Did you notice the difference in handling of the latest foreclosure statistics by the Star-Advertiser and Pacific Business News?
The S-A continued its full court press in favor of more foreclosures without court supervision, bending the news to reflect its editorial viewpoint.
Foreclosures fell off in March
Statewide filings declined 13 percent ?from a year ago as a troublesome law continues to depress cases
Hawaii foreclosure filings remained subdued last month by a problematic year-old law, which the Legislature hopes to improve before the end of this year’s session.
The number of foreclosure filings statewide in March totaled 600, or 13 percent fewer than the 691 in the same month last year, according to real estate research firm RealtyTrac.
Of course, asserting that the decline was due to “a problematic year-old law” is purely an editorial comment made without evidence or sourcing. Nothing in the statistics being reported makes a link to the new law.
There are several other problems for the S-A version of reality. First of all, the drop here mirrors a similar drop nationally. So Hawaii’s law may have nothing at all to do with the monthly or quarterly variations.
The next big problem with the S-A viewpoint was noted by PBN. While there was a decline from a year ago, Hawaii’s foreclosures actually rose by 16% in the first three months of this year when compared to the last quarter of 2011.
Hawaii was ranked No. 18 in the nation during the quarter for the number of foreclosures. A total of 1,668 Hawaii properties, or one of every 311 housing units, received at least one foreclosure filing or notice of default, or was sold at a public auction or repossessed by a lender from January through March, Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac said.
Hawaii’s relatively high foreclosure ranking undermines the S-A view that Hawaii’s new law has been a drag on foreclosures. Compared to mainland states, including all those foreclosure meccas we read about, Hawaii still has a relatively high foreclosure rate.
It’s a shame the S-A is letting this bias get in the way of its ongoing reporting on the issue.
Discover more from i L i n d
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
The idea that court supervisions could slow down foreclosures is analogous to the idea that a speed bump at a beach park parking lot could stop a tidal wave.
The market for housing is in some ways global. There are investors from China who have been buying $2 million condos in London with cash as a hedge against inflation. But there is currently a housing bubble in China. There are 65 million unoccupied homes in China bought on speculation, which would be proportionally equivalent to 13 million unoccupied houses in the US.
According to the economist Paul Krugman, China is not entering a downturn or even a recession, but an economic depression.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/19/opinion/krugman-will-china-break.html
How would this scenario affect Hawaii, in particular Hawaii’s real estate values?
Some say that real estate is on the verge of a great comeback. More sober voices point out that the real estate market will not get back to normal until prices fall to 2000 levels.
My point is that even the 2000 levels might be over-optimistic, especially for working-class suburbs, considering various trends.
What would be a solution? Retrofitting the suburbs into walkable communities? Would that help stabilize real estate markets if transit were minimized? Even if this were true, do people want that, especially in working class areas?
Just a comment on Civil Beat. On a good day, I used to read about four articles in it, taking maybe 40-45 minutes. Since John Temple left, I have spent half that time reading CB. Today, I spent like 10 minutes reading CB. What’s going on? CB is beginning to suck. I guess all good things come to an end.
Reading CB was once like watching the original “Saturday Night Live” of the 1970s, which was kind of amateurish and rough around the edges, but also excellent and sometimes even brilliant. No more.
There were at least a couple of articles last night in Civil Beat on how the rail’s capital budget was cut by about $300 million. Today, those articles are gone and instead there is an article by Michael Levine entitled “Honolulu Council Keeps Rail Budget Intact”.
http://www.civilbeat.com/articles/2012/04/12/15510-honolulu-council-keeps-rail-budget-intact/
In the comment section, the reporter tries to explain his elision of the huge budget cut from the title.
I think that even a high school student would not make that mistake. It might even be a sign of bias, that’s how odd its omission was.