Hedge Funds Piling Into Housing

02-Jan-2012

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An eternal optimist, Liu-Yue built two social enterprises to help make the world a better place. Liu-Yue co-founded Oxstones Investment Club a searchable content platform and business tools for knowledge sharing and financial education. Oxstones.com also provides investors with direct access to U.S. commercial real estate opportunities and other alternative investments. In addition, Liu-Yue also co-founded Cute Brands a cause-oriented character brand management and brand licensing company that creates social awareness on global issues and societal challenges through character creations. Prior to his entrepreneurial endeavors, Liu-Yue worked as an Executive Associate at M&T Bank in the Structured Real Estate Finance Group where he worked with senior management on multiple bank-wide risk management projects. He also had a dual role as a commercial banker advising UHNWIs and family offices on investments, credit, and banking needs while focused on residential CRE, infrastructure development, and affordable housing projects. Prior to M&T, he held a number of positions in Latin American equities and bonds investment groups at SBC Warburg Dillon Read (Swiss Bank), OFFITBANK (the wealth management division of Wachovia Bank), and in small cap equities at Steinberg Priest Capital Management (family office). Liu-Yue has an MBA specializing in investment management and strategy from Georgetown University and a Bachelor of Science in Finance and Marketing from Stern School of Business at NYU. He also completed graduate studies in international management at the University of Oxford, Trinity College.

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By , Valuewalk,

Big money is starting to wager on housing.

Hedge funds run by Caxton Associates LP, SAC Capital Advisors LP, Avenue Capital and Blackstone Group LP have been buying housing-related investments, betting on a rebound. And formerly bearish research firm Zelman & Associates now predicts a housing pickup, as does Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Other investors seem to be making the same bet. Shares of home builders are up 30% since the end of the third quarter, as measured by the Dow Jones index tracking those shares, topping a nearly 10.5% gain for the Standard & Poor’s 500.

These stocks rallied during certain periods over the past three years, only to fall again when hopes of a housing rebound proved unfounded. However, home builders haven’t outperformed the broader market by this much in a quarter since the third quarter of 2008.

“We turned bullish on housing. A rebound is coming,” says Andrew Law, chief investment officer at $10 billion hedge-fund firm Caxton. He expects that home prices and construction will rise in 2012.

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Bulls received ammunition last week when the National Association of Realtors said sales of previously occupied homes in the U.S. rose 4% in November from October, topping expectations. The inventory of previously owned homes listed for sale fell 5.8% to 2.58 million, the lowest level since May 2005. That came on the heels of data that residential construction surged in November.

“The housing-price bottom is probably in sight,” Goldman said in a December 15 report. Housing prices might decline by 3% next year before beginning a rise, Goldman says. The bank predicts gains of 30% over the following 10 years, not taking inflation into account.

It is too early to declare an end to the housing difficulties that began five years ago and led to trillions of dollars of losses and a global economic downturn. U.S. home prices fell 3.4% this year as of October, according to the Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller home-price indexes released Tuesday. Inventories could rise next year if banks move more properties through the foreclosure process.

Some investors and market observers aren’t convinced of an imminent turnaround. Still, investors try to anticipate economic trends before they materialize. Even some housing skeptics acknowledge that real estate may no longer be the drag it has been on the economy.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204296804577124991922170830.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection

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