According to the S&P/Case-Shiller index, home prices in Phoenix, Las Vegas and San Francisco sunk the most – giving back 32.7%, 31.7% and 31.0% of their value in a year’s span, respectively.

The ocean-side metros of Miami, Los Angeles and San Diego followed, with respective declines of 29.0%, 27.9% and 26.7%.

Atlanta, Seattle and Portland entered what Case-Shiller called “the double-digit club,” with annual rates of decline of 10.5%, 10.2% and 10.1%, respectively.

The three best performing housing markets – meaning the ones that lost the least value – are Dallas (-3.0%), Charlotte (-4.4%) and Denver (-5.2%).

On a monthly basis, Detroit was hit the hardest, with home prices falling 4.5% from September to October of this year. That’s a dramatic leap from the 2.5% decline from August to September.

“The bear market continues; home prices are back to their March, 2004 levels.” David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at Standard & Poor’s, said in a news release.

Recent statistics from the National Association of Realtors suggest similar pain. Single-family home sales fell 8.0%, the slowest sales growth since July 1997, NAR reported last week.

And the national medium home price fell 13.2% from last year to $181,300, the largest drop since the NAR started tracking statistics, and likely the largest decline since the Great Depression, said Lawrence Yun, the trade group’s chief economist.

“Falling home prices would lead to faster contraction in consumer spending and further deterioration in bank balance sheets,” Yun said in a news release. “More importantly, falling home values would lead to higher loan defaults, including those recently modified distressed mortgages.”

Source: U.S. Home Prices Post Record 18% Annual Drop in October

They are seeking cheap, easy access to the 2,000-mile border with the United States, and the Mexican government is helping them, even creating laws to aid them. Why? Because these people pump $5.3 billion into the country’s economy every year.

Mexico’s being paid off, and certain U.S. agencies are joining in. They want to make it even easier for foreign nationals to creep into our southern neighbor’s towns and cities.

In one popular nest, the wave of zealots has reached 60 people a day. That’s about 15% a year as the size of this camp has grown to over 200,000. The state government in the area is allowing this group to run rampant; the incoming cash is too hard to resist.

Not a single alarm has been raised, even though this one camp is a mere two-and-a-half-hour flight away from the heart of Los Angeles.

Who’s in charge, anyway? The Mexican Foreign Ministry and Ministry of Governance? The United States Customs and Border Protection? The Department of Homeland Security?

Try none of the above.

No, we’re talking about the NAR and the AMPI, who’ve been working together for the past six months while governments and activists were removing obstructive, inefficient laws that hindered their “clients.”

NAR stands for National Association of Realtors, and AMPI stands for Asociación Mexicana de Profesionales Inmobiliaros. And no, these groups are not helping fund terrorist cells in Mexico. They are helping individuals buy real estate.

I know, I know… Every time the business circle talks about housing there’s an overtone of fear: lower housing starts, homes staying on the market longer, rising interest rates, rising number of foreclosure. It all adds up to make one scary picture. The U.S. housing industry is in dire straits.

But while the U.S. housing market is still searching for its bottom, the situation is much livelier just south of the border. Mexico’s housing sector is seeing a strong resurgence.

Most of this recovery – for it is a recovery, and we’ll talk about that in just a minute – is in vacation or recreational properties. And despite the cooling investments in the U.S. housing market, Mexico is seeing investment growth.

In 2005, foreign investment in Mexico was $17.6 billion. In 2006, that number was around $20 billion, with resort and vacation property investment holding more than 25% of total investment. In fact, in the first half of 2006, 500 acres of new resort property on the Pacific Coast was snapped up for $125 million.

The market for vacation and recreational properties in Mexico is booming, with $5.3 billion of foreign investment flowing into these properties just last year. Most of the activity is centered on new markets such as Puerto Peñasco and San Felipe in Baja
California, but we’re also seeing new growth in well-known areas like Puerto Vallarta and Los Cabos.

For example, one gentleman in Los Cabos has well over $100 million in property sales to his credit: condos, villas, homes, home sites and commercial resort properties…

Many buyers are coming from America. Twenty-five percent of U.S. citizens living abroad are living in Mexico. That’s about 1 million Americans – quite nearly an invasion.

Folks in Southern California can retire just over the border to Baja California and buy a comparable home for 20% less than U.S. market prices. An estimated 78.2 million people are on the edge of retirement, and a 20% savings on a retirement home with great views sounds pretty tempting.

With billions of dollars in foreign investment being pumped into Mexico’s economy, there’s been a full-blown real estate revival that extends to low-income, affordable housing.

The market for vacation and recreational properties in Mexico is booming, with
$5.3 billion of foreign investment flowing into these properties just last year.
Real estate, especially in the residential arena, may be among the country’s hottest sectors.

With the scorching hot resort and vacation industry in Mexico, you may be tempted to buy your own retirement home down there. The country has made it a lot easier, and less risky, to do so.

Investors are now protected by U.S. title insurance, bonded escrow accounts, extensive title searches, and Fideicomisos, which is a renewable Mexican property trust established specifically to protect foreign investors.

You have all the rights of a property owner in the U.S. or Canada, including the right to enjoy the property, to sell, rent, or to improve the property, whatever you want to do.

If you’re a real-estate investor, Mexico is a great emerging-market for you to consider.

–S.R. Nunnally

Source: The Big Land Grab in Mexico

The NAR pending home pending home sales index, a leading indicator of existing home sales, dropped 1.9% in February. The index is down 21.4% from the February 2007 level.

There has been plenty of shrill calls for government to intervene in the housing crisis, but what can – or should – government do?

“All through the boom, the bulls were claiming that the super-sized house price growth was based on fundamentals, and had nothing to do with slack lending practices,” says John Stepek in MoneyWeek.

“If they’re right, then prices shouldn’t fall very far before the fundamentals pick them back up again. If they were wrong, then house price gains were a bubble based on rampant speculation. Those bubbles need to be allowed to pop, so that people don’t keep throwing good money after bad.

“Of course, the reality is that many of the bulls knew this was a bubble. They just thought it was too big to blow. More than a few people used to argue that “the government will never let the housing boom end. It’s too important to voters.

“They will soon be reminded that there are few things less worthy of your faith than governments. For all its efforts, the Federal Reserve still hasn’t prevented US house prices from diving by more than 10%. Our leaders can’t hope to do any better.”