‘Amid The Boom, Details Hardly Seemed To Matter’
A mortgage fraud report from the New York Times. “On May 18, 2005, a small Indiana company bought 184 duplex homes in a down-and-out neighborhood in northeast Indianapolis for an average price of $50,000 each. The company, Land Economics, began selling the properties for $120,000 apiece to church secretaries, truckers, retirees and factory workers, sometimes as many as three a day to a single individual. As recently as September 2004, homes in this neighborhood sold in a range of $20,000 to $65,000.”
“Amid the boom, those details hardly seemed to matter. Federal investigators are still trying to sort out the scope of what some are describing as one of the largest cases of mortgage fraud in recent years. Countrywide Financial, which bought the Indianapolis loans soon after they were written, has filed a lawsuit seeking damages from Land Economics, its principals and others involved in the deals.”
“The Indianapolis situation may prove to be the most vivid example yet of how the boom in housing has provided fertile ground for mortgage fraud, industry experts and regulators say. Rising home prices served as cover for quick-flip plans and an easy hook to recruit investors.”
“And the boom created incentives for the mortgage industry not to look too closely. As the appetite for home loans soared on Main Street and Wall Street, the industry came to increasingly rely on networks of independent mortgage brokers, appraisers and other officials to keep the lending assembly line well supplied. All had incentives to minimize hold-ups.”
“‘If the deal doesn’t go through, nobody gets paid,’ said Bill Matthews, a senior vice president at the Conference of State Bank Supervisors.”
The Rocky Mountain News. “Denver-area home sales and prices were weak in September, according to reports released Thursday. In addition, the housing market may be in even worse shape than the monthly reports indicate because of the way the statistics are being collected and because of rampant fraud, a top real estate executive said.”
“‘The (real estate) industry’s biggest problem right now is loan fraud,’ said Chris Mygatt, president of the largest residential real estate company in Colorado.”
“‘We have been seeing many more homes on the market, and average prices (in most months) are going up, which does not make any economic sense,’ said independent broker Jerry McGuire.”
“Two days ago, a broker severed a listing agreement with the seller of a home priced at $850,000 because the broker suspected he was involved in a fraudulent sale. ‘For five or six months, the home received zero offers,’ Mygatt said. Out of the blue, the seller received an offer for $1.1 million, $250,000 above the asking price.”
“Mygatt suspects the buyer will pocket the $250,000 and let the house go into foreclosure. But before that happens, the home will be listed as a $1.1 million sale, helping to skew the Metrolist numbers higher, he said. He said these kinds of deals, often with lower-priced homes, are becoming increasingly common. ‘This could not work without appraisal fraud,’ Mygatt said.”
“Mygatt said he thinks about 25 percent of the near record 31,450 unsold homes on the market will ’statistically never sell’ because their mortgages are higher than their potential sale value. That means those houses eventually will end up in foreclosure, he said.
From the Gazette. “A sharp drop in home construction continued in September, putting the local housing industry on pace this year to build the lowest number of homes in nearly a decade. The slowdown is rippling through the industry, prompting some builders to lay off workers and others to add incentive packages, although they say nobody is pushing the panic button.”
“Classic Cos. has started offering discounts of 4 percent on pre-sold homes and 5 percent on its speculative inventory, an incentive that will translate to several thousand dollars, Joe Loidolt said.”
“George Hess, who’s the incoming president of the Colorado Springs Housing and Building Association board, added that speculators, buyers who purchased homes with the intent of quickly selling them, might have driven part of the building. A glut of resales on the market, August’s local used home inventory was up 35 percent from a year earlier, also is providing plenty of competition for the new home industry.”
“Super-low mortgage rates sucked all types of buyers into the marrket, many of whom might not have ordinarily bought a home. ‘Low interest rates created a situation where the market borrowed buyers from the future, and people who probably would have been buying today or tomorrow actually bought a house yesterday and the day before,’ Colorado Springs economist Dave Bamberger said.”
“Easy financing on the part of lenders also contributed to the wave of home construction, Fred Crowley, a University of Colorado at Colorado Springs economist said. ‘It wasn’t that we overbuilt,’ he said. ‘We overfinanced.’”
?? does anyone live in an area where rent is 120/th price ?
historical norm w an interest rate adjustment………
I’m at 240 here in N VA
SD = 280
Portland, OR about 240-260x
santa rosa ca,about 500,down from about 600.
you’re sht-en me,500 x monthly rent ?
for a regualr sfh or townhome ?
I pay $1800/mo for an oceanfront home in the Florida Keys with a dock that was tax appraised last month at $1,277,000. We sold out in late 2004 when things really went nutso down here (our place went up 114% in 2 years, between 2002 and 2004). We sweated bullets during late summer/fall of 2004 with 4 re-scheduled closings as hurricane after hurricane whizzed past the Keys (the buyers couldn’t procure insurance with an active storm in the area, and therefore, couldn’t close). Now, predictably, there is a terrible affordable housing crisis down here. In fact, check out these two lead stories on housing in the October 6, 2006 online edition of the Keynoter (one of our local newspapers) - they actually closed the Intensive Care Unit at Marathon’s Fishermans Hospital due to staff leaving the area. Here are the links :
http://www.keynoter.com/articles/2006/10/04/news/news01.txt
http://www.keynoter.com/articles/2006/10/04/news/news02.txt
La Jolla, CA. 600X is the going rate.
San Luis Obispo County = 300-400X
Central Valley, CA 350X is the rate right now heading lower.
3BR/BA Townhome in Seascape is 450X
2BA and 2 car garage approx 1600sqft.
Manhattan: ~175x based on asking prices.
I just rented a home in Lincoln (Sacramento), CA for $2,000/month. A fipper paid $750,000 for the home in May and can’t resell it. So the Multiple here is 358 using monthly rent. I think a Gross Rent Multiplier is usually applied annually, so divide by 12 months to get 29.87. In the late 1990’s a normal GRM was 8-10 annually (or 96-120 monthly). The market is so out of balance in the Sacramento Valley that rents for the McMansions are dropping. I just saw an add for a 4500 sf home in 12 Bridges (again, Sacramento foothills) inside a gated community. $2095/mon! The FB paid $900,000 for the place ($200/sf) and is leasing it for $6.20/sf/year! This is a monthly GRM of 429! And no one wants to rent it, as the utilities alone will be 25% of the occupancy costs. The FB must pay $10,000/yr in taxes, $5,000/year in bonds! He will net about $8,000/year on a $900,000 investment.
What were these Flippers thinking. There are whole subdivisions of them, though not quite so F’s as this one. Amazinag. Some people think the correction in Sac will only last another year. I contend it will take 3 + MORE years to sort out the ugly mess in this county.
Hey, beat 570 to 1 at my Naples rental.
looked like about 80 in Roanoke last time I checked
Depends on the type of property, but here in Palm Beach, about 200-400X is pretty normal.
The higher the property “value” the higher the multiple. Million dollar properties rent right around 3000/mo, but seem to be dropping (the rent, that is).
Merced, CA: about 350
Roughly 350 here in Ashland, Oregon.
In Las Vegas I am at 1/300 th.
Vancouver is about 300 for condos. I don’t know about SFH, because almost all of our specuvestors are in condos and townhouses here.
Rent on the condo I live in is actually at a 333.33 multiple.
Calgary, Canada
about 250-300x
Hood River, OR 300-350x, small town about an hour east of Portland. Alot of vacation houses are empty 9 months of the year, owned mostly by rich people from Calf.
Jacksonville Beach 160-200
The house I’m renting in Marin = 315
West Hollywood, CA — 240, at least in my building. That’s down from close to 300 last year.
Here in Manhattan I would put it at 220 - 240. $2,500 per month to rent. $600,000 to own. Pretty ridiculous. And people still think NYC won’t get hit. I laugh about it every day.
what you can rent for $2500 per month in NYC is real crap these days.
You can get about 200 - 225 in Fort Lee, NJ just on the other side of Manhattan.
405 in my part of Fremont, CA. I suspect the ratio is much higher in other parts of Fremont. Part of the problem is that although the better neighborhoods in this city are 50% more expensive for buying than the house I’m in, the rental market doesn’t tolerate that level of variation within a city.
“The company, Land Economics, began selling the properties for $120,000 apiece to church secretaries, truckers, retirees and factory workers, sometimes as many as three a day to a single individual.”
What a bunch of Rubes…
But don’t tell the Universities they’re still trying to convince us of the soft landing. These anecdotes haven’t swayed their no-bubble theories for 3 years. For most of us, when every rube we know “owns” multiple properties, that’s a red flag. And a sign that inventory is going to be strong and pressure to sell constant for the foreseeable future. But don’t tell the Universities.
Where is the fraud here? If a bunch of secretaries and truckers buy houses for 2.5x what they were worth a year before, then they are just your run of the mill FB’s.
Is this company stealing identities and making up buyers?
Or is this one where the buyers take a kickback and never make a payment?
It’s my understanding that many of the buyers were actually credit fraud. (I may be wrong here)
As example: many of the church goers were told that there was some sort of “investment group” and that to join they had to surrender their Soc Sec #’s etc for “IRS purposes”.
Then the crooks took those Soc Sec #’s and bought tons of houses with them.
the story I read was about a couple who were declined a credit card… when they pulled their report they saw that 3 houses had been bought in their name.
I could be wrong though.
I think that was the Va. case that also involved Countywide funding .
I suspect before this is all through Countrywide will be owned by our govnernment and become another GSE.
posted “I think that was the Va. case that also involved Countywide funding . ”
Where is RICCO when you need it? The mob could learn alot from these guys.
I agree …what about RICCO??
I agree …what about RICCO??
Sorry my mistake it is RICO…. Just punch in RICO laws.
Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act
I agree, the article never explains the fraud is. It implies that because the properties were sold for so much more than they were worth that that is fraud. I watched this sort of thing happen everyday by monitoring realtor.com everyday during 2002-2004. A property would be listed for $60,000 then the next day it was listed for $120,000. This kind of thing happened EVERY DAY here in Tampa. It was obvious and everyone knew about it, these guys are just mad that they are at the end of the ponzi scheme. Quote from article:
“Still, the apparent inability of lenders to spot suspicious transactions is puzzling to some.”
Yep. I’d see some homes being sold three or more times in 6 months. Each time, the price would go up another $30K-$60K (or more!).
Can’t wait ’til the SHTF on all this fraud.
Praise the Lord!
Gee maybe Countrywide ought to have a policy of having someone drive out to have a look at the house before they buy the loan. If they’re too scared to get out of the car, they shouldn’t buy it.
I bet their margins are too thin to even afford that.
Every time something stinks, you can count on Countrywide to be there. What now? The dog did it?
You would also think the buyers would have taken the time to have a little field trip out to that God-forsaken area of Indiana where the war zone I mean houses were located. Even as part of a consortium, buyers should be aware of neighborhoods.
Also when you see a price going for 50k 6 months ago and than it go to 120k i a short time you know that something is up . The underwriters/appraisers should be looking at what the last sales price was on a house to check on funny business ,(pretty easy to do . Also if your having to many sales in a area in a short time it could be funny business .
Without widespread appraisal fraud, this bubble could never have happened. When you look at certain neighborhoods, houses were “appreciating” hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. Considering historical trends, how on earth were these appraisals coming in at the agreed sale price? I want these appraisers held accountable for this fraud. It’s fine if somebody wants to pay $250k more for a house than it was worth the year before, but the appraisal needs to be realistic forcing them to bring the cash to the table. These appraisers have been a huge part of this bubble. They cry about how they have to hit these amounts or they will be out of a job, but that is the same nonsensical BS as an athlete complaining that he had to take steroids to keep up. Rampant appraisal fraud priced people out.
Your right Bantering Bear . If a property or area goes up to much in one year you make the risk-takers put more down . It makes you sick when you think about how much money this is going to cost everyone just because appraisers and mortgage brokers ,realtors ,etc. wanted to hit the numbers .
It stinks because the dog shat on it
I hope Countrywide gets nothing in their lawsuit. They weren’t victims; they were part of the fraud. Without their insanely lax lending standards, this would have never happened. Hey Countrywide, that’s what those old concepts known as “lending standards” were for! You should try them sometime.
Hard to do that when so many Country Wide employees live in India.
posted “Hard to do that when so many Country Wide employees live in India.”
I am sure they will fire the 5,000 in Simi Valley before they can the ones in India.
Since Countrywide employees in India can’t do a drive-by, do they just “Zillow?” -
“Easy financing on the part of lenders also contributed to the wave of home construction, Fred Crowley, a University of Colorado at Colorado Springs economist said. ‘It wasn’t that we overbuilt,’ he said. ‘We overfinanced.’”
It was that overfinancing led to overbuilding. The Springs is awash in a sea of McMansions, worse than SD (which is very bad).
Fred is a genius.
He is so right, the building never would have occured without the crazy financing. And the f***ing MSM telling people that housing does nothing but go up. They definately had a part in it as well.
There is a billboard still up in PB County for a morgage, 999/mo for 400K financed. That sure seems to make owning cheaper then renting; until it adjusts anyway.
Only the monthly payment matters if you have a very high personal discount rate. Of course, that tends to select the type of buyer with a high subjective discount rate into the loan officer’s customer queue — at least those high-discount-rate types who are not in jail.
mygatt is a good friend of mine and for him to make those accusations publicly means that things are much worse than even we think it is. it is beyond me that the wholesale investors could be calling us weekly with suicide/toxic mortgages while they are effecting 20,000 foreclosures in this market. there is a serious disconnect going on here. imho.
I hear ya, bro. We had one of our AE’s from a sub-primer come by yesterday announcing their new OpARM, as toxic as ever. It seems to me they’re going to try to push as much of this paper as they can and sell it off before someone turns the spigot off.
Ditto here in FL, only my AE was selling the stated 100% 620 fico purchase loans. How in the hell would any sane paper buyer want to finance someone with marginal good credit, no money down, without any proof they can possibly repay? These subprime lenders have to be thinking if they only keep cranking out the loans it will be enough to cover any losses. These companies are like the rogue futures trader in Singapore who kept making these huge purchases only to go more in the whole. Eventually he singlehandedly took down a company, Barings, that had been around for hundreds of years. I can’t see how these subprimes can be in very good shape 3 years from now.
Does the fraud going on in supposedly non-bubble places like Indianapolis suprise you? Not me. And for about the 100th time, I’ll predict that fraud will be as bad or worse in Texas than any bubble area.
To Mr. Peach (VP at the NY FED) who slammed me in an email and claimed this boom was built on FUNdamentals I hope you are reading this. This boom was built on fraud, mass speculation and fueled by cheap&easy credit!
I have a degree in Economics but work in the Computer Industry now, and I’m truely disapointed by what Economists that make a living with their trend anylysis are saying.
Although, in their defense the numbers being used to measure change are getting harder and harder to trust.
crispy&cole,
I totally agree. Without a willing accomplice somewhere “on the inside” much of the boom simply would not have been possible. Oh, there was a time when one could argue that the home price appreciation was driven to some degree by FUNdamentals but clearly by 2003 prices and sanity took seperate trails.
It’s fraud.
How frothy of you.
“cheap and easy credit”……that’s a fundamental isn’t it? Didn’t low interest rates kick off this boom?
LOL. Are you serious? By real FUNdamentals I mean - job growth, wage increases, etc.. When an asset class get away from the FUNdamentals, as this one has, cleary the asset must come down or the drivers (wages,etc…) must go up.
Maybe just don’t feed the troll, y’know? It’s like reasoning with a tree stump.
Mr. Peach is reading this, but he will deny later that he had any knowlege about the extent of the loan fraud early on. He will say that he found out sometime after 1Q 2007, which is exactly what all of the bigshots at CW and WO and WCI are going to say, and will be consistent will all of the reporting by the MSM.
flatffplan, I am looking at a 6-plex in Houston that is 70k/2 bedroom 1000 sq ft unit with $600/mo rent. Neighborhood used to be a rough one, probably in an area that floods too. Haven’t seen anything that will really cash flow in years. Multiple here used to be 70-80 (2003), even 100 never worked with 4% tax + insurance costs.
No trolls today? Yesterday was fun. C’mon guys, we know you’re out there. We need some troll bait. Someone tee it up for ‘em.
You seem awfully sanguine about what is happening for someone who’s handle indicates he is a mortgage broker. How is it you can laugh into the teeth of the coming storm when its also your bread and butter?
Sorry, not really a trollish comment.
Josh
He has been here for some time and is well prepared for the coming disaster. In fact, IMO, with is level of honesty from his posts I assume he will even thrive!
Yeah, no worries about nnv.
Not only is he not worried but he said if any bubble bloggers make it to Reno, he said he’d buy the beer!
You might want to switch to decaf after the first 2 or 3 cups NNV, this thing is going to take a while to play itself out.
And don’t get me started on the fundamentals that make Maui invulnerable to a downturn…the beautiful women are enough of a reason to support prices there.
Sorry for pretending to be a troll. I get tired of being so bearish all the time. “Hopefully” we will some day once again have a real estate market where this is no longer warranted.
Did you play the part of “azrituas”?
No… maybe he was for real? After my own foray into trolling, I haven’t a clue.
I just had a thought. Maybe we could ask Ben to send some special requests by e-mail to the likes of BeaConst, LV_Landlord and friends to let them know how much they are missed around here. The housing shortage has morphed into a troll shortage! LOL
“troll shortage” LOL!
Just like cops, they’re never around when you need one!
posted “Just like cops, they’re never around when you need one!
True story. A friend that lives in Palmdale he call the cops no responce. He sent his son to the corner donut shop to get one. Thier were 4.
They aren’t making more trolls anymore, you know. We’re ‘troll-locked’.
“Mygatt suspects the buyer will pocket the $250,000 and let the house go into foreclosure. But before that happens, the home will be listed as a $1.1 million sale, helping to skew the Metrolist numbers higher, he said. He said these kinds of deals, often with lower-priced homes, are becoming increasingly common. ‘This could not work without appraisal fraud,’ Mygatt said.”
Can someone explain how this works?
“Mygatt said he thinks about 25 percent of the near record 31,450 unsold homes on the market will ’statistically never sell’ because their mortgages are higher than their potential sale value.”
And what does this mean? Thanks.
I posted a story on here from the Dallas Morning Snooze a few weeks ago about a “Nigerian bidnessman” who was doing this at a high end townhouse complex in Frisco, Tx. Basically, they find a sucker with good credit to “buy” the place for more than it’s worth, they get a phony appraisal, the seller kicks back the overage to the “buyer” (crook) who then runs off and never makes a payment. Property goes to foreclosure.
Txchick,
You forgot to mention that the seller( co-conspirator), number hitter( co- conspirator), will be the ones going to jail and not the buyer (conspirator). He flew back to Nigeria sipping champagne and laughing is arse off.
That problem IMHO is more common than we are aware of. Prime example is that Casey shmuck that amassed 2 million in debt, all on liar loans, cashing out at every closing.
These guys are still advertising on Craigslist for people with good credit to be “investors.”
these ads are still up today on the denver craigslist, but then again, so are the infomercials on making “a million on real estate with no money, no credit, no brains”. just how stupid is the average dolt that buys into this crap?
Around Tucson, there are quite a few hand-lettered signs advertising a real estate investor who’s seeking apprentices. Looks like this investor can’t even afford professionally printed signs. Not good.
I always wondered what those “real estate apprentice” signs were. I was pretty sure it was a scam, but wow, that’s flat out criminal. I’m sure they have no shortage of dumb schmuck “apprentices”, thinking they’ll get rich by calling the number on a sign post.
Same here in Seattle. I was leaving the Bellevue Home Depot the other night and there was a crudely hand-drawn “Real Estate Investor Apprentice Wanted: $20k per month” on the side of the street opposing the exit. I wasn’t sure if the apprentice was going to MAKE $20k per month or had to PAY $20k per month.
Just saw my first one of those here, on a busy exurbian street corner. “Real estate investor seeks apprentice, $8-20K month.”
I have a friend who owns a print business in Fort Myers, FL and he will no longer give credit to realtors/brokers.
He is tired of chasing them down to get paid and will only deal with them on a cash basis. These people are dirtbags and I hope they all get crushed. Sorry, but I have wanted to buy a home the last few years but knew this all one big ponzi scheme. Looks like I’ll buy something in 2009 for a fraction of the cost!!
I just saw one of those here in the Reno/Sparks, NV area. Good grief!
Yep, saw one of those signs at the HD here in Mobile last week. Looks like a nationwide scam.
Also in “THE” OC.
…and the sell goes in the comps. Seems like “painting the tape”, perhaps the SEC can get a piece of them as well.
You wonder if you can get an advantage by pushing the comps *down*.
It’s risky, but if you find a nice area of well built established homes that you feel may do OK in 10-15 years…
1. Buy a few of them
2. Sell them (to someone who really works for you) for a very low price. Maybe 50% or less of what you paid just months before. Make it low enough that if it was a true sale at that price, you’d easily be cash-flow positive by renting, and then some.
3. Other sellers will panic and be “happy” to sell theirs for 40% off.
4. Buy and hold these! (While renting them out in the mean time).
It’s similar to the practice of “blockbusting” that worked in NY, which depended on neighbor’s racist fears to work.
This is exactly what happened to a house on my block. Judging from the names of the parties of record, we were speculating that it may have been the Russian mob.
‘Low interest rates created a situation where the market borrowed buyers from the future, and people who probably would have been buying today or tomorrow actually bought a house yesterday and the day before,’
Too bad that cheap money wasn’t used for something beneficial to society, like improving highways, building new hospitals, etc.
bairen,
So true. Realtors have totally “tapped out” their pipeline of prospective clients! If I went to ALL of my clients in the same month and “peddled” my a$$ off I would have a really great month! (But what would I do for next month, year etc.) The NAR didn’t give a rip! With over 60 bil. in commissions paid out in 2005 they’ve built a considerable war chest to fight the discounters. Given Lereah’s candor of late perhaps that was the design all along.
I can’t help but visualize the analogy here of the boy with his finger in the dike, desperatley trying to hold back the huge wave(of massive fraud). Liar lonas IMHO were well over 50% of the purchases in 2004 and 2005. Looking back on this a few years from now, we will wonder how such rampant fraud was allowed. lending standards will revert to the “old” days of real loans, real income, and real buyers. This, of course, will only occur after an enormous government bailout of the lending and banking industry, and the taxpayers wil once again be responsible for paying for the massive losses.
Can you imagine a world where Americans take credit and risk seriously? I can’t. But it is a nice thought.
posted “Can you imagine a world where Americans take credit and risk seriously? I can’t. But it is a nice thought.”
We did all crazy lending, while waging an unpaid for war too! My my we do have a talent….I sure am glad we have a “consetive government” Just think of the mess we would be in if the “liberials” were in power.
That old horn dog Clinton nearly had the buget balanced his last year of being “Jack the Lad”…. Perhaps history will be kind to him, at least he liked mature women.
One can dream.
Yup, and don’t think of buying before then. When you’r not bidding against morons using OPM obtained with suicide loans, then prices will be real.
Very good point, and also a large part of the problem. I like tha auction analogy, when you at an auction with people who never intend to pay for the items they bid on, the prices, natrually, get to insane levels.
You just have to wonder who is on the hook to pay all these “bids” when the bank comes knocking.
We have been bidding against morons who never intended to pay in the first place; that’s what pushed housing so high as an asset class.
Interesting to think that true “low-ballers” have the balls and credit to make a true offer are still stymied by non-depository predatory lenders’ clients.
There was an article in the LA Times about the amount mortage fraud reported. Apparently it ranks 6 in priorites. They are turning away opportunities to investigate. They don’t have the sources.
posted “There was an article in the LA Times about the amount mortage fraud reported. Apparently it ranks 6 in priorites. They are turning away opportunities to investigate. They don’t have the sources. ”
Funny how things work out, they are all fighting the war on terror. Of course big lenders are taking everything that is not nailed down.
Just like the “count room” in the movie Casino ….Joe Peshie says “God forbid, they should work and forget to steal”
Hey, does anyone remember that pair of clowns in Florida who were in that article a few weeks ago? They had to sell their shitbox to buy a newer bigger shitbox because 2800 square feet wasn’t big enough? The one I wanted to belt with my 20 pound trout?
I wonder if they sold the first place. If I remember correctly, the drop dead date was Oct. 7 or thereabouts.
Wow, thats quite a memory. Unfortunately all I remember about that thread, was the 20 lb trout. (Sort of circular I know)
The schadenfreude is strong with this one, Luke.
According to the Orange County Property Appraiser’s website (http://www.ocpafl.org), the house is still owned by said clowns. Here’s the address for future reference:
3519 Stonefield Dr, Orlando, FL 32826
Zillow doesn’t list a recent sale. And the house is still listed on the MLS:
http://tinyurl.com/gp3g3
According to the CNN article (http://tinyurl.com/joj6r), they’re due to close on the new house on October 24. Or they’ll learn a $28,000 lesson.
Has anyone read Moody’s peak to bottom prediction of the 100 largest markets?
They only see the tip of the iceberg!
That piece is hogwash. According to this “report”, Ft. Lauderdale is going to bottom next year while Palm Beach hs already bottomed, and Miami not until 2008?
Picture this- you live in SOUTH Palm Beach county or North Dade.. Are you bottoming now? Next year? Or 2008? Wow they sure covered their ass well enough- just pick a year from 2006 until 2008. And don’t forget the “massive” 5 % correction- we have already seen that-officialy. Unofficially, it’s more like 20%. Look at any HB ad- they are cutting 20 to 30 % off list price.
Pure fluff piece meant to push a few more lemmings off the cliff.
I would want to have bought into a new development to live in in 2004-2005. you probably don’t have many neighbors, because they’re all investors. the bulider is slashing prices like crazy and that will just cause the flippers to all sell later. it’s like nasdaq index of the housing world. can you imagine being underwater 50k almost overnight?
A few empty or lightly-used residences may be nice but beware of wishing for few neighbors. Not a good long-term situation for a resident.
These people are clueless. I live in West Palm Beach. Moody’s believess we will see 5.7% declines and the bottom will be Q32006. Not hardly you jackasses. Our median is down 6% YOY already and prices are realistically off 15-20% (from the peak) for those homes that do sell. We also have a 24 month supply of homes that needs to be worked off. A 30% decline (or more) is more likely and the bottom will be closer to 3Q2009. Do this people even bother to do any real research or do they make shit up? Unreal.
Moody’s bought out Economy.com in the past year. The report was generated by the Economy.com team. I have a subcription for their services (not for the housing report though), and can tell you that they have been bearish on housing for a while.
I belive the report is conservative regarding price declines, but they were brave enough to print it. In the forecasting business, you want to lead but not put stick your head to far out. If you are wrong but close to the industry forecast, then the whole industry got it wrong. If you are wrong and against the industry forecast, then you have to look for a new job.
Although I have been a housing bear for a long time, I finally stated that the housing bubble has bust a few weeks for our company forecast a few weeks ago. There will be no impact through the first half of next year for our high tech business because the consumer is still clueless, but this is going to be the last good holiday selling season for a while.
I was reading a WSJ article yesterday that cited Economy.com. Here is what Economy.com considers “reliable” forcasting data:
Economy.com based its price forecasts on a broad range of factors including demographic trends, job markets, mortgage rates, lending standards, construction costs and limits on land development. Mr. Zandi says the economic model doesn’t take into account the supply of previously occupied homes available for sale because there aren’t enough reliable data on that nationwide.
So all those homes that are for sale in the MLS and FSBO are not part of their forcasting equation.
Yeah, their numbers are really accurate.
Moody’s and S&P warned us about the corporate frauds in 2001 only after the stocks were off 80%. They were worse prior to the S&L crisis in the early 1990’s.
I can’t believe some of that finding, There is no place in NY city that is averaging 375K. You can’t even look for a 2 bedroom attached house (a 50 yr old house) with no garage for that price. Some sellers are still out of touch with reality here in the 5 borough. A decent house is asking over 650K - 800K which is way too high. I’m waiting for a 20-25% drop.
we had an AE come by yesterday as well,loans as bad as ever 95% with a 500 fico score,stated income,he told a story about a broker who did such a bad job cutting and pasting bank statements,that he looked at all of this guy’s business closely…the point he made was the guy had no computer skills…..there was no condemnation of the fraud,just the lack of skill.i do not understand this attitude,and never will…
Okay, guys. Not all of us are in the Mortgage industry. What is an AE?
Account Executive?
What is a GF?
Either “greater fool” or “girlfriend” depending on the context of the message. Although my wife would argue they would be synonymous in my case.
“‘If the deal doesn’t go through, nobody gets paid,’
——————————————————————————
This will become the epitaph for the coming tidal wave of fraud.
“Countrywide is a victim in this case,” the company said. “We have a zero-tolerance policy against fraud, and dedicate considerable resources toward identifying and investigating possible incidents through our systems, technology and fraud investigation unit.”
As a former underwriter for Countrywide Wholesale I have two things to say,
1. It doesn’t suprise me
2. There’s a whole lot more where that came from
I eventually left after watching broker shenanigans every day that got nothing but a “don’t do that again”. Sales volume was far more important than loan quality.
“Sales volume was far more important than loan quality. “
I would not doubt this, sales volume brings in money now, loan quality only matters latter and the whole system is based on what today’s stock price is and what this quarters dividend will be and all that is based on the quarterly report which does not count the bad loans since they have not yet gone bad.
i´m not sure if this was postet before.
but this is the best i have ever seen.
a comiplation from the tapes with lereah, shiller bernanke, etc
over 70 minutes of superb bubblehistoy video´s alle the famous quotes “not a bubble, a baloon” call to arms at lows etc.
spread this one around. this is a must see!!!!!!!!
http://www.paperdinero.com/BNN.aspx?id=20
Great!
“‘We have been seeing many more homes on the market, and average prices (in most months) are going up, which does not make any economic sense,’ said independent broker Jerry McGuire.”
Followed up by: “Show me the money!”
Averages, medians? No one but futures traders and hedgers buy these. You buy a house. Show me a home worth more now than late 2005. I don’t care if the average or median goes up — this probably only reflect the tighter credit quality. You are definitely getting more for your money now. No way to say otherwise.
guit fretting everythings cool
I saw it on tv http://dnn.tv/
the NAHB says no big deal…………….
I just carefully read the entire NYTimes article. The “fraud” was the fact that the appraisals were overpriced:
The Countrywide suit asserts that the company was defrauded of the difference between the true value of the homes and the inflated prices at which the loans were taken out.
I don’t feel too sorry for the individual investors. They simply wanted to get rich quick. Two minutes on the internet would reveal the prior sales price, the crime statistics for that neighboorhood, etc.
The fact that the individuals taking out the mortgages were “poor” shouldn’t make us feel sorry for them. There’s a reason they’re poor! They have a life history of making bad financial decisions. If they didn’t do stupid things like this, they wouldn’t be POOR!
Having lived around the poor, I heartily agree. Their endless acts of stupidity are downright aggravating.
And, if you’re in a reading mood, take an evening to go through Theodore Dalrymple’s book, Life at the Bottom. I guarantee that you’ll be very aggravated by the time you finish it.
There’s even such a thing as Dalrymple’s Maxim:
“Misery increases to meet the means available for its alleviation.”
BTW, Dalrymple is an English physician working in the UK National Healths chronicling/lamenting the the complete breakdown of the lower-middle class society in Manchester due to the welfare state.
I don’t mean to imply I have no sympathy for people. And I think that we have an obligation to make sure that the people who lack the mental capacity to take care of themselves get basic essentials. And of course, it would be nice if every child had a fighting chance….
BUT…having been involved with some charitable organizations, I got totaly disgusted when meeting people who, if they spent as much time learning a very simple trade, like being a sales clerk or a janitor, as they did learning how to maximize their returns from Social Security Disability, AFDC, Welfare, Section 8, etc, they’d be much better off! (You can get social security disability for “anxiety” or “depression”, for example.) And all of these people had No Idea what to do with money, other than to spend it as fast as possible on crap.
posted “The Countrywide suit asserts that the company was defrauded of the difference between the true value of the homes and the inflated prices at which the loans were taken out.”
Law 101 blame the victim.
“The “fraud” was the fact that the appraisals were overpriced:”
I agree, this is what the bubble was all about and what this blog has been trying to warn people about since its inception. Every single house, condo and townhome in Tampa sold since 2003 fits this category. So what? Nothing new to report.
Addendum: This is why most of the people on this blog rent. Duh. These were the same type of people who would constantly ask, so why don’t YOU buy Jannifl? I guess they are believers now.
O.K. one more comment, just this week someone asked me why I don’t buy now. I said, “Because I don’t want to pay for someone elses car that they inflated their house appraisal to buy or their retirement or anything else. If I buy a $100,000 house I want to pay $100,000, not $130,000 which essentially puts the car they are driving on my mortgage for 30 years.
Bloomberg just had a guy from Moodys on to recap his take on the loss of jobs from the housing downturn.
1). Peak was March 06.
2). 75k jobs lost so far in the industry
3). will lose up to 500k jobs
4). losses will be mitigated by strong economy outside of housing
5). Banks are cashed up so that industry will not be impacted as badly as early 90’s
6). economy will not be dramatically impacted
Lots of koolaid being consumed over at moodys. Hope they are serving cupcakes along with that beverage.
“On May 18, 2005, a small Indiana company bought 184 duplex homes in a down-and-out neighborhood in northeast Indianapolis for an average price of $50,000 each. The company, Land Economics, began selling the properties for $120,000 apiece to church secretaries, truckers, retirees and factory workers, sometimes as many as three a day to a single individual. As recently as September 2004, homes in this neighborhood sold in a range of $20,000 to $65,000.”
What did they do to these homes? $120K must be able to buy you at least a half-way decent home in Indy. I mean, even in Philadelphia, where I am you can live in a house that is only $120K and not have to dodge bullets. I am confused.
I’m guessing neither Land Economics nor the “buyers” (i.e. dupes)didn’t do squat with the homes (although it’s hard to tell, as the reporter appears to incapable of writing a proper news story); Land Economics probably pocketed the diff between their purchase price & the “sale” price, and left the buyers holding the bag on mortgages they were probably not even aware that they signed.
I appear to be unable to write a proper comment — meant to say “did squat” and “to be incapable”.
BTW, this has been done before — next, I expect we’ll see the rebirth of the old “airline seat” ponzi scheme. Remember that one?
Makes complete sense to me. By buying up a whole neighborhood they were able to eliminate the sociopathic elements. As people became owners rather than renters and squatters, the value of the neighborhood naturally appreciated dramatically. In the low end, it ain’t so much the location but rather the quality of neighbors that matters the most.
Every time I read an article like this, I think - if it’s bad in Indy, wait until we hear about what’s been happening in Miami. Miami is a place where 1,000’s of people claim hurricane damage from hurricanes that don’t even go there (and are paid by FEMA - duh), a place where every penny designated to build public housing was stolen, where politicians are re-elected while under federal indictment. The folks in Indy are rank amateurs compared to Miami Dade.