bubble, yet which nobody wanted to pop because there was just too much fun to be had chasing the bouncing ball, not to mention money. Well, courtesy of the real-time real estate pricing trackers at Altos Research, we now know that the very worst of the housing bubble is not only back, but it is at levels not seen since the days when a house in the Inland Empire was only a faint glimmer of the prototype for BitCoin.

This is a descriptive not a normative claim. My focus is on what people are actually doing, not what they might have done or what some think they should have done.

Confused about the latest disconnect between reality and propaganda, this time affecting the (foreclosure-stuffed) housing "recovery" which has become the only upside that the bulls can point to when demonstrating the effectiveness of QE now that the latest attempt at economic recovery has failed miserably both in the US and globally? Gluskin Sheff's David Rosenberg is here to clear any confusion.

Socialism is a dirty word in many parts of the US, but as the FT reports, the government has turned its mortgage market into a giant nationalised enterprise on a par with China’s Red Army with over 90% of mortgages subsidized by the state and aided by so-called "progressive" or "redistributive" policies. In the UK, the government have also become entwined with the housing market, albeit in different ways. Rates have also been slashed close to zero; tens of thousands are buying homes arm-in-arm with the state under 'shared equity schemes'; and one-third of all mortgages come from the two state-controlled banks (Lloyds and RBS); very reminiscent of supposedly communist China, where most banks are majority-owned by the state with small public floats. The question remains how can they avoid another crash if and when they withdraw support from the market? "It’s broadly accepted nowadays that China still lives under the banner of ‘communism’ despite capitalist markets playing an increasing role in society. In Britain and America – at least where the housing market is concerned – the reverse process seems to be taking place."