More bad news

November 27th, 2007 at 07:34am Alex Gary

I don’t have anything new to report today so I was looking on the wire …. not encouraging.

This from AP out of Detroit.

DETROIT — Rising foreclosures will lead to billions of dollars in lost economic activity next year in the nation’s major metropolitan areas, but homeowners and financial institutions have the ability to work together to contain the effects, according to a report compiled for the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

The report was released Tuesday ahead of a meeting of mayors from across the country in Detroit, where they hope to create policy recommendations to help address the nation’s housing crisis.

Prepared by forecasting and consulting firm Global Insight, the report said weak residential investment, lower spending and income in the construction industry and curtailed consumer spending because of falling home values will combine to hold back the nation’s economic activity.

“The wave of foreclosures that has rippled across the U.S. has already battered some of our largest financial institutions, created ghost towns of once vibrant neighborhoods — and it’s not over yet,” the report said.

And this out of New York:

NEW YORK — U.S. home prices fell 4.5 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, the sharpest drop since Standard & Poor’s began its nationwide housing index in 1987 and another sign that the housing slump is far from over, the research group said Tuesday.

The index also showed that prices fell 1.7 percent from the previous three-month period, the largest quarter-to-quarter decline in the index’s history.

The S&P/Case-Schiller quarterly index tracks prices of existing single-family homes across the nation compared with a year earlier.

The bumpy ride continues ….

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