Now it's UBS' turn for writedowns. It jumped ahead of everyone and reported $14 billion. More than Citi and Merrill.
The writedowns just keep coming. The question is are these estimates over or under? Hopefully they are overestimating and there wont be further writedowns. But the way the housing market is tanking, I wonder if there might be more writedowns if there are more foreclosures.
Remeber that it's not just a subprime issue anymore. As seen on 60 minutes last Sunday, people are walking away from homes. There was a couple who is going to stop paying because they can't refinance and they are upside down in home equity. In fact, the report might make more people just walk out of home.
Hats off to Bill Fleckenstein who last year wrote an article on about people sending keys back. He wrote it back in August 2006.
This is the first I've heard of missed payments by a developer -- though I imagine that others have occurred. I expect to see many more still. However, I have heard about isolated cases of "jingle mail," where homeowners have mailed in the keys because they can't make the payments and no longer have any equity in their homes.
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