The Shadow Knows

Today's topic is Shadow Inventory - the foreclosed or soon to be foreclosed properties that banks are stuck with and which are not listed for sale. As a result, they are not found in any formal listing of housing inventory when existing home sales are reported. This has been a problem for a long time, as we mentioned many months ago in Household De-formation.

The media's silence on this issue has been almost total. Probably because any reasonable discussion of the topic would severely undermine the illusion of stability they are trying to project. This weekend, the Wall Street Journal took a stab at estimating the damage. Their conclusion is that it would take 107 MONTHS to clear the shadow inventory at current sales rates. Obviously not a number that the bankers and their apologists in government and media are anxious to publicize.

Over the summer, banks appeared to be making some headway. The government’s mortgage-modification program helped some people get current on their payments, taking their homes out of the foreclosure pipeline. At the same time, homebuyer tax credits helped boost sales. Combined real and shadow inventory fell to 91 months of sales in May.

Lately, though, a new wave of defaults appears to be coming in, in part related to the high rate of failures on government modifications. As of September, some 1.9 million homeowners had missed one payment on their mortgages, up 14% from March. Meanwhile, home sales have slowed sharply with the end of government stimulus.

The government "assistance" was never going to help many people, much less actually succeed on a large scale. However, it was helpful for the banks - aiding them in concealing the collapse of their collateral for another year or so (i.e. another Bonus Cycle).

But the good news is that we can expect the housing market to start to recover - in another eight or nine years.