Recent data from the Census Bureau’s American Housing Survey shows that people living in mobile homes spend far less on keeping up their homes than do residents of stick-built homes.

America’s infatuation with home-ownership didn’t include much interest in getting people into manufactured homes. Some people were going on and on about the chance to build assets by buying a home. The perception has been that mobile homes do not appreciate in value. There’s probably more than enough evidence out there to support that idea. However, the experts didn’t foresee that stick-built homes would nosedive. That is what happened, unfortunately. The problem is that now, millions of Americans now owe more than the value of their homes.

An evaluation of the benefit or cost to a household in owning a home is generally determined by looking at the gain or loss on a sale of a home. That’s a bit of a simplification. It costs a lot to keep up your home.  People that bought a manufactured home during the boom years enjoy lower maintenance costs on their homes.

Among households that spent money doing repairs, manufactured home owners put approximately $1,450 into their homes in 2008. That is slightly less than one-third of what a homeowner living in a stick-built unit paid. Even people living in homes that were less than 4 years old spent far more than did residents of “mobile” homes.

Part of the discrepancy may be natural. Mobile home owners are much more likely to do the repairs (more…)

Jackson Hewitt and H & R Block both suffered setbacks in their efforts to defend their refund anticipation loans in New York courts last week.

In Jackson Hewitt Tax Service v. Kirkland, a judge dismissed an effort by Jackson Hewitt to prevent the New York State Division of Human Rights from continuing with its investigation of the marketing of JTX’s refund anticipation loans. Kirkland, the Commissioner of the New (more…)

No one can know what to expect from the  Office of Thrift Supervision over the next ten months.

The Dodd-Frank bill spells out the end for the OTS. Thrifts under its supervision will all have a new primary regulator. Most will become supervised by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. State-chartered thrifts, of which there are only about fifty, will become the concern of the FDIC. The others will move to the care of the Federal Reserve.

Those changes won’t happen until the summer of 2011. In the time between, thrifts will (more…)

The run on Kabul Bank leaves policy makers with a set of bad choices.

Kabul Bank was created as part of US strategy to create a civil society in Afghanistan. Critics might say that is another example of cultural imperialism, where a conqueror creates institutions that mirror their own. Fine. At the same time, a banking system creates the framework for exactly the kinds of changes that will lead Afghanistan toward progress.

Deposit-holding customers have withdrawn $200 million from Kabul Bank this week.

It would be less problematic if the shortcomings at Kabul Bank weren’t so clearly due to (more…)

Unless I am mistaken, H&R Block will share in much of the risk for its refund anticipation loans during the upcoming tax season.

Block has a relationship with HSBC for its refund products.  Block’s customers are delivered to HSBC for refund loans.  HSBC advances the customer cash based on the expectation that they will have a refund.  In the past, that expectation was backed up by the IRS debt indicator. HSBC won’t have that kind of certainty next year.

My reading of Article IV, Section 4.5, part (a) of this filing, made in March 2010, is that Block will have to refund to HSBC on their losses from RAL advances that cannot be collected.

Tax refunds are going to be very risky without the debt indicator. Last year, a high percentage of refund loans were turned down. Many people have outstanding liens, either for child support or back taxes or for unpaid student loan debt. The debt indicator caught those returns. Now, it’ll be an unknown.

Block shareholders should be paying attention to this situation. HSBC might be one of the world’s largest financial institutions. Block is not.