The housing crisis threatens to destroy hundreds of billions of dollars of value by causing homeowners with negative equity to walk away from their houses. We advocate a legal reform that would allow homeowners to reduce principal while giving mortgage holders an equity interest. Such a plan would give homeowners an incentive to keep or resell their homes, thus reducing the market value loss of homes while protecting the effective value of creditors’ interests. Two further elements of the plan are that it uses prices based on the average house price in a particular ZIP code; and it is automated
CBREThailand RealEstate on 15 Jul 13Asia Pacific Office MarketView Q1 2013 07 May 2013 Office demand in Asia Pacific was stable in Q1 2013 with net absorption totaling 7 million sq. ft., the same figure as in Q4 2012. Occupiers remained cautious outlooks, a trend which continued to impact leasing activity across most markets. However, Japan saw a noticeable improvement in occupier sentiment following the election of the Liberal Democratic Party. Hong Kong was the only market to record negative absorption as a sizable amount of secondary space was released to the market. The CBRE Asia Pacific Office Rental Index recorded marginal growth of 0.05% quarter-on-quarter in Q1 2013, a very slight improvement on the 0.14Q quarter-on-quarter decline seen in Q4 2012. Rents have now been relatively flat for the past six quarters. In the current cycle overall Grade A rents peaked in Q2 2013.
