A Citigroup housing sector analyst had this to say.
Yet the group has lost about 23% the past several weeks, according to Kim, due to the subprime woes and is once again trading at about price-to-book value — a rough estimate of a company’s tangible assets if it were liquidated. He reiterated his view that a price-to-book valuation of 1 is a traditional “buy signal” and that the “recent pullback represents an attractive entry point.”
Here are a couple of pieces on good real estate stock buys caused by the falling price due to the sub-price mortgage default scare.
Here’s a similar take from Street.com.
Thanks to the panic over subprime mortgages in the past few weeks, any stock even associated with the mortgage business has seen its price bludgeoned.
In the case of American Home, the panic’s knocked it a third in a month to just $25.10 at the market close on Friday.
At these levels, the shares have a forecast dividend yield of 18.5%. That’s right: 18.5%. The company is organized as a real estate investment trust, or REIT, which basically means it pays out all its earnings as dividends.
How vulnerable are those dividends?
Ackor notes that subprime mortgages made up less than 2% of American Home’s business last year.