‘Shining A Spotlight’ On The Housing Bubble
The Boston Globe looks at another effort to spur home sales. “St. Joseph statues have long been used by sellers to help move property. Tradition has it that if you bury a statue upside down and facing the property you are trying to sell, St. Joseph will direct a buyer your way. Lately, all signs point to a real estate meltdown: Ward’s Gifts in Medford isselling 300 statues a month.”
“‘We can’t keep them in stock,’ Donald Ward Cranley said. ‘Everybody comes in here looking for them. Realtors are buying a dozen at a time.’”
“It’s the same story across the country. Statue sales are up 25 percent, according to the manufacturer. Sales have doubled over last year’s at stjosephstatue.com, a firm out of Modesto, Calif. ‘About a quarter of my sales are in Florida right now,’ said Phil Cates, owner of stjosephstatue.com. ‘The [real estate] market is getting killed there.’”
“Angele Fillion, a clerk at the St. Joseph the Worker Shrine, calls the practice akin to voodoo. ‘It’s not the statue, it’s the faith that makes it work,’ said Fillion, who said she frequently has to restrain herself from coming on too strong about the importance of prayer to troubled homeowners who enter the shop looking for the statues, and little else. ‘I can tell who they are the minute they walk in the door,’ she said. ‘They look a little embarrassed.’”
“Meanwhile, foreclosures are spiking, interest rates are rising, and thousands of homeowners and property speculators are sitting on land they can’t afford and need to unload. The result? Desperation.”
“‘I’ve had grown men come in here with tears in their eyes,’ Fillion said.”
An editorial at The Record. “It was a classic case of blaming the messenger for the message. This particular case involved a friend who believes the media caused the slowdown in the housing market.”
“‘Really? How?’ I asked. That’s all it took. My friend was chaffed about housing stories on this and that national newsmagazine. On national TV news. And in newspapers.”
“No doubt when the media begin shining a spotlight on soft sales, sliding prices and climbing inventory numbers, it changed the market dynamics. Buyers and sellers react. We in the media start pumping out stories saying sales are sliding, the inventory of homes for sale is ballooning and prices, while not necessarily falling, aren’t climbing with anything like the vigor sellers enjoyed in months past.”
“The media aren’t making this up. The raw figures come from outfits such as the California Association of Realtors, DataQuick and the Building Industry Construction Board.”
“For example, CAR’s chief economist, Leslie Appleton-Young, warned last month that the days of selling ‘as is’ real estate are gone, something every agent worth her license already knew. And Sean Snaith, of University of the Pacific, in (a) review of San Joaquin County, noted the bulging number of homes on the market, up fourfold from last year, is ‘making it harder for sellers to sell.’”
“Still, my friend was not pleased with the media. He’s especially galled about what he believes is the manipulation of the information.”
“For the record, my friend never suggested media manipulation when the housing market was booming, prices climbing in San Joaquin County from 25 percent to 40 percent per year. Those were the days of easy money. We all felt wealthy if we owned a home, safe in the knowledge, utterly false, of course, that the line on the graph runs only and forever upward.”
“The housing price run-up was something like the heady days of the late ’90s when a lot of boomers were counting our money, or at least feeling a rush every quarter when the 401(k) statement arrived. More than one person presented at my office door to explain that if they could just get five or six more years of stock market increases in the 20 percent to 25 percent range, they’d be outta here. Those folks don’t stop by so much anymore, probably because they’re still here and real busy working.”
“And likewise, sellers are sprucing up their homes because in this market, even if my friend believes otherwise, a chicken coop with peeling paint isn’t going to sell.”
Should be an interesting week ahead:
‘It’s a quiet week ahead for U.S. economic data, with orders for durable goods and home sales the only major releases. July home sales will be the chief focus of the markets, and the news probably won’t be very encouraging. Stu Hoffman, chief economist at PNC, says the housing data will be ‘ugly.’ The slump in housing ‘has gained momentum in the past few months,’ said Mickey Levy, chief economist for Bank of America.’
‘The slump in housing ‘has gained momentum in the past few months,’ said Mickey Levy, chief economist for Bank of America.’
At what point does the “slump” moniker give way to the more appropriate “crash” moniker?
Give it 8 months.
give it 8 weeks.
Slump is OK. It’s a slump for sure.
This stuff just pisses me off. Tears in their eyes, eh? They weren’t crying when they thought they could rip an easy 100K off the next GF.
They should try praying for some brains next time.
lol
What? No “hurling”?
Something just made the urge come on . . . can’t imagine what.
“‘I’ve had grown men come in here with tears in their eyes,’ Fillion said.”
===================================================
I do NOT feel one bit of empathy for this kind of nonsense. We are all adults, the party is over, you wanted to play and you got burned…nope, you get what you deserve.
LOL.
Speaking of grown men with tears in their eyes: Remember this guy?
Sitting on a FSBO –
watches passing cars with time to blow.
Sweat running down his nose –
Graspy fingers — dirty windows.
Grass dying in the cold sun –
Watching as the worried buyers run.
Feeling like a dead duck –
spitting out pieces of his broken luck.
~~~
Sun streaking cold –
a seller waiting lonely.
Biding time
the only way he knows.
Price dropping fast,
as he bends to pick some crab-grass –
he goes down to the curb
and scans for cars.
Feeling alone –
the Builder’s up the road
With freebies a la mode and
a cup of tea.
Aqualung my friend –
don’t you start away uneasy
you poor old sot, you see,
it’s only me.
~~~
Do you still remember
the Springtime’s selling freeze –
when the gloom that fell
on to the comps
was screaming agony.
And you clutch your bloated last comps
with sobbing flipper sounds,
and the condos bloom like
madness in the spring.
Should have included the Accompaniment
And, to add to the Jethro Tull theme
“Greenspan, he stole the handle
And the train it won’t stop going
No way to slow down”
Too easy, here’s a quickie:
In the funding madness
Of the locomotive breath,
Runs the big-time flipper,
Headlong to his death.
He feels his finance failing –
Sweat breaking on his brow –
Bernanke stole the handle and
The train it wont stop going –
No way to slow down.
He sees the Realtors jumping off
At the stations — one by one.
His credit and his broker –
All gone and no more funds.
He’s pleading as a mortgagor…
On his hands and knees –
Bernanke stole the handle and
The train it wont stop going –
No way to slow down.
He hears the buyers howling –
Grasps at offers as they fall.
And the all-time winner
Has got him by the balls.
He picks up gideons Bible –
Open at page one –
Bernanke stole the handle and
The train it won’t stop going –
No way to slow down.
Good lyrics, SM…But I disagree. I think Greenspan stole the handle, and Bernanke could well be Locomotive Breath.
I needed some artistic license there to make the meter work right. Yeah, it was Sir Allen that stole the handle, maybe that would work better. And Bernanke can’t stop going, no way to slow down.
LOL
Chicken bones and ouiji boards to sell a house? ‘Help me Cthulhu, I really need to unload this flip!”
Well, these borrowers are “Deep Ones”.
Are these St. Joseph statues made of wood or metal? Has anyone seen these? How big are they?
My cat needs a new scratching post and (if wood) one of these might be a good substitute.
As I remember, they are white plastic about a foot high. Sort of like the old plastic Jesus.
whoa, whoa! if I were the home owners, I would plant a money tree on the front lawn.
those condo flippers are in real trouble! maybe if they have the neighbor on the 10th floor point the statue upward to their 11th floor shack - but still, your neighbor isnt going to wanna have your place sell, his needs to first
What a bunch of losers. These people need to get a life, drop the price, and move on to the next sad get-rich-quick scheme that middle class people always lose on.
Oh, and one more thing. Why the F is Leslie-AY still earning a paycheck as an ‘economist’ for CAR? They should have S-canned this tune-changing, fair-weather dumbass six months ago. It really is amazing that we are still reading the swill these idiots pump into the MSM.
Because she says exactly what they want her to say?
Her function is to legimitize economic theories that will benefit Realtors, regardless of their factual validity.
Well put, but it pisses me off all the same.
Who else would be dumb enough to take the job???
This is so sick . God is suppose to help a person rip off a greater fool so a FB investor can get easy money . I think they talk alot about greed in the Bible ,and remember how Jesus got mad at the money-changers ,(lenders ).
Look at how fast the market changed . The same thing happened in Florida in 1926 .
I think about the lady last year in a new paper article who said in essense that she owned 4 houses and she was going to buy 5 more because real estate always goes up . I’m sure the lady is upside down by now because the properties can’t cash flow by renting them .And to think that this jerk lady was given media attention ,yet people are now complaining about the media starting to tell the truth about the inventory glut nationwide .
http://www.investopedia.com/features/crashes/crashes4.asp
From the article about the Tulip Bubble:
“No one emerged unscathed from the crash. Even the people who had locked in their profit by getting out early suffered under the following depression.”
Reminds me of the joke about the old man waiting on top of his house in a rising flood. Along come a row boat and a helicopter offering help but each time he says “Nope, the Lord will provide.” Finally the waters swallow him up and he drowns. When the old meets his makers he is dismayed: “Lord, why didn’t you help me out of that flood” and God says “I sent you a row boat and a helicopter, what more do you want?”
You can use (substitute Bible, Koran, Hebrew, Buddha for the book title) to justify anything, including greed. It is 1000 years beyond the time when one could seriously agree that religion X is better than religion Y.
I remember that article. I’m obsessed with this blog.
Me too. Is there a 12 step program to get over this addiction?
No. We are doomed, doomed. But God bless us all, everyone.
Durable good and home sales are the only economic indicators to be released this week?!? Oh boy…
I cannot wait to see the stock market spin on the two. Remember, the largest portion of durable goods is for homes and is often driven by new home purchases (washer/dryer, fridge, etc.).
Sound the dive alarm. The stock market isn’t going to be happy. Oh, its pre labor day, so I expect no “crash.” But if these two don’t shout bubble… I’ll be shocked.
if enough sellers buy these statues, it might seriously skew economic numbers and retail sales data!
rotfl
It doesn’t matter. The stock market will tumble down below 11000 and then “something” will cause it to recover and close at 11008 at the end of the day. And then it will go up and down but never be very far from 11000. 11000 seems to be “someone’s” magic number. You might ask yourself, who has the power to prevent the stock market from crashing?
The stock market is looking for indicators that will stop the Feds from raising rates again…so this will be a “good news” week for them.
The truth hurts.
“Angele Fillion, a clerk at the St. Joseph the Worker Shrine, calls the practice akin to voodoo.
-That old black magic called - loser. Who in the hell is so shallow that they think that the media caused the correction to prices. The media surely fed the hype to higher prices
combined with ‘Thar’s Gold in them thar Hills’
These folks must be the ones who watch 40-50 hrs of tv per week.
Who in the hell is so shallow that they think that the media caused the correction to prices.
They’re the same people who blame the media for the civil war in Iraq. It was all going so well until those damn journalists starting spinning their agenda, next thing you know, civil war.
Wasn’t aware realtors were providing commentary on foreign affairs.
If you read the post, the seventh paragraph down says:
‘An editorial at The Record. “It was a classic case of blaming the messenger for the message. This particular case involved a friend who believes the media caused the slowdown in the housing market.’
I’m not sure where you get “realtors providing commentary on foreign affairs”, but you might want to cut down on your TV viewing hours.
The media IS RESPONSIBLE for this housing crash!!! Not because they are reporting the facts now, but because they over-hyped the market to begin with.
The felons at CNBC never got arrested for creating the stock market bubble, even though they used to foam at the mouth about stocks.
Amen to that. Then when the crash came they all had a coolective” we told you so attitude”. CNBC has been cancelled at this house. Carpetbaggers and snake oil salesmen.
Yes the media hypes many things and creates markets for crap nobody realy needs. No doubt.
But sooner or later we all have to be responsible for our actions. The longer we are in denial the bigger the adjustment will be. The “Piper” will be paid (soon).
The piper has just spent 5 years in jail pumping iron and perfecting his beat downs on hapless FBs.
He called me today and said that he really looks forward to his release date just after Labor day.
Of course, I’m not saying they’re the ONLY one’s responsible. I just think it’s ironic that all the greedy ones that are getting spanked by this market now are blaming the media for the wrong reasons.
Oh, man, this is too easy!
Open the accompaniment
in a new window and sing along with the old landlord here:
Hey little flipper what have you done?
Hey little flipper - not the only one
Hey little flipper who’s your Realtor-man?
Hey little flipper how many do you want?
Hey little flipper — shot gun!!!
It’s a nice day to start again
It’s a nice day for a fore-closing…
It’s a nice day to start again
~~~
Hey little flipper what have you done
Hey little flipper - not the only one
I’ve been in pain for so long (so long)
I’ve been in pain for so long (so long)
I let you go for so long
It’s a nice day to start again (come on)
It’s a nice day for a fore-closing…
It’s a nice day to start again!!
~~~
(Pick it up)
Take me back home
There is nothin’ fair in this world
There is nothin’ safe in this world
And there’s nothin’ sure in this world
And there’s nothin’ pure in this world
Look for something left in this world
Start again
Come on
It’s a nice day for a fore-closing…
It’s a nice day to start again
It’s a nice day for a fore-closing…
It’s a nice day to start again
Yikes!
I think that SM_landlord used to be an 80’s DJ.
Where do you come up with these?
Close. I was on the production side (mostly in the booth) from ‘74 through ‘84.
There had to be some actual musical talent behind all of these rapid fire musical parodies.
You already answered the question about your background, but it would be funny if you were Weird Al (the most famous song parody artist).
also with apologies to Mr. Idol - something a little more apt for 2005 and earlier.
In the midnight hour, they bid “more! more! more!”
With their realtor, Mel, they bid “more! more! more!”
(maybe someone else would like to try come up with something for “Mortgagin’ Myself”)
“Lately, all signs point to a real estate meltdown: Ward’s Gifts in Medford is selling 300 statues a month.”
Maybe it is time for flippers to leave the condo market and enter the statue market?
That’s it! Instead of selling real estate door-to-door, ex-agents can sell statues to floppers!
Of course the statues will want a commission of the house sells.
Of course I meant “if the house sells”. Without editing capabilities, this is like performance art. Hmmm.
Not a bad idea. After all, they aren’t making any more bronze or plaster.
“Still, my friend was not pleased with the media. He’s especially galled about what he believes is the manipulation of the information.”
Where does this blog fit in? Does collecting a bunch of articles from reputable news outlets and posting them here constitute “media manipulation?”
There are a few bears that were harping about the same thing.
They continue to harp over at OCR’s RE blog.
It is a total waste of time over there.
We will have our day over there very very soon!!
Hey Sunset,
Jon has been a real jerk at the OC blog. I’m not going to waste my time anymore. They will all understand where we are coming from soon.
Yep, I can’t believe some of the bear postings that he doesn’t edit, but then lets total knuckleheads through.
I tried to post some comments to the effect of Jon’s blog has jumped the shark, total delete.
This remindes me of a really funny skit in the late ’60s or early 70s — I think the comedian was Bill Cosby or possibly Dick Gregory. It was about Noah and the Ark.
The current version would be the homeowner saying, “Lord, please help me sell my house.” Just then, the clouds part and there is a rumbling as of thunder and a voice from above says, “Lower Your Price.”
“And likewise, sellers are sprucing up their homes because in this market, even if my friend believes otherwise, a chicken coop with peeling paint isn’t going to sell.”
What is the return to money sunk down the rathole of fixing up chicken coops with peeling paint in order to get them ready to sell? Is 80 cents return per dollar of rehab costs about right, or is this an overestimate when the market value is dropping quickly? It would be pretty sad for a misguided seller to lose more than the cost of home improvements due to the falling knife effect during a crash.
If you count your own labor at zero and go cheapo on the materials, on certain purely emotional cosmetic things you can get a return, IMO.
Finally, someone is correctly pricing the value of the flippers’ labor!
There was a project in Chicago called “Cabreenie Green” (sp), the tennants would rip out the copper pipes when they left and sell them.
Sounds like the flippers are going to be hawking parts of the house for more money than the house itself. LOL, oh, wait a second, new homes are made of poor materials, scratch that.
US News article: Housing Slump Threatens Jobs
http://tinyurl.com/jm235
finally, someone makes the obvious explicit to the general public.
funny that the Boston Globe is running this deal on St. Joseph’s statues at the same time as my paper carries a bit on it…my local, the Ann Arbor News, started the first in a *four* part series today, with a *front page* piece on how the once red-hot real estate market (it hasn’t been “red hot” for at least 3 years, but it takes til it’s sooo stone cold that nobody who isn’t lying can say otherwise for it to be even widely spoken of as ‘cooling down’) is now…uh…kinda slow.
http://www.mlive.com/news/aanews/index.ssf?/base/news-19/1156068712314220.xml&coll=2
So far in the series we get to see people trying to make outrageous profits, wondering what they’re doing ‘wrong’ to not sell, sob stories of folks who can’t start their retirement even though they’re ill because they can’t sell their homes or condos. I’m sure some of these people are stuck and need to stick to their too-high prices, but some are just being stubborn. Allegedly the realtors are starting to tell them that their prices have to come down, but since these same agents told them when they bought that there’s no way they won’t make heaps of cash it must be extra hard convincing them.
I can look forward in part 2 to continued sob stories from sellers, then a deeper look at what has already been labeled the pesky picky buyers who can’t chose or who ‘think they need to get the best deal in the market’ (the double standard is really blatant..sellers don’t want to ‘give away’ their homes, but buyers apparently should be happy to ‘give away’ extra cash on homes whose values are not rising at all and may even be *gasp* falling). All in all, it’s nice to see admission of a ‘problem’, but the picture is still being spun in the usual way, complete with the typical forecast of a turnaround real soon.
And there was a side-bar blurb on how these St. Joseph’s statues are being cleared out of the local stores that sell them–realtors apparently buy them by the dozen, ‘cept here the practice is apparently to bury them under the for-sale signs.
cheers all!
wow, if you have to rely on burying statues, you’re in trouble.
funny how people “find religion” in bad times. “no atheists in a foxhole”.
i find it repulsive and sacreligious.
Sacrilegious, from sacrilege.
Obscure factoid alert.
OMG. Las Vegas condos are tipping over!
http://louminatti.blogspot.com/2006/08/las-vegas-condos-are-tipping-over.html
“Meanwhile, foreclosures are spiking, interest rates are rising, and thousands of homeowners and property speculators are sitting on land they can’t afford and need to unload. The result? Desperation.”
I just love that squeal, interest rates are rising. Face it jughead, you gambled, you lost. Next!
“My friend was chaffed about housing stories on this and that national newsmagazine. On national TV news. And in newspapers.””
There’s going to be a lot of people getting “chafed”, i.e., taking it “Deliverance” style, to use SS’s euphemism. Man, that’s gonna hurt - especially if they haven’t prepared for it. As people have speculated, the relevant questions are: how long and how deep?
Oh we got some serious “ass-pounding” going on, you can bet on it!
BRAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What a crazy country!
I said that exact same thing coming back from a festival in downtown Ypsilanti just tonight, after seeing a grungy old apartment building with 8 or so units, 2 stories of cinderblock with those long balconies college kids hang beer banners off of, all in a block of similar buildings very near to Eastern Michigan University, with banners hanging to advertise not Coors or football teams but hawking the grubby squarefeet behind them as *condos*! This past week the family went to west michigan to be at the lake and every third driveway off the roads, be they rural or in little resort-towns, had for sale signs on it, amd plenty of for-rent signs on vacation-y looking props. Maybe Florida is gonna sell those hundreds of thousands of new condos after all, because apparently everyone is leaving Michigan.
I grew up in Michigan, and I find it humorous that the same shit went down back there (only on a smaller scale, pricewise).
I grew up out in the boonies in SE Michigan. My house was in the middle of miles of open field. Now, all that space is covered with $350-500k houses. Who’s buying $500k houses in Downriver Michigan? It’s a factory town and the big three are imploding.
Great question. I found myself really wondering who’s selling all those props near lakes big and small in MI. A lot of them were older homes…it made me wonder if maybe they’re the ones ‘upgrading’ to McMansions elsewhere in MI. I was curious to know the trends there. Was *everyone* retiring? Was *everyone* deciding to try and cash in before the last greater fool got a clue?
The ridiculous beer-y condos were more fathomable to me, as an albeit bizarre symptom of the crazy credit bubble “ownership” society, whereby it has become ’silly’ to rent for even the 4-6 years of bud-guzzling and BA-getting. Why lose out on all that appreciation and equity-building, when the incoming class will be happy to buy those keys from you and continue on in the endless magical free-money scheme? Once it becomes clear that it’s not as easy as forfeiting the security deposit at the end of your lease to sell your condo, that whole weird scene should end I’d guess.
It’s truly trippy to see though…
Yes, EVERYONE bought into the ownership society - took out crazy loans. Just like here in LA. Same story everywhere.
In Europe, 30% consider themselves religionless. In America, 14% consider themselves religionless. It is safe to say, Americans are more superstitious than Europeans. Or, Europeans are more reality-based than Americans. So this silly upside down statue does not surprise me one bit.
I wouldn’t say Europeans are “reality-based”; after all they think French and German are relevant languages. Silly rabbits! We all know English (India) and Chinese are the important ones going forward…
I also wouldn’t say that Europeans are not religious. That is a temporary statistical anomaly soon to be corrected by their flood of Muslim immigrants.
only reason europeans aren’t very religious is because all the religious wars there and the being put down by the catholic church have turned them away
Nobody wants to hear hate talk, we are hear to calmly watch the residential housing market.
As an athiest, people believing a statue will save them doesn’t surprise me either - but it does depress me. I would have hoped, with the “Information age” and all of the hard work scientists have done and built upon that mankind would have gotten passed this stuff by now.
why should we be surprised? people buying recently who can’t afford to lose bucks on a gamble must be working on an ARMed-wing and a prayer that the game keeps on keeping on…realtors who’d been making out like bandits recently have got to know how lucky they’d been to make their money for nothing…and goodness the whole ponzi scheme nature of it all depends utterly on a collective (un)consciousness. So whether it be a desire to bolster that collective spirit or a superstitious appeal for a lucky roll, it’s not surprising to me. Probably there’s a certain similar psychology in buying up the statues as there is in the real estate St Joseph is believed to help transfer ownership of, lol. People don’t want to be left feeling stupid, having missed out on the benefits and riches conveyed to those who bury the things under their for-sale signs.
Gee, I wonder if the outfit that makes these statuses is listed on the stock exchange. Sounds like an opportunity.
I’ve heard of some crazy things, but burying statues kind of gets my skeptical nature going. Tell the flippers that the statue doesn’t work properly unless its been dipped in the Holy Fountain of a McMansion that’s been sold
Saint Jude is the more appropriate satue; The patron of lost or impossible causes …..
I really enjoyed that 2nd article. I am really enjoying this whole thing.
A buddy I work with used to laugh about my advice to him to sell his OC home and rent for awhile before trading up. I have been giving him that advice for over a year now. I havn’t talked to him about it in a few months.
On Friday he told me ‘You can get real good deals now. This one house that was selling for 1.1 is at $800k. Prices are going down.” (said it like he was totally shocked) I told him “dude, duh … what have I been telling you for the last year….?”
Anyways, probably not a very good story, but he used to laugh at me and make fun of me when I gave hime my advice. The way he said that to me on Friday was like “dude … you may be right.”
The tide had changed.
Yeah, my hubby actually used the ‘r’ word after seeing the ‘cooling real estate’ market as the front page story finally yesterday…
Something like, “so, maybe for the last couple years when you’ve been saying oh man these prices are too high, there’s no way they’re going to go up from here anytime soon…you were maybe ‘right’?”
Despite my referring him to these kinds of stories and this blog for months now lol..
It was almost a relevation, but not quite.
Desperate sellers can list their property at
http://stjosephstatue.com/newhomes/homelist.mv
Could be interesting to follow the growing numbers
slightly OT:
http://heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060821/BUSINESS/608210570/1448
Amazing stuff when even auctions are not successful……
This auction article has an amazing insite into the mind of a flipper. The $315,000 property just sold for $255,000 at auction and here’s this fools comment:
Pincus said he would have gone for $250,000 if he thought he could flip the property within 30 days. That would allow him to assign the title and skip the doc stamps.
“But chances are slim that you’re going to sell a property over $300,000 in less than 30 days,” Pincus said, acknowledging just how slow the region’s real estate sales are right now.
This goof ball has just seen it sell at a loss and yet he’s contemplating “flipping” for a profit.
Is there a 12 step program for these idiots???
I always thought the St. Joseph statue thing was quaint. You only hear about the homes that actually sold when they buried St. Joseph in the lawn, and not the ones that didn’t!
Magical thinking got these people into this mess, so I guess they hope magic will get them out of it. Sad.
So true. In fact, magical thinking got EVERYONE into this mess.
Looks like the next bubble is in St. Joe statues!
“This particular case involved a friend who believes the media caused the slowdown in the housing market.”
I am howling with laughter at the Stockton Record editorial. I truly have never read a piece in print that had more disconnect with reality than the story of that truly, TRULY FB.
And yes, no remorse for these idiots. The market always wins, regardless of what realtors and loan officers may want to believe. And all of us get to pay a price for their greed via a diminished U.S. economy.
well, installment two in the Ann Arbor News gives this fab sob story about a couple who raised their two children in this trilevel in Chelsea MI, HELOCed the place once the mother started to require oxygen and couldn’t use the stairs, spent part of that money on acres and construction for the ranch in the country they had always talked about getting, and now are losing 2K a month they say on carrying the two mortgages, the two tax bills, the two utilities. Their first home, despite finally giving in and reducing the price by 30K, has been unsold in 18 months of showings. Now, the article implies it’s a lovely house, and I’m sure the family had a nice time there, but it’s apparently a 1150 SF trilevel, and I’m thinking they’re still asking about 30-40K too much. The mom blames new construction, apparently because potential buyers can chose to live in something a little bigger or a little nicer than her 40 year old trilevel and thus don’t need to beg her to be allowed to feed her squirrels!
http://www.mlive.com/news/aanews/index.ssf?/base/news-19/115616941047030.xml&coll=2&thispage=5
Tomorrow we get to hear about those evil reluctant buyers, who won’t let this poor woman live peacefully in her new ranch with stainless appliances and corian countertops because they’re wussy-scared to give her the profits she’s due for having vacated her old place. And after she buried not just one but *two* St Joseph’s statues in her lawn no less!