Nov172015
What happened to all the real estate blogs?
At the height of the housing bubble hundreds of bloggers wrote about the real estate market, but over time, the genre has almost completely disappeared.
The 00s were the golden age of real estate blogging. Many people from all walks of life realized house prices were a real estate bubble, and legions of citizen journalists said so. Housing blogs proliferated, but rather than experiencing an over-saturation, the phenomenon fed on it’s own energy. It was a special time.
Unfortunately, all good things must end, and even the most interesting and exciting times fade from the headlines; life goes on.
After the Gold Rush
Posted November 6, 2015 by Joshua M Brown
… I wanted to touch on the state of financial blogging in general, to give you some context about how I look at the success of TRB over the years.
I haven’t cleaned things up in my RSS garden in at least four years. By the time I finished, it was a massacre, an absolute bloodbath of unsubscribed-to sites that I used to read every day. There were literally hundreds of blogs to unfollow.
Over the last several years, I also had to prune the weeds of real estate blogging sites that no longer contribute to the conversation. 
A quick catalog of the now-unfollowed sites from my list:
- Blogs where the owner simply stopped publishing sometime in 2013 or 2014 (a fairly common timeframe among those who had given up)
Most real estate bloggers quit sometime during the crash, but the rate of attrition slowed somewhat thereafter. At this point, very few real estate bloggers remain.
- Blogs where the writing moved away from finance and toward some sort of bizarre political hinterland …
During the housing bubble, the craziest, most dynamic, and rowdiest real estate blog as Housing Panic (HousingPANIC – The Housing Bubble Blog with an Attitude Problem, 2005 – 2008). Keith was over-the-top, irreverent, and hilarious, and his blog best captured the Zeitgeist of the housing bust.
Toward the end of Housing Panic’s run, it devolved into a series of political rants decrying George W. Bush, and although I shared his disdain for the gross incompetency of the idiot I once voted for, his foray in a bizarre political hinterland diminished the blog. He tried to migrate his readers to Soot and Ashes: The World AFTER the Crash, but after three years, he lost interest and stopped blogging.
A copycat recently started HousingPANIC 2.0. He’s already lamenting the difficulties of blogging. I wish him well.
- Blogs where the author was so incredibly wrong about how the recovery period would play out that there was no chance of me being able to read their stuff with a straight face
(See: When should pundits admit their mistakes?)
- Blogs that had converted into a paid newsletter product or shoved a tip jar or donation link toward the top of the page
- Blogs that had been abandoned, and then restarted, and then abandoned again (this was very common – no one said this was easy)
For an example of both, see Burbed, a survivor still on my blogroll — BTW, blogrolls are another forgotten or abandoned feature of the housing blog era. I would likely be in this category if I hadn’t discovered a way of making some money from my writing. It’s difficult to soldier on forever for nothing.
- Blogs where the writer was now employed elsewhere …
- Blogs that had become a parody of themselves and had failed to change with the times (perma-doom content, poorly plotted charts, endless links back to the writer’s previous posts, etc) …
It’s hard not to think about ZeroHedge when reading that statement. For a time, I was concerned Dr. Housing Bubble would fall victim to the perma-bear trap, and although he is still bearish, the quality of the content is consistently high, and he continues to add to the real estate conversation.
But one question lingered on – why did so many interesting and promising financial blogs die?
There are many cases where, for personal or business reasons, the writer had to devote more of their time elsewhere because there just wasn’t a lot of synergy between what they were saying and what they were doing in real life. This is especially the case among the subculture of anonymously penned blogs – we’re talking about an asymmetric equation in which career risk is never quite balanced out by the accolades from strangers on the web.
For the first 18 months I wrote for the Irvine Housing Blog, I did so anonymously because I was concerned about the potential problems it would create for my career.
It was never about money. I wrote because I wanted to save people from financial ruin. But no matter how well intentioned, no matter how pure the motivation for writing, it takes a great deal of time and energy, and if there isn’t a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, it’s difficult to justify taking that much time away from family or work.
Additionally, the ad model probably didn’t work for a majority of DIY bloggers. Firms like Business Insider began producing so much content that CPM click rates dropped through the floor and then kept on dropping. I know the biggest and most widely-read bloggers in the industry – believe me when I tell you that none of them can earn a living from banner ads anymore.
Google Adsense is a joke. Nobody makes a living from advertising. In fact, the payouts are so poor, it’s more financially productive to search the cushions on the family couch than it is to write a blog and monetize it with Google Adsense.
But there are other reasons for the rapidly shrinking population of independent financial bloggers.
Here are a few:
*Mainstream media figured out how to get their journalists blogging and they’re better at it (see the WSJ’s MoneyBeat for the example par excellence). It’s hard to compete with professional journalists and trained writers backed by superior resources.
This is probably true in financial blogging, but as regular readers here are aware, the quality of real estate writing in the financial media is somewhat lacking.
Content is king on the Internet. Writers who publish good content can find and sustain a readership; those who put out garbage joist with windmills.
*They ran out of stuff to say or lost their edge. One of the most common things I’ve seen is that a new blogger begins as though they were shot out of a cannon, with weeks worth of incredible material. And then, when they’ve written the 10 or 20 posts that had been bursting to come out for years, they’re spent. …
After writing over 2000 posts, I can attest first-hand to the difficulty of coming up with new concepts or ideas.
However, an advantage of writing so prolifically is that I can explore many related concepts and ideas in great detail. Often when I write, I previously explored many of the premises in key arguments, and I link to them as I write. If someone wants to attack one of my arguments by claiming the premise is faulty, I already responded to that attack in a previous post. Of course, the downside to this approach is that it shortens the discourse in the astute observations.
Those readers who don’t read the astute observations miss out on the discussion that drives the ongoing narrative. This blog is blessed with many wise and active commenters who freely share their wit and wisdom. These discussions challenge my arguments and deepen my understanding of these issues. Without the contributions of the astute observers, the content of this blog would suffer.
*”Writing for exposure” used to be a thing people did, even when they couldn’t put their finger on exactly what all that exposure would mean for them once they had it. …
So far I’ve resisted contributing articles to national sites where my “exposure” would go up significantly. I never really saw the point. Exposure is extremely difficult to monetize. One of my goals for 2016 is to start contributing to national sites to see what happens. I anticipate I’ll get more exposure — and make nothing for my efforts.
*A job change – especially within finance – almost always means a rethinking of one’s public commentary. Especially if the writer goes from a small firm to a larger one. The large financial industry firms already have people doing PR, thought leadership or research for public consumption. The last thing they’re interested in is a freelance opinion-haver from within the ranks proffering an “off-message” take on a given subject. …
I was not hired by a major real estate market analysis firm for this very reason.
*A lot of the blogs that sprouted up during the crisis found themselves rudderless when the the chain reaction of economic explosions finally stopped. In the absence of a major disaster unfolding, the authors realized that they didn’t have much to say about the status quo, … so they walked away. …
I thought about quitting. When the housing market reached a point where the emergency passed, the urgency to save people from ruin was gone. I decided I needed to keep writing to educate the next generation about how real estate works. If I didn’t, who would? realtors? I couldn’t abandon innocent future buyers to that unseemly bunch. Spend some time reading the OC Register, and you’ll see what I mean.
And then there’s a much smaller list of financial blogs that have kept the fire burning. There’s Eddy and Tadas and Barry and Epicurean Dealmaker and Howard Lindzon and Yves Smith and Bess Levin, people whose sites predate the financial crisis and are still delivering each day.
My reading list of real estate blogs has dwindled to four:
Dr. Housing Bubble is an old stalwart, Logan Mahtashami is new and good, Professor Piggington rarely posts, and Seattle Bubble is another old blog maintaining high quality content.
The slow death of the Irvine Housing Blog was painful to watch. It still exists on life support, but the content, while useful, is not as interesting as it once was.
Sure, lots of times they’re saying things that have already been said, but most readers don’t care. As long as they’re seeing the information presented in a fresh, interesting way, the readers will click and share. There’s no shame in revisiting these well-worn paths. The award-winning and highly regarded investing writer Jason Zweig describes his gig at the Wall Street Journal like this:
My job is to write the exact same thing between 50 and 100 times a year in such a way that neither my editors nor my readers will ever think I am repeating myself.
That’s because good advice rarely changes, while markets change constantly. … And while people need good advice, what they want is advice that sounds good.
It took me quite a while to really understand and accept this. For the first three years of my writing, I never repeated a topic. I felt that once I wrote about it, the matter was fully discussed, and there was no need to revisit it again.
An up and coming blogger can still do canonical stuff with a topic that’s already been covered because brand new investors are arriving every year.
I finally realized that my readership changes. Although many people reading today have been readers since early 2007, most are not. The average reader discovers me because they are looking for more information on the housing market, they read for months or years until they buy a house, then they lose interest and move on. With this constant turnover of of my readership, repeating topics and rewriting old posts is necessary and appropriate.
When I read the closing of this author’s post, it resonated so strongly with me that I felt that he took the words out of my head and wrote them for me. As you read this, consider these my words as well.
Which brings me to today.
Five years ago, people used to ask me “How do you have so much time to blog?” Nobody asks me that anymore. They get it. …
Writing this blog every day for seven years and having an amazing reader base to share my thoughts with has quite literally changed my life. I never could have dreamed that my free wordpress account would open up so many doors. This blog has directly led to thousands of events, connections, relationships and friendships that would have been unimaginable without it. If you’ve been with me since the beginning and have stuck around through it all, then you’ve been a big part of that and I can never truly repay you or thank you enough.
But I can try.
And so I’ll end here with a commitment to you, all of you, that I will always do my best to keep you informed about the markets and the economy as I see them. I’ll continue to link out to the most crucial and entertaining articles and posts, as they come spilling in over the transom each day. I’ll attempt to be fair about the subjects I cover, even when fairness isn’t deserved. I’ll keep my opinions informed at all times and I’ll always consider the other side of an argument before I dismiss it.
Most importantly, I will remain open-minded and willing to change when the facts no longer support a long-held belief. Even if it means I’ll have to admit to being wrong – especially then. I like to think you come here because I keep it real, not because I think I’m always right (believe me, I’m not).
The intent of this blog was always about discovery and learning, for both readers and myself. Continuing on that mission is the least I can do to say thank you for an amazing seven year run.
Cheers and thanks!
– Josh
Ditto,
Larry
In The Great Housing Bubble, I provided a partial list of prominent real estate bubble and related blogs:
The Irvine Housing Blog – http://www.irvinehousingblog.com/
Patrick.net – http://patrick.net/housing/crash.html
The Real Estate Bubble Blog – http://www.thehousingbubbleblog.com/index.html
The House Bubble – http://housebubble.com/
Implode-o-meter – http://ml-implode.com/
Bubble Markets Inventory Tracking – http://bubbletracking.blogspot.com/
Housing Doom – http://housingdoom.com/
Southern California Real Estate Bubble Crash – http://www.socalbubble.com/
Calculated Risk – http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/
Housing Panic – http://housingpanic.blogspot.com/
Professor Piggington – http://piggington.com/
Dr. Housing Bubble – http://drhousingbubble.blogspot.com/
Bubble Meter – http://bubblemeter.blogspot.com/
The Real Estate Bloggers – http://www.therealestatebloggers.com/
Housing Bubble Casualty – http://www.housingbubblecasualty.com/
Housing Bubble Bust – http://www.housingbubblebust.com/
Real Estate Realist – http://www.realestaterealist.com/
Housing Wire – http://www.housingwire.com/
Sacramento Area Flippers In Trouble – http://flippersintrouble.blogspot.com/
Seattle Bubble – http://seattlebubble.com/blog/
Westside Bubble Blog – http://westside-bubble.blogspot.com/
Marin Real Estate Bubble – http://marinrealestatebubble.blogspot.com/
Sonoma Housing Bubble – http://sonomahousingbubble.blogspot.com/
New Jersey Real Estate Report – http://njrereport.com/
New York City Housing Bubble – http://nychousingbubble.blogspot.com/
See for yourself what’s become of them.
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Thanks from a longtime reader. Your writing still makes me think.
Thank you for your continued readership and your astute observations.
Thank you Larry for all your insight and content from a long time lurker. After all this time, I still go to you and Calculated Risk to give me the straight shot regarding real estate news.
Agreed. If you want mindless chatter with little value that doesn’t require you to think, you have many mainstream options.
Here’s why housing will help the economy in 2016
realtors spout nonsense
SAN DIEGO (MarketWatch) — The housing sector will be a positive contributor to the U.S. economy in 2016 , overcoming concerns about rising interest rates, tight mortgage credit and student-debt burdens that are holding back many buyers, according to analysts here at the National Association of Realtors annual convention.
“This was a good recovery year for housing, although not anywhere near the peak in terms of home sales,” said Lawrence Yun, the NAR’s chief economist. “Next year the recovery continues, but it will be at a slower pace.”
Cris Deritis, senior director of consumer economics for Moody’s Analytics, said there are three key areas for optimism about housing in the coming year: the labor market is coming back to near full employment, wage growth is finally picking up and there are millions of new households waiting to be formed that have still not done so thanks to the Great Recession.
“The key driver there is we have 4.5 million more 18- to 34-year olds living with their parents than at the start of the recession,” Deritis said. “With rents rising and wages growing — and the parents pushing — that should send many into the housing market.”
Democratic Presidential Candidates Vow to Get Tough With Wall Street Banks
Bernie Sanders probably would
The Democrats then went on to discuss the “financial squeeze on the middle class,” where Sen. Sanders proposed that “there must be a tax on Wall Street speculation,” and since taxpayers have already bailed out Wall Street, it their turn to bail out the middle class.
Dickerson alluded to a quote that was recently said by Sen. Sanders, “People should be suspect of candidates who receive large sums of money from Wall Street and then go out and say ‘Trust me. I’m going to really regulate wall street’.”
Sen. Sanders added in the adebate, “I don’t know and with all due respect to the secretary, Wall Street played by the rules? Who are we kidding? The business model of Wall Street is fraud. That’s what it is.”
The major issue on Wall Street, according to Sen. Sanders, is that six financial institutions have assets of 56 percent, equivalent to 56 percent of the GDP In America, and they issue two-thirds of the credit cards and one-third of the mortgages.
As the only democratic candidate without a super PAC, Sen. Sanders mentioned that he is not asking Wall Street or the billionaires for money. He then presented a plan from the past to reinvigorate the banking industry in America.
“If Teddy Roosevelt, a good Republican, were alive today, you know what he’d say? “Break them up.” Reestablish Glass-Steagall. And Teddy Roosevelt is right. That is the issue. I will break up these banks. Support community banks and credit unions. That’s the future of banking in America,” Sen. Sanders explained.
“If Teddy Roosevelt, a good Republican, were alive today, you know what he’d say? “Break them up.” Reestablish Glass-Steagall. And Teddy Roosevelt is right. That is the issue. I will break up these banks. Support community banks and credit unions. That’s the future of banking in America,”
It’s scary knowing these mega banks essentially hold the government hostage right now.
When the mega banks do fail,they will be beyond bailout help.Looking back through history,banks always fail.Govt. is too smug to realize reality.When the pension funds start to fail and government takes them over,thats the cue.
What’s even more scary is when the extreme left and the extreme right agree on something, but the financial elites bought off all the mainstream politicians, so despite widespread support for a breakup of the TBTF banks, nothing gets done.
Recap and Release: Not the right path to affordable mortgages
It’s easy to understand why hedge funds and other speculators in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac stock are pushing anew to “recap and release” the companies from conservatorship. But it’s a lot harder to understand why affordable housing groups are joining this chorus when it will neither expand affordable housing nor necessarily support broad credit access.
The fundamental problem with the recap and release approach is that starting any discussion about a future mortgage finance system with Fannie and Freddie is like looking through the wrong end of a telescope: the field of vision is very restricted and the details are hard to make out.
The right place to start is to ask “what are the goals of government engagement in mortgage finance, how should it be structured, and, once that’s settled, what role do Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have to play?”
The government’s role should be to ensure a set of critical outcomes:
The broadest possible access to sustainable mortgage credit by the greatest range of credit worthy borrowers, everywhere in the country
A deep and liquid market for mortgage backed securities to ensure reliable investment at all times from the broadest possible range of investors at the lowest possible cost, enabling rate locks for consumers
The choice to have a long term fixed rate mortgages at a reasonable price for consumers who prefer them
The newest affordable housing recap and release champions say that these goals are what drive their recommendations. They point to the companies’ shrinking capital base and argue that recapitalizing them and ending conservatorship – turning back the clock to the years before the GSE model’s fault lines became so clear – is the best way to assure access to affordable housing finance.
But the facts don’t support these calls for action.
The remaking of an American housing bubble: Home prices are up 78 percent since 2000 and 30 percent since 2012.
You have to realize what makes a bubble tick. People get caught up in a deep rooted herd mentality. The absolute blindness that occurred between 2005 and 2007 was incredible. Yet a decade later, people have forgotten many of the reasons why the bubble hit in the first place. Toxic loans were merely a symptom of the bigger issue – and that bigger issue was that stagnant incomes need riskier debt to keep prices moving higher. The system is built on everything moving higher and the Fed lives off of this. Yet somehow, we had an enormous housing collapse. Today, prices are being driven higher by investors and foreign money. In a previous post we discussed how one housing development in Irvine had 80 percent of buyers from China paying all cash – all cash for a median price of $1.16 million. Even a couple of professionals can’t compete with all cash offers. The driver for pushing prices higher today is different but the result is the same – local families need to take on more precarious levels of debt to buy in today’s market. And the homeownership rate shows that many simply can’t compete.
More from Dr. Housing Bubble…
Mine is still active!
I see from your archives that you’ve been consistently active since February of 2009. That’s an impressive run. Most agents who try to blog don’t stay with it very long.
Boom or bust? It may just be politics: Poll shows huge chasm between economic outlooks of state’s GOP and Democratic voters
Perhaps it’s a personal failing, but I’m struck by the economic negativity that surrounds us.
A new poll of California voters helps me understand the chasm between a noteworthy volume of financial anxiety and what is statistically a fairly decent economic rebound.
The USC-Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Poll found that 60 percent of California voters are dissatisfied with the state’s economy. That’s in line with national results showing 58 percent of those polled were unhappy with their own state’s economy.
California’s business climate isn’t perfect, but the state has been generating more jobs that any other, incomes are slowly on the rise, and the housing market has recovered nicely.
Do residents focus more on persistent unemployment in certain segments, the housing affordability challenge or troubling high poverty rates?
“The economy is recovering in pretty impressive fashion,” says Dan Schnur, director of the poll. “The recession was so deep that it’s taken time for voters’ perceptions to catch up.”
When you dig in to where the disappointment lies, the poll reveals an ugly political reality: 81 percent of self-described Republicans were dissatisfied with the California economy vs. 39 percent of Democrats.
What a gap! Those were the only two groups among the 23 demographic or geographic slices in the poll that expressed such deep feelings one way or the other.
Pollster Schnur says such partisan views are nothing new, but he admits that today’s level of partisanship is awfully high.
“When your party is in power, you tend to see the world as better than it is,” Schnur says. “And when your party is out of power, you see the world as worse than it is.”
Fed Speak, Ranked
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/NA-CH834_FEDSPE_16U_20151112171524.jpg
FHA Reluctant to Further Cut Premiums, Despite Boost to Fund
http://www.nationalmortgagenews.com/news/compliance-regulation/fha-reluctant-to-further-cut-premiums-despite-boost-to-fund-1066043-1.html?utm_medium=email&ET=nationalmortgage:e4010451:a:&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=-nov%2017%202015&st=email
WASHINGTON — The Federal Housing Administration’s unexpected windfall is already generating industry talk about another premium cut by the agency — but FHA officials insist such discussion is premature.
The agency announced Monday that the mutual mortgage insurance fund’s ratio of reserves to guaranteed loans had skyrocketed to 2.07%, marking the first time since the financial crisis it was above its statutory minimum. The dramatic reversal from a year earlier, when the fund’s ratio was just 0.4%, was helped by a premium cut in February.
But FHA officials downplayed the chances of another cut.
“At this point, we don’t have any plans to change the [mortgage insurance premium] structure,” said FHA Deputy Principal Assistant Secretary Edward Golding during a briefing with reporters on Monday morning.
The fund had been expected to reach 1.3% as of Sept. 30, based on analysis by actuarial auditors last year. But the FHA cut its annual insurance premium by 50 basis points to 85 basis points in February, which helped swell FHA’s loan volume and revenues.
As of Sept. 30, the reserve fund jumped to $23.8 billion in the 2015 fiscal year, up dramatically from $4.8 billion a year earlier.
Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro cited the drop in premiums as a key reason behind the FHA’s change in fortune.
“It’s an incredible comeback story,” said Castro. “Today the housing market is getting stronger, optimism is rising and opportunity is expanding.”
The rebound is particularly good news for Castro because he came under intense criticism from Republican lawmakers for enacting the earlier premium cut before the fund reached its statutory 2% minimum.
Fear of a political backlash may mean the FHA takes its time before cutting premiums again, but community groups have already laid the groundwork for another move by the agency.
“If FHA exceeds a 2% capital ratio, CHLA believes FHA should cut annual premiums back to the pre-crisis level of 0.55%,” wrote Scott Olson, the executive director of the Community Home Lenders Association, in a letter dated Oct. 28 to Golding.
The group is also pushing for the FHA to end the life of the loan requirement, which requires borrowers to pay the annual premium for the entire term. The annual premium used to terminate when the loan-to-value ratio hit 78%.
“We think we can go further on premiums and life of loan is still a problem,” Olson said in interview Monday.
Jim Parrot, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute and former White House advisor, said he does not expect the FHA to give in to industry demands in the near future.
“I am not sure we will see FHA move on the premium front anytime soon. I think they feel comfortable they are in a good place price wise,” he said in an interview. “My hope is they will focus on the credit overlay problem.”
Parrot said FHA could endorse many more loans if lenders worked better inside the FHA’s credit box. The agency allows a 580 credit score, but many lenders won’t lend to anyone with less than a 640.
The agency could have a sizable impact if it provides more clarity on how its handles mistakes on loan underwriting, Parrot said. The agency’s proposed loan certification rule, which has raised objections from lenders, will be critical in providing that clarity.
“They can be more impactful if they can expand the universe of people that can get FHA loans rather than making it less expensive for those who can already get an FHA loan,” he said.
Ed Mills, an analyst for FBR Capital Markets, agreed that FHA is unlikely to budge on premiums.
“The FHA appears poised to continue its push down the FICO spectrum,” he said in a report Monday.
There are separate questions, meanwhile, about whether the FHA single-family forward mortgage program and reverse mortgage program should be subject to separate capital standards.
The reverse mortgage program is significantly more volatile than the single-family one.
The reverse mortgage program “improved by $8 billion from last year,” Golding said. But “the HECM portfolio does exhibit significant swings year over year.”
The Mortgage Bankers Association noted that the HECM program has an over-weighted impact on the FHA fund.
“While only 10% of the overall portfolio, the HECM program has been responsible for a large part of the value swing in recent years, which is something that policymakers might want to be looking at,” said David Stevens, the MBA’s president and chief executive. “That, however, does not diminish what is really good news today, that the capital reserves are now forecast to exceed the 2% statutory minimum.”
Buyers who want to (can only) put just 3% down are recapitalizing FHA. Thanks! I did my part with my FHA cash-in refi back in 2012. In hindsight, I should’ve accepted a premium rate to cover the UFMIP. Oh well…
I may write a post about this topic. IMO, all they did was trade in a great long-term income stream for a short-term cash infusion. They spin this as if it’s a great boon for the FHA fund, but they greatly reduced their future inflows from fees in the process.
I don’t think the fees are outrageous, considering the risk. However, I do think the FHA needs to eliminate the “life of loan” MIP, regardless of LTV. That’s a bit much.