Arizona Title Agency shuts its doors

This post is more gas on the fire. We are a long way from the bottom, and it will take years to repair the damage and rebuild the RE process institutions.

Re: your response to my earlier post: I agree that price decline seems to have begun decelerating, which is requisite. The decline would not come to a screeching halt, but would gradually slow down, like anything with a lot of inertia. The acceleration of the price decline took about a year, according to the charts below. So, if the decel path is similar, that would put the bottom in the middle of next year.

But to start prices back up, a healthy mortgage market is required. I don’t know where the “new money” for mortgages will come from. All of our foreign friends have been burned badly. It may be a while before they buy the next version of CDOs or RMBSs from us. America as a safe place to invest has been disabused. And until Freddie and Fannie are fixed by Congress and time so there is again confidence in them, there can be no strong “government insured” mortgage market, which comprises almost all of the lower end / starter home market.

I think we will have a price bottom next year, after prices are rolled back to 2002-03 levels, but it may flat line for a while at a level of sales well below historic averages.