Below The Beltway

Two stories in the local media demonstrate that the foreclosure story isn’t over in the Metro Washington, D.C.
First, the Washington Post reports that foreclosures are on the rise throughout the D.C. area:
The Washington region, once considered immune to the unfolding mortgage crisis, has experienced a surge of loans gone bad in recent months. It’s an [...]

Among those who aren’t going to benefit from it:
The agreement has sparked bitterness and anger among those who either sat out the housing boom or endured friends’ snickers when they stuck with a traditional mortgage and a smaller house. To some who watched prices rise out of their reach or who moved to cheaper cities, [...]

Two years ago, Northern Virginia’s real estate market was leading the nation. Now, we’re leading the nation in foreclosures:
The number of recent home foreclosure filings in Loudoun, Fairfax and Prince William counties is up more than 600 percent from a year ago, a much higher increase than in the United States as a whole, according [...]

In today’s New York York Times, Shelia Blair, Chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, makes this proposal on how to fix the subprime mortgage crisis:
[S]ubprime servicers should take a more standardized approach: restructure all 2/28 and 3/27 subprime hybrid loans for owner-occupied homes in cases where the borrower has been making timely payments but [...]

The Washington Post is running a story this morning which contends that the decline in the housing market in Prince William County is linked to the counties’ policies toward illegal immigrants:
Prince William County’s home prices and its Hispanic population rose in tandem during the first half of this decade, a result of a home-building frenzy [...]

The D.C. Examiner reports that sales of existing homes in the D.C. area are continuing their downward trend:
RICHMOND, Va. (Map, News) - New and existing home sales declined by double digits in July compared to the previous year, according to industry figures.
Nearly all 24 regions of the state reported declines, the Virginia Association of Realtors [...]

Until recently, the rise in foreclosures seems to have been a phenomenon that would live Fairfax County alone. According to The Examiner, though, that is no longer the case:
Fairfax County saw five times the number of home foreclosures in the first half of 2007 as it had during the same period last year, according to [...]

How much is too much for a parking space ?
In Houston, $225,000 will buy a three-bedroom house with a game room, den, in-ground pool and hot tub.
In Manhattan, it will buy a parking space. No windows, no view. No walls.
While real estate in much of the country languishes, property in Manhattan continues to escalate in [...]

That’s the latest forecast from the National Association Of Realtors:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. home sales and prices will fall further in 2007 than earlier expected, the leading realty trade association predicted on Wednesday.
The National Association of Realtors trimmed its sales forecast for the fifth straight month and also widened its predicted drop in existing home [...]

Notwithstanding the fact that the real estate market remains soft, there seems to be one segment of the market where homes are selling faster:
Given that the real estate market is supposed to be in free fall, some strange things have been happening recently in Mill Valley.
It is one of the expensive suburbs of San [...]