Thursday, January 10, 2008
Exchanging losses for liquidity
Bloomberg.com: News
Lennar Corp.'s November sale of 11,000 properties in eight states set a price that may mark the bottom for the U.S. housing market: 40 cents on the dollar.
That's how much Morgan Stanley Real Estate paid for an 80 percent stake in the 32 communities, 60 percent less than the price at which the properties were valued just two months earlier. That's also what some investors say they would pay for distressed land, condominiums, homes and whole developments, whether it's now or later this year.
That may be a price bottom, but the individual market won't be recovering too soon. Morgan Stanley will be making deals on those houses right and left.
1 Comments:
By 
TigerHawk, at
Thu Jan 10, 06:51:00 PM:
One silver lining, I suppose -- if you are young and coming up and actually have saved enough for a real down payment, you are in a much better position buying a house today than a year ago. In one sense, this is a transfer of wealth from people who have a house to people who want to have a house, all facilitated by new vulture funds.
