Subprime Mess on 60 Minutes

For most real estate investors, the boom times of the past few years was fueled by easy access to money given by the big mortgage companies like Countrywide, Homebanc, and New Century. Money, as they say, flowed like water.

The “subprime mortgage crisis” has pretty much put a stop to that, and our real estate investor clients are finding new and different ways to profit in this challenging market.

60 minutes recently ran a segment which does a fairly nice job of detailing the relationship between simple homeowners, mortgage lenders, Wall Street, and international banking. It’s an interesting watch.

The Word of the Year

According to the American Dialect Society, the 2007 word of the year? Subprime.

w00t!

And in other news: According to the National Association of Realtors, pending home sales have fallen 2.6% in November, well beyond the 0.8% decline predicted by economists.

The NAR does not now see a rebound in housing until 2009.

UPDATE: The head of Fannie Mae is now predicting that housing won't recover until 2010.