foreclosure defense

You've without doubt seen these or study them. Glossy advertisements or four-color spreads in publications and magazines promising to show you every one of the juicy information regarding successful real-estate investing. And all you have to do to learn all these real est investing surface encounters chuck russo secrets is to pay a rather high sum for a one-or two-day seminar.




Often these kinds of slick real-estate investing classes claim that you can make smart, profitable property investments with absolutely no money down (other than, of training course, the significant fee you purchase the seminar). Now, how appealing is which? Make a profit from real estate investments you made out of no cash. Possible? Not most likely.




Successful real estate investment requires cash flow. That's the nature of any type of business or perhaps investment, especially real-estate investing. You put your cash into something that you hope and plan is likely to make you additional money.




Unfortunately too little newbies for the world of real-estate investing believe that it's any magical form of business in which standard company rules don't apply. Simply place, if you want to stay in property investing for a lot more than, say, a day time or two, then you are going to have to generate money to utilize and invest.




While it might be true that buying real estate with simply no money down is easy, anyone who is even made a simple real estate investment (like buying their particular home) is aware there's much more involved in property investing that can cost you money. For instance, what about any necessary repairs?




So, the number 1 rule people new to real est investing must remember would be to have obtainable cash reserves. Before you decide to actually do any real estate investing, save some money. Having slightly money within the bank when you begin real property investing surface encounters chuck russo can help you make more profitable real estate investments in rental properties, for example.




When real-estate investing in rental attributes, you'll want in order to select just qualified tenants. If you've no income when real-estate investing inside rental attributes, you might be pressured to take a much less qualified tenant since you need somebody to cover you money to enable you to take care of maintenance or lawyer fees.




For almost any real est investing, meaning rental properties or properties you purchase to sell, having funds reserved can permit you to ask for a higher price. You can request a higher price from your real estate investment because you surface encounters chuck russo won't feel financially strapped as you wait for an offer. You won't be backed into a corner and forced to accept just any offer because you desperately need the money.




Another downfall of several new to real-estate investing will be, well, greed. Make any profit, yes, but do not become therefore greedy that you ask regarding ridiculous leasing or resell rates on all of your real property investments.




Those new to real property investing have to see real estate investing being a business, NOT an interest. Don't think that real estate investing will make you rich overnight. What business does?




It requires about 6 months to determine if real-estate investing set for you. If you have decided in which, hey I enjoy this, then give yourself many years to really start earning money. It usually takes at the very least five years to become truly successful in property investing.




Persistence could be the key to be able to success in real estate investing. If you've decided that property investing is made for you, surface encounters chuck russo keep plugging away at it and the rewards will be greater than you imagined.

Ashton Kutcher probably gets more pitches in Silicon Valley than Hollywood these days.

The movie actor and technology investor turned up the star power at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference this week in San Francisco, where start-up companies competed for his attention. Michael Arrington, fresh off his own Hollywood worthy drama, interviewed Kutcher on stage Tuesday.

Kutcher plays a tech investor in real life and in CBS' top-rated "Two and a Half Men" on TV. His character, Walden Schmidt, is an Internet billonaire who sold his company to Microsoft and now backs other entrepreneurs.

"There are some parallels to my actual life," Kutcher said.

On the show, Kutcher said he covered his character's laptop with stickers of his "dream portfolio" companies but CBS balked at giving exposure to companies that hadn't paid for the privilege.

Kutcher told Arrington that his investments were a "witch hunt" for the next big thing "that is so magic you can't understand how it works."

"I wonder what would happen if a pilgrim would have seen a computer back in Massachusetts 200 years ago. They would have killed the person as a witch because the computer would look like magic. That's the essence of being a good investor, they're on witch hunts," he said. "That's what I’m trying to do."

Kutcher is not your typical celebrity investor. He was a biochemical engineering major in college so he gets technology but, because he was a model at 19, he says it's nice to be appreciated for "something substantial."

On TV Kutcher is in the funny business. But in technology he's hunting for happiness. Kutcher says he picks technologies that have the greatest potential to create more love, friendship and connectivity in the world.

He has made 40 investments in companies such as AirBNB, Path and Skype but does not disclose many of them.

"I think sometimes for the early-stage companies that I've invested in, disclosing that I'm an investor can be detrimental to the story of the company," Kutcher said.

RELATED:

Ashton Kutcher: Entrepreneur, investor

Star investors (and other stars) come out

Ashton Kutcher at TechCrunch50: Blah, blah, blah

-- Jessica Guynn

Photo: Hollywood actor and Silicon Valley investor Ashton Kutcher and TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington at TechCrunch Disrupt. Credit: Araya Diaz / Getty Images

Socially responsible investments might be emotionally compelling investments, but do they necessarily have compelling financial returns?

The term "Impact Investing" has taken on many meanings in the past few years. I want to end the confusion and underscore that impact investing must by definition deliver impactful and compelling financial returns.

Impact investing has been labeled as a subset of socially responsible investing (SRI). But, it is not a subset of SRI.

The basic premise of socially responsible investing is to avoid investing in businesses that cause harm to the environment or society. Since SRI's approach to investing is narrow and passive, it is by definition often a niche investing strategy, which in many cases has delivered lukewarm returns.

SRIs don't necessarily impact an industry, impact investments necessarily do. Yet, many organizations still treat SRI and impact investing like synonyms - causing confusion.

For example, here is the definition of SRI from ecolife, a website that is an online guide to green living:

"Socially responsible investing is an investment strategy employed by individuals, corporations, and governments looking for ways to ensure their funds go to support socially responsible firms. The concept goes by names like sustainable investing, impact investing, community investing, ethical investing, and socially-conscious investing; it is a non-financial gauge that is used when selecting various investment options that takes into account factors such as environmental, social, and ethical values."

The reality is that some socially responsible investments can be impact investments, but not all impact investments are socially responsible investments. So, SRIs are really a subset of impact investing. According to the Monitor Institute's new report "impact investors want to move beyond 'socially responsible investment'."

All impact investments have the potential to move towards a new economy - an impact economy, not all SRIs will. In fact, most SRIs won't.

Why? Impact investing is socially responsible and must have compelling returns. Returns that make the professional investor consider it seriously as a critical piece in the portfolio. According to Dr. Arjuna Sittampalam, research associate with EDHEC-Risk Institute, "in other words, the investor makes an active decision to seek a social or developmental return alongside their financial return."

Since impact investments create compelling returns, they have a greater chance of attracting more serious professional investors than SRIs -- a necessity for creating worldwide social change and impact.

The Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) defines impact investments as those that: "aim to solve social or environmental challenges while generating financial profit. Impact investing includes investments that range from producing a return of principal capital (capital preservation) to offering market-rate or even market-beating financial returns. Although impact investing could be categorized as a type of 'socially responsible investing,' it contrasts with negative screening, which focuses primarily on avoiding investments in 'bad' or 'harmful' companies - impact investors actively seek to place capital in businesses and funds that can harness the positive power of enterprise."

This definition is more on target with the real definition of impact investing, but to revise part of GIIN's definition: Impact investments only include investments that can offer market-rate or even market-beating financial returns.

So, my definition -- impact investing must achieve four significant goals:

1. Make an impact in solving a pressing problem of our time,

2. Generate compelling returns for investors,

3. Generate growth for economies, and

4. Generate prosperity for developed and developing nations.

An example is my own case-in-point. I founded SunEdison that created the power purchase agreement (PPA) model for the solar industry. This business model used net metering, streamlined interconnection standards, ways to connect to the grid, and actually provided a new solar power service to customers.

Investments in PPAs are delivering 7-12% unleveraged after tax returns. In today's financial environment; these are compelling returns given the low risks.

Plus, PPAs have lowered the use of fossil fuels to deliver electric energy; created thousands of jobs worldwide and are growing. They have impactful financial returns and impact a big problem.

According to the Monitor Institute's new report Investing for social and environmental impact: a design for catalyzing an emerging industry "it is certainly plausible that in the next five to 10 years investing for impact could grow to represent about 1 percent of estimated professionally managed global assets in 2008. That would create a market of approximately $500 billion. A market that size would create an important supplement to philanthropy, nearly doubling the amount given away in the U.S. alone today."

But that is only a start, a start to an "Impact Economy." To really make a difference - to leverage impact investing to create an impact economy, it must be larger. Some estimate that we need to invest over $1 trillion to combat issues like climate change, poverty, and lacking global health, to put the world back onto a stable more equitable footing.

So, let's put our money where the impact is. Stop selling impact investors short.

Jigar Shah is CEO of the Carbon War Room, a nonprofit that harnesses the power of entrepreneurs to implement market-driven solutions to climate change and create a post-carbon economy.

foreclosure investing

You've without doubt seen them or read them. Glossy advertisements or four-color spreads in periodicals and magazines promising to teach you all the juicy details about successful real estate investing. And all you have to do to learn each one of these real est investing surface encounters chuck russo secrets is to pay a rather high sum for a one-or two-day seminar.




Often these kinds of slick property investing workshops claim that you can make intelligent, profitable real-estate investments with simply no money straight down (except, of program, the hefty fee you pay for the workshop). Now, how interesting is that? Make a profit from real est investments you made with no money. Possible? Not likely.




Successful investment requires income. That's the character of any kind of business or perhaps investment, especially real estate investing. You put your money into something that you hope and plan can make you additional money.




Unfortunately not enough newbies for the world of real-estate investing believe it's a magical kind of business in which standard business rules don't apply. Simply put, if you want to stay in real-estate investing for greater than, say, a day time or a couple of, then you will have to generate money to make use of and commit.




While it could be true that buying real-estate with absolutely no money down is simple, anyone who is even made a fundamental investment (like buying their very own home) is aware there's far more involved in property investing that will set you back money. For example, what regarding any necessary repairs?




So, the primary rule people new to real property investing should remember is always to have obtainable cash stores. Before you choose to actually perform any property investing, save some cash. Having slightly money in the bank when you begin real property investing surface encounters chuck russo can help you make more profitable real estate investments in rental properties, for example.




When property investing inside rental attributes, you'll want every single child select simply qualified tenants. If you might have no cash flow when real-estate investing inside rental attributes, you might be pressured to take a a smaller amount qualified tenant since you need somebody to pay for you money to be able to take attention of maintenance or attorney fees.




For any kind of real estate investing, meaning leasing properties or perhaps properties you buy to re-sell, having cash reserved can enable you to ask to get a higher value. You can require a higher price from your owning a home because you surface encounters chuck russo won't feel financially strapped as you wait for an offer. You won't be backed into a corner and forced to accept just any offer because you desperately need the money.




Another downfall of numerous new to real-estate investing will be, well, greed. Make any profit, yes, but don't become therefore greedy that you ask for ridiculous rental or resell rates on many real est investments.




Those not used to real property investing need to see real-estate investing like a business, NOT an interest. Don't believe real property investing will make you wealthy overnight. What business does?




It takes about half a year to decide if property investing in for you. If you've decided in which, hey I love this, then give yourself a few years to truly start earning profits. It typically takes at the very least five years to get truly productive in real estate investing.




Persistence is the key to success in real-estate investing. If you've decided that real estate investing is for you, surface encounters chuck russo keep plugging away at it and the rewards will be greater than you imagined.

The manic depressive market wildly swings up and down on each new news story: The Fed is meeting at Jackson Hole on August 27 possibly to discuss QE3 (or not), and that news may pump up the stock market. But China's banks seem to be using Enron's accounting manual, Europe's banks need liquidity and are loaded with bad debt, and U.S. banks only temporarily TARPed over trouble. Gaddafi's regime in Libya appears over, but Libya's oil output may not fully recover for years. Venezuela wants banks to open their vaults and send back its gold, but Wells Fargo says gold is a bubble. Pundits say gold is a barbarous relic, but exchanges and banks are now using gold as money. The U.S. is headed for hyperinflation with skyrocketing stock prices, but on the other hand, we seem to be deflating like Japan and doomed to a deflating stock market for another decade. Whom do you trust and what should you do?

No one knows where the stock market or U.S. Treasury bonds are headed tomorrow, but in my opinion, here are some fundamentals to consider.



The Bad News Isn't Going Away

Until we have real global financial reform and restrain the banks, we won't have sustained growth. The stock market hasn't hit bottom. There's a crisis of confidence in banks and all currencies. We haven't taken effective steps to tackle the U.S. deficit through productivity. We haven't examined spending to eliminate fraud and waste, and we haven't addressed our need for more tax revenues by eliminating the Bush tax cuts (for starters).

Savers are punished by "stranguflation:" negative real returns on "safe" assets, declining housing prices, and rising costs of food, energy and health care. The Fed touts the falling cost of I-Pads, but how often do you buy one of those, and how often do you eat?

Good News (for Now)

The USD is still the world's reserve currency. Even though we devalued the USD, there has been a global flight to U.S. Treasuries pushing down our borrowing costs (yields). No one in the global financial community feels the U.S. has done its best to correct our problems, but severe problems in Europe, China's inflation, and Middle East unrest has money running to the U.S. Since we've devalued the dollar, we appear to be a bargain for foreign investors, even though they are terrified by our money printing presses and the potential for inflating commodity prices in the long run.

How did I play this? My own portfolio is currently more than 20% gold with some silver, and I bought out-of-the-money call options on the VIX when it was in the teens with maturities of 4-6 months. This is "short" stock market strategy, one could have also done well buying puts on the S&P a few months ago. In the first big stock market downdraft in August, I sold the options when the VIX hit the high 30's, and I'll buy more options again if the VIX falls again. Many investors are not comfortable with options, and this strategy isn't appropriate for everyone. The rest of my portfolio is chiefly in cash or deep value opportunities.



What Happens Next?

No one knows for sure, and anyone who tells you he or she does is selling snake oil. The situation is fluid. We tried to reflate our deflating economy. Our massive dollar devaluation may encourage investment, because it's protectionist. It reduces our cost of labor, among a few other "benefits." The problem is that the Fed has printed money, and we haven't done anything to position the U.S. for greater productivity. We're trying to inflate our way out of a problem without investing in productivity. This is a very dangerous way of attacking this problem. Even more "stimulus" would just be an attempt to inflate our way out of our long-standing deep recession. That's the foolish and unsuccessful strategy we've adopted so far. That could lead to runaway budget deficits (our deficit already looks intractable) and bring us to double-digit inflation. Even the European flight to US Treasuries may not save us from a deeper recession in that scenario.

If we don't overreact -- and we may have already overreacted -- our dollar devaluation results in our foreign trade situation first getting worse (as it has now) before it gets better. Now is the time (actually, we should have started years ago) to spend capital to increase U.S. productivity. The dollar's plunge relative to other currencies will eventually make us more competitive. This will be good for blue chip companies, in particular those that own real assets and manufacture items. The Fed and Washington may do anything, however, so one must watch the news.

What does this mean for the U.S. stock market? In my opinion, it is currently not good value and feels like the 1970s when we experienced a recession followed by inflation. One should consider staying mostly in cash and expect stocks become cheaper. One might miss an interim rally, especially if the Fed announces QE3 (more "stimulus" and money printing) or more bank bailouts, but that is like using Kleenex laced with sneezing powder. We will see stock prices even lower than they are today. The old paradigm dictated that stocks were a buy when P/E ratios were 13 or less (and many are well above that), dividends at 4%, and book values at 1.3 or less. (This excludes oil companies, which tend to trade at lower P/E ratios in general.) I believe we'll see much better deals in coming months. In 1978/79 P/E ratios sank below 7 for blue chip companies.

Should one buy U.S. Treasuries with long maturities? The long end of the bond market doesn't reward investors due to the potential of rising interest rates. If interest rates spike to double digits, then one can reassess the situation.

Long term investors should consider buying commodities or companies that own physical commodities. We're running out of key commodities especially related to agriculture and fertilizer. Washington's brand of the latter isn't the type we need.

NEW YORK—The nation's top experts unanimously agreed Tuesday that the current struggles of the U.S. economy were no reason whatsoever to stop investing in print media, which they said was easily the safest and most profitable place to invest one's money.

Without exception, leading authorities across all relevant disciplines said that while traditional low-risk instruments such as CDs, bonds, and gold were still relatively secure investments, only the nation's beloved print media outlets could offer both the reliability and the potential for tremendous financial gain required for guaranteed peace of mind.

"Print media is far and away your best bet in this tough fiscal climate," said the nation's foremost economists. "Just put your money in and forget about it for 10 years, 20 years, 50 years, doesn't matter. No economic downturn on earth can touch it."

"There's no question about it," continued all economic experts. "If you're a nervous investor—and you should be in this climate—you should be pouring all your cash into your local broadsheet right this second."

One of millions of Americans who will always support print media no matter what new technology comes along.

Experts went on to tell reporters that not only is there no safer place to invest than print media, there's also no sector of the economy with more promise for growth. Urging investors to diversify their stock portfolio among national and regional newspapers as well as dailies and weeklies, they said print media will be a "bonanza" for shareholders, even as the economy as a whole flounders.

"Print media is a cash cow that will multiply an investment over and over," said the experts. "Other products fail, real estate bubbles burst, but print media is here to stay. The only retirement strategy anyone needs is as close as their local newsstand."

"People who invest in print media are going to see their holdings grow by leaps and bounds, and they'll probably ask themselves, 'How can this be real?'" continued the experts, every single one of whom described print media as "the closest thing there is to a money tree." "Well, trust us, it's real. You can expect to make a lot of money very quickly, and best of all, you'll do it by supporting a pillar of American society."

In explaining print media's remarkable appeal, the entire financial community said citizens rely, and will continue to rely, on printed newspapers to keep them not only informed about current events, but better prepared to function as the kind of knowledgeable citizens a robust democracy requires. Others pointed toward people's deep emotional attachment to print media and the loyalty readers have for the treasured publications as a financial guarantee. In addition, investors from every major financial firm strongly noted that newspapers are an integral part of the ongoing American story that is written each morning, chapter by chapter, on black-and-white newsprint by decent, hardworking men and women who live in the very communities their newspapers serve.

Not investing hundreds of millions of dollars in newspapers right this very second, they added, would simply be foolish.

"No matter how tough times get, people will never turn their back on their newspapers," said every media expert in the nation, adding that newspapers would likewise never, never, never take their readers for granted, because it is readers that the print media industry depends on, and the nation's newspapers and magazines have always, without fail, worked tirelessly to provide readers with the highest-quality product possible. "They wouldn't desert their trusted print media outlets like that. Besides, everyone knows that new media technologies come and go, and that newspapers are an indispensable part of our national identity that must be protected by all of us, and chiefly by shrewd investors or even ordinary business owners who take out a very reasonably priced quarter-page ad. Or something smaller. You'd be surprised how much mileage you can get out of even a tiny little classified."

"The weekly newspapers are, of course, the most vital," the nation's media experts added. "We'd really be lost without those."

foreclosure defense

eric seiger

foreclosure help

Concerted efforts designed to prevent unnecessary foreclosures have reduced the amount of mortgage redefaults, says a group of state attorneys general and banking regulators. But the group also expressed concern that foreclosures continue to outnumber loan modifications.



According to a report issued by the State Foreclosure Prevention Working Group, a multi-state coalition, recent loan modifications are in fact performing better. Loan modifications may include reduced interest rates and other changes that result in smaller payments -- and in some cases, lower outstanding balances.



"Some analysts have predicted redefault rates as high as 75%, but today's report paints a brighter picture of the future," Washington Attorney General and working group member Rob McKenna said in a statement. "The newer modifications are holding up better, with fewer borrowers redefaulting."



Despite the progress noted in the report, McKenna says he's concerned that 6 out of 10 seriously-delinquent borrowers are not getting any help.



The report tracks loan modifications made by nine mortgage companies who were servicing 4.6 million loans as of March 2010. Banks -- which are regulated by federal agencies -- are not included in the report. Compared to loans modified in 2008, borrowers whose loans were modified in 2009 were 40% to 50% less likely to be seriously delinquent 6 months later.



The majority of loan modifications (89%) tracked by the working group for the first quarter of 2010 showed some reduction in payments, and nearly 78% lowered the monthly payment by more than 10%. Redefault rates were lower for loan modifications that reduced the principal balance by more than 10%.



However, only 1 in 5 modifications reduce the loan amount, and the vast majority increase the loan balance by adding servicing charges and late payments.



"When housing prices are low, the lender is going to take a loss if that home is foreclosed and surrounding home values will ultimately be impacted," McKenna said in a statement. "The underlying theory of a loan modification is to enable the lender to get the same value out of the home as if it had been foreclosed. The lender still takes a loss through the reduction of interest or principle. But the net result is better for the community and the borrower because, of course, a house is more than just an asset. It's a home."



The Office of Thrift Supervision and the Office of the Comptroller of Currency reported a similar reduction in redefault rates in its Mortgage Metrics Report for the first quarter of 2010. Of the 590,000 modifications made in 2009, nearly 52% were still current (i.e. homeowners were making payments on time) at the end of the first quarter of 2010, the agencies reported. By comparison, only 27% of loan modifications made during 2008 were still current.



McKenna and his office have trying to help homeowners by cracking down on unethical lenders and fraudsters, pushing for the modification of unaffordable mortgages, urging changes to bankruptcy rules, and seeking state-federal collaboration on bank regulation.



The Washington Attorney General's Office also granted $920,000 of its Countrywide/Bank of America settlement payment for local foreclosure prevention programs that provide counseling and pro bono legal services.



The State Foreclosure Prevention Working Group consists of 12 state attorneys general (Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas and Washington), bank regulators for New York, North Carolina, and Maryland, and the Conference of State Bank Supervisors. The group was founded in 2007 and has issued four previous reports.

There's a lot of despair in these parts lately and it's perfectly understandable. The country is going to hell in a handbasket and the forces of corporatism and know-nothingism are dominating the political culture while the Democrats seem to be in a state of suspended animation. It's very tempting to just tune it all out and watch TV. But we can't. Not as long as there are progressive politicians like David Segal out there on the campaign trail fighting to change things every day. If don't support real progressive leaders with a track record of success, we are basically giving up.

David is running in a primary for the Democratic nomination for Patrick Kennedy's seat against two doctrinaire establishment hacks and an anti-choice zealot and he needs our help in the home stretch. (The election is September 14th.) His most formidable rival, the mayor of Providence is using his money advantage to run a deceptive ad and David needs our help to run this rebuttal to remind people who the real progressive in the race is:

I know it's hard to get excited about politics right now. But it would be foolish for us to fail to support a young, smart progressive with a proven track record in his run for congress. Unless we are prepared to simply surrender to the forces gathering around us we need to nurture future progressive leaders who understand this political environment and have ideas about how to prevail in it. David is one of those future leaders.

Here's what Howie wrote about him when Blue America endorsed him:

David Segal is one of us. He was elected to the Providence City Council in 2002 as a Green, and is now a lefty Democratic state Rep for Providence and East Providence. He has a very clear path to victory and he can win-- and if he does, he'll be among the strongest voices for progressives in the halls of the Capitol.

David's worked on the meat-and-potato issues: Jobs, the environment, housing, progressive taxes, all with success. He's successfully pushed for expanded renewable energy, more affordable housing, against predatory lending, and for foreclosure prevention measures.

But he's never shied away from the really controversial issues: He's been a vocal leader on criminal justice reform, standing up for the rights of immigrants and for gay rights, and has pushed as hard as one can from the state level against war spending. He's an ardent supporter of gay marriage, and was the sponsor of the last year's bill, which was passed over the Governor's veto, to allow gay partners to plan each other's funerals.

He's a co-sponsor of marijuana decriminalization, and just convinced the Governor-- after two years of vetoes-- to allow a bill to become law that ensures due process for people on probation.

He's sponsored the "Bring the Guard Home" legislation, and his first act on the City Council was to pass a resolution against the war in Iraq.

But, most importantly, he's an organizer at heart, who is committed to joining the Progressive Caucus-- and making it function better. Here's an excerpt from an interview with David:

"n Rhode Island I've tried to develop alternative structures for legislators to lean on when the leadership makes such threats. I am the lead organizer for our progressive caucus. I founded a political action committee to support members of our progressive caucus so that if funding from sources dries up at leadership's request because something was done to offend them, that we would have at least some, some degree of money to fall back on to help fund our campaigns nonetheless. We funded ten, twelve races relatively modestly in the last cycle and hopefully we'll be able to do something in the forthcoming cycle."

That's the kind of inside political organizing we desperately need in the US Congress. If you can help with a few dollars today the campaign can keep its ads on the air and compete. If he wins the primary, there's almost no doubt that he will win the seat. It could be one of the few progressive victories in this midterm election.

make money from home jobs

foreclosure help

From the Associated Press:

One in 10 American households with a mortgage was at risk of foreclosure this summer as the government’s efforts to help have had little impact stemming the housing crisis.

About 9.9 percent of homeowners had missed at least one mortgage payment as of June 30, the Mortgage Bankers Association said Thursday.

That number, which is adjusted for seasonal factors, was down slightly from a record-high of more than 10 percent as of April 30.

In a worrisome sign, the number of homeowners starting to have problems with their mortgages rose after trending downward last year. The number of homes in the foreclosure process fell slightly, the first drop in four years.

More than 2.3 million homes have been repossessed by lenders since the recession began in December 2007, according to foreclosure listing service RealtyTrac Inc. Economists expect the number of foreclosures to grow well into next year.

The number of Americans missing payments and falling into foreclosure has followed the upward trend in unemployment, which has been near double digits all year and has shown no sign of dropping soon.

“Ultimately the housing story, whether it is delinquencies, homes sales or housing starts, is an employment story,” Jay Brinkmann, the trade group’s top economist, said in a statement. “Only when we see a consistent increase in employment will we see an increase in sales and starts, and a sustained improvement in the delinquency numbers.”

Read the whole thing here.

Demand: fewer new households

Household creation depends on the state of the economy. The combination of high unemployment, weak wage and salary growth, and tight credit has led to a decline in household growth over the past few years. The two main surveys of household formation from the Census Bureau – the Housing Vacancy Survey and Current Population Survey – show that about 500,000 households were created annually over the past three years compared to an annual average of about 1.2 million during the first half of the decade (Figure 6). How can we explain such a notable drop in household formation?

Moving in with the folks

The obvious answer is to look at homeownership rates, which have tumbled to 66.9% from a peak of 69.2% in 4Q04. This translates to a loss of nearly 2.5 mn homeowners. Most of these homeowners became renters, which means they remain a household, but not all. As can be seen by the surge in the rental vacancy rate to 10.6%, it seems that there was not a perfect shift from homeowners to renters (Figure 7). This begs the question: what happened to these former households? There was doubling up among economically stressed households; in other words people moved in with friends or family. Many of these former homeowners were probably foreclosure victims (Figure 8).

As Figure 8 shows, household formation can also decline if there are fewer young households created to replace the aging homeowners. Given the nearly 10 point surge in the unemployment rate among 16 to 24 year olds from the trough to peak during this cycle, it seems like this was a considerable factor. A recent paper sponsored by the Research Institute for Housing America estimates that the probability of a young adult forming a household declines by 4% during a recession, and up to 10% if unemployed. In addition to the slowdown in “headship rates” domestically, there was a drop in household formation from immigration. According to the Office of Immigration Statistics at the Department of Homeland Security, the number of unauthorized immigrants decline by 1.0 million from 2007 to 2009 compared to a net gain of 1.3 million from 2005 to 2007.

Household growth to improve, but with a lag

Household formation will naturally pick up as the economy improves, but if our forecast for a sluggish recovery is realized, household growth will also be lackluster. The main factor influencing household growth will be the state of the labor market. The above-referenced paper finds that the unemployment rate must fall by 2pp from current levels to return to normal rates of household formation of about 1.2-1.4 million a year. We do not expect the unemployment rate to reach the mid-7% range until 2013, implying another two and a half years of sluggish household formation of about 800,000 a year. This is also when we expect the pace of foreclosures to slow notably, which means that fewer households will have to double-up.

Looking ahead to 2013 and beyond, we use forecasts from the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. They present two possible trajectories for household growth: 1) an average of 1.48 million annually through 2020 assuming net immigration returns to the 2000-05 pace and headship rates at 2008 levels; and 2) an average of 1.25 million annually through 2020 assuming the same 2008 headship rates but slower immigration. We believe the latter is more likely and use this as our baseline forecast (Figure 9).

Renters will take market share

Although we expect household formation to start to improve in 2013, the homeownership rate should still fall further, suggesting that most of the gain in households will be due to an increase in renters. This is because there is still a considerable number of homeowners with mortgages in some stage of delinquency that are likely to end in foreclosure. Based on data from the Mortgage Bankers Association, there are about 5.5 mn seriously delinquent mortgages currently outstanding.

A recent paper by economists at the NY Federal Reserve (Haughwout, Andrew, Richard Peach, Joseph Tracy. “The Homeownership Gap”, Federal Reserve Bank of New York Current Issues in Economics and Finance, Volume 16, Number 5, May 2010) attempts to quantify the effective lower bound for the homeownership rate. They make the assumption that underwater borrowers (negative equity), who currently account for about a quarter of mortgage holders, will transition to renters over time. Subtracting these underwater borrowers yields an “effective homeownership rate” of 61.6% (Figure 10). This would be a record low in the data which goes back to 1965. We do not expect such a precipitous drop because not all underwater homeowners will become renters. Indeed, a recent study by Trulia.com and RealtyTrac found that 59% of respondents would not go into foreclosure simply because of negative equity. We believe it is more likely that the homeownership rate will bottom at 65%, returning to mid-1990s levels.

It is plainly obvious why the demand-side is so often ignored in polite conversation: it is the consumer-driven aspect of the house price variable, over which neither the Fed, nor the Treasury, nor the FHA has any authority, and which is a function purely of expectations of the future. Alas, those right now are lously and getting worse. We expect that Demand-side housing economics will take on progressively more importance in the future, as it becomes obvious that no amount of Supply-side tinkering will prevent another 20% drop in prices.

And speaking of Supply, this is also a critical factor, if much more prevalent in the daily media. Alas, that in itself does not make the problem any easier to resolve.

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