Friday, December 22, 2006

Another Builder Posts Q3 Losses

Hovnanian Enterprises of Red Bank, New Jersey reported a quarterly loss of $117.9 million or $1.88 per share down from $165.4 million or $2.53 in profits during the same period a year ago.
"We did not anticipate suddenness or magnitude of the fall in pricing that occurred this year in many of our communities," Chief Executive Ara Hovnanian said in a statement. "Our profitability and the pace of new home sales in our markets continues to be adver sely impacted by high contract cancellation rates, increases in the number of resale listings and increases in the number of new homes available for sale."

Shares fell 16 cents on the New York Stock Exchange and in after hours trading it fell another $1.25 to $34.
Read the Janet Frankston Lorin report
Read TheStreet.com report

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Thursday, December 21, 2006

Affordable Housing Across NJ --Maybe

Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts’ D-Bell Mawr proposed reform bill of New Jersey’s affordable housing rules has number. It is A-3857. The proposed bill will eliminate regional contribution agreements (RCAs) which allowed municipalities to reassign a portion of their affordable housing responsibility – as much as fifty percent – to cities. The proposed bill also creates housing rehabilitation and assistance program for grants to municipalities. The lack of affordable housing across the state means minimum wage workers would need to 119 hours a week to afford a two-bedroom apartment at $1,103 a month. We will watch what happens with proposed bill A3857.
Read Robert Stern's article.


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Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Are Incentives the Way to Get Buyers?

Offering incentives is a marketing ploy to get buyers to come look. Builders have the best chance at attracting lookers since they can offer a wider variety of incentives than the average existing home sellers. Still existing home sellers are getting into the act offering to buy points (which would lower monthly payments) and pay fees (pool, lawn maintenance, etc). But for all of the incentives builders and sellers have come up with, paying for incentives instead of just reducing asking price seems the more prevalent practice. Sellers hope lookers see a dazzling incentive carrot and come nibbling. Whether lookers will actually make buy depends on the looker rather than the incentive. We have had about five years of sellers being in control of real estate transactions and now the pendulum has swung the other way. Price reductions bring out buyers rather than lookers.
Read Judy DeHaven's story on Sellers and Incentives

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Tuesday, December 19, 2006

On and Off Again Katrina Aid

Add another avoidable disaster to those associated with Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. One would think U.S. District Judge Richard Leon would have known better; trying to force the federal government to explain itself clearly is a daunting task. The judge ruled that FEMA must get better explanations of its decision to cut aid to the 4200 Texas families affected by Hurricane Katrina. He pressed to get the explanation finished by today—but FEMA is appealing the decision and asking for an enforcement delay. The ruling on the delay will not come before the middle of the week at best and by then FEMA will have advised Texas officials of aid restoration and sent out letters to Katrina affected families. Should FEMA prevail in appeals court, they would then have to turn around and tell Katrina victims their wretched luck won again. What a mess!
Read CBS News article

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Monday, December 18, 2006

Tax Reform: Home for the Holidays

Legislators went home for the holidays without passing one piece of tax reform legislation. While some legislators wasted time being angry with Governor Corzine because he told them to work on reforming the pension and benefits packages of non-unionized, appointed and elected officials. Still they have gone home and passed nothing. Perhaps the job of policing elected officials is just too big for the legislature… after all it is their colleagues that are double-dipping into the benefits and pension funds. It would have been a lot easier to cut the benefits of the faceless unionized worker than mess with that guy/gal across the isle.
Read The Times article for a different point-of-view.

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