Newsgathering and number crunching

While some bloggers are content to offer readers their thoughts on the issues of the day, others are venturing into territory that once belonged to news reporters. Bloggers routinely gather, crunch and interpret numbers, interview industry movers and shakers, and break news before the mainstream press.

For some, part of the incentive is to counteract what they see as the negative or oversimplified reporting on the real estate industry that’s done by professional journalists. But often the news and issues discussed by bloggers wouldn’t otherwise be covered at all.

A national home-price index fell 0.7 percent in the fourth quarter and ended 2006 at 0.4 percent annual growth.

This Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller U.S. Home Price Index declined steeply throughout 2006, falling to near-zero growth after peaking at about 16 percent year-over-year growth in 2005.

S&P/Case-Shiller also publishes 10-City Composite and 20-City Composite indices that measure home prices in select metro markets.

The indices are designed to track the price changes of typical single-family homes and are based on data for single-family home resales for homes that have two or more recorded sale transactions at fair market value. Condominiums, co-op and new-home sales are excluded from the indices, and no appraisal data are used.

Government-sponsored mortgage repurchaser Freddie Mac says that beginning Sept. 1 it will buy subprime adjustable-rate mortgages only if buyers are qualified at the fully indexed and fully amortizing rate.

Freddie Mac will also limit the use of low-documentation underwriting for subprime ARMs and “strongly recommend” that lenders collect escrow accounts for borrowers’ taxes and insurance payments.

In instituting new, tougher standards for qualifying borrowers who take out hybrid ARMs such as 2/28 and 3/27 loans, Freddie Mac appears to be a step ahead of lawmakers and regulators.

COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE NEWS

• AMB Property of San Francisco, which owns and develops industrial real estate, said Friday that it would sell as many as 9.1 million new shares and plans to expand its global development business by 75 percent over the next four years. The company will use the funds to acquire properties, repay debt and for general corporate purposes, AMB said in a regulatory filing. The company owns or has interests in 124.7 million square feet of distribution space in 12 countries, the company said. AMB shares fell $1.23, or 2 percent, to close at $61.18. They gained 19.2 percent in 2006 and are up 4 percent so far this year.