Turning One Dollar Into Two, Sight Unseen
The New York Times reports on flippers buying sight unseen. “For the last few years, real estate transactions over the Internet, where buyers need never set eyes on the property they purchase, have become increasingly common. But now, with plenty of buyers eager to get in on the real estate boom, such online sites have become perfect places for unscrupulous sellers.”
“Buffalo has been particularly hard hit by online flipping, as the city’s persistent population decline and high foreclosure rates have created a glut of some 20,000 vacant houses. Said Tracy Krug, a building inspector in Buffalo, ‘They paint a nice rosy picture: ‘on a bus line, near a nice market.’ They don’t tell you you’re going to be across the street from a crack house.’”
“Greg Tanner, who says he has a knack for ‘turning one dollar into two dollars,’ is now more than $30,000 in debt. Three years ago, Mr. Tanner, a pawnbroker in Salida, Colo., hoping to make money in real estate, went to eBay and found low-price houses for sale in Buffalo. One ad, for a house at 173 Paderewski Drive on the city’s East Side, read: ‘Attractive, warm, two-story home has great potential.’ Forty years ago, that might have been true.”
“Although Mr. Tanner had never set foot in Buffalo, he called the seller, a real estate investor named Scott Burton, who had paid $1,000 for the house a few months earlier. Mr. Tanner and his business partner paid Mr. Burton $3,000 for the house on Paderewski Drive, and $10,000 for two other houses in the same area, on Lombard Street. They paid with a credit card, using PayPal.”
“Two of the houses were considerably run-down, Mr. Tanner said, but it was the 130-year-old two-story house at 173 Paderewski that was to become his albatross. Over the next few months, he paid nearly $7,000 to a Buffalo contractor, recommended by Mr. Burton, who told him that all that was needed were a few thousand dollars in repairs. After a while, the contractor reported to him that the work had been completed, Mr. Tanner said, and the house was ready to be rented.”
“Counting on a profit, several months after buying the Paderewski Drive house Mr. Tanner advertised it for sale on eBay. He quickly found a buyer in Britain: Claire Fennelly. Ms. Fennelly paid $14,900 to Mr. Tanner and his business partner, and $2,500 more to the same contractor for further repairs.”
“Then Ms. Fennelly decided to do what Mr. Tanner had not: she and her husband got on a plane and flew to Buffalo in November 2003. When they took a cab to Paderewski Drive and arrived at the house, the cab driver refused to let them out. The neighborhood was just too dangerous, he said. When she saw the house, Ms. Fennelly said, it had missing windows, holes in the roof and the siding was gone. ‘You’ve never seen anything like it,’ she said. ‘We sat there in the cab thinking, ‘What have we done.’”
“Ms. Fennelly called Mr. Tanner immediately. He said hers was the first true description of the house he had heard. He promised to pay her back and called the county clerk’s office to make sure that the title would not be transferred to her. A few months later, Mr. Tanner received a Housing Court summons for a lengthy list of code violations, so he drove the 1,600 miles from Colorado to Buffalo. He said he received little sympathy from the Housing Court judge. Mr. Tanner called Mr. Burton to demand his money back, but could reach only Mr. Burton’s business partner, who, Mr. Tanner said, hung up on him.”
“Representatives of eBay say the company has few legal obligations to buyers of real estate on the site. ‘The people responsible for house flipping,’ an eBay spokesman, Hani Durzy, said, ‘are the people selling these houses and the people buying them sight unseen..The buyers are not doing the proper due diligence when buying a property.’”
“The house at 173 Paderewski, which was claimed by the city for back taxes Mr. Tanner had not paid, was deemed a safety hazard and razed several weeks ago. The cost of the demolition, which Buffalo expects Mr. Tanner to pay, is $9,000. Mr. Tanner’s two houses on Lombard Street were also taken by the city. They, too, are in line for demolition. Mr. Tanner, whose business partner has declared bankruptcy, said he lay in bed at night, wondering where he went wrong.”
Thanks to the reader who sent this in. I remember doing a post on some article in the spring of 2005 where people were buying much more expensive property than this over the internet; whole RV parks in Texas, streches of desert outside Vegas, etc.
I wonder how much homes would drop in price if people had to put 20% down? Or an extreme example, what would houses be worth if we had to pay cash for them? All of this creative financing has been a major factor in extreme prices.
sounds like that article of people buying land out in nowhere, texas. or those people buying land that you couldn’t get to and could not build on, ever.
I submit that we will get at least a partial answer to your first question within the next six years or so. The reason that we do not pay cash for homes is that it the traditional mortgage financing system allows young people to live in a much nicer home at an early age than if they had to pay cash, by allowing them to accumulate the payment through time. The situation is actually win-win between the buyer and the bank — the buyer gets to live their early adult years in much more comfortable surroundings than a cramped apartment, and the bank gets to collect interest.
Under the complete abandonment of loan underwriting standards which we have seen take place over the past six or so years, the lending system which funded your father’s post-WWII home purchase may have incurred irreparable damage…
Lender, Please give me a loan to buy my million dollar dream home, cause you know I deserve it. Oh by the way, I’m broke and have shotty credit. Ok no problem. Heres what were gonna do for you partner:
We will loan you that million bucks with no money down. Guess what, well even let you make no payments for the first 5 years. Well just add that interest to the loan cause you know what, you look pretty honest. Oh but wait, since you look like a young healthy dude, were gonna let pay on this puppy for 60 years. Oh thank you mr lender your my hero. Isn’t great that real estate only goes up mr lender.
Hey, We shoud to a David Letterman’s top ten list…How I know I did business with a mortgage loan predator.
The folks who bought homes without an inspection contingency are only slightly less guilty than this guy of not doing their due diligence.
To fully understand this, you have to let your mind travel back to late 2003. The mania was getting steam and people were led to believe alot of craziness about real estate. He buys a house for three thousand, puts seven thousand in it and flips it to a british landlord for almost fifteen! ‘What were we thinking’ indeed.
Not to mention the Brits fly all the way across the Atlantic to inspect a $15000 property!
The buyers are at fault. They did not due their homework and thus they got screwed over. Their own fault and hope they learned something out of it.
The buyers are partially at fault, but in fairness, they are generally acting on the assumption that the lending system is operating on the same footing that it did, say, pre-Y2K. Because loan underwriting standards have subsequently gone the way of the buggy whip, we are in a new era where a PhD in economics comes in handy
a PhD? to buy a house?
not in this case. they bought the Buffalo property with Visa cards, says the article!
Go ahead and “assume” away. But, as we all know, it makes an ass out of u and me. Heard that from a junior high teacher.
I wonder if they left him negative feedback?
Thanks for the laugh!
A great group of greater fools.
Does anyone know how I can contact either Greg or ms. fennelly? I recently came into possession of a vehicle and passenger bridge going from lower Manhattan to Brooklyn.
Bridge is very old but still useable. I’d be willing to transfer my ownership. Please contact stanley johnson for more info and where to send money
$3,000 / house ? and he still lost money in an up market?
somebody help me find the words.
>$3,000 / house ? and he still lost money in an up market?
he didn’t pay for a house, he paid a down payment on a future demolition.
But he still owns the lot, right? Hey, maybe in 50 years his grandkids (assuming the Darwin rule doesn’t apply) can sell it for a profit when the next Buffalo bubble hits.
I’m from Buffalo. It’s a dying city, with miles and miles of decrepit housing stock. It’s Detroit without the declining auto industry - the jobs left Buffalo long ago - crime, pollution, AIDS, bad weather, decaying infrastructure. Take a trip there sometime and you’ll see what these guys got themselves into pretty quick. The few houses in those neighborhoods that haven’t collapsed on themselves are crack houses and slum squatters - the cabbie was right not to warn them not to get out of the car.
Sadly, I blame the buyers even more than the sellers. Greed and incompetence are a deadly mix - if the lottery is a tax on people who don’t understand probabilities, then the cost of buying properties sight unseen is a tax on people who don’t understand fundementals of real estate investing.
More tales of abandoned rust belt/industrial revolution cities and their dirt cheap and decaying housing stock.
The US is chock full of lost cities and towns whose infrastructure is already in place but falling apart from neglect.
It’s true that “they are not making any more land”. But it’s equally true that there is PLENTY of developed then abandoned land that could be reclaimed.
The “scarcity” hype is a total figment of our imaginations. Those abandoned NE and midwest cities could house millions and millions of people.
It is funny how many people seem to not want to live in a house someone has lived in before - as though you were buying a car or clothing. The irony of course is that many older homes are made of far superior building materials than the vinyl siding and popsicle stick structures that seem to be in vogue these days.
the thing is, a house(s) that from the outside may look unlivable, if someone comes around who actually knows what they’re doing could come in and in a few months could be renting out to 2 families. if there actually WAS a true shortage, these areas would be gold mines. buy cheap, fix up and and rent, or live there. in a true shortage, these areas would quickly “gentrify.” at lot of these places in the rest belt used to be respectable areas where families live, economics just made them areas you wouldn’t want to live in.
I was playing around with zillow when I found wayne county in michigan. According to the zestimates values have fallen by 50% in the past 6 months. Houses go for 30-50K. Perhaps we’ll have a boomer retiree gentrification movement that will reclaim the old cities. Once their “investment” in phoenix tanks and takes their retirement fund with it that may be the only thing they can afford.
I think I heard somewhere that if the world was happy to live with the population density of NYC, the entire world could fit in the state of Texas.
But then we’d have to live in Texas.
Beats NY.
i live in new construction in DC. Moved from a 1960’s era building. OMG what a joke. The old building was solid. the new one is spit and cardboard
http://www.dcbubble.blogspot.com
I am looking through a copy of ‘fix and flip’ book. It is adamant about not renting, which may say more about those empty Phoenix houses.
‘One of the major advantages of the strategy is that you want to avoid income tax problems. When you hold rental real estate, it is very easy to recapture depreciation when you sell the property. Currently..you pay 25% in taxes.’
‘Can you say CPA? When you own rental real estate, you must keep extensive records. You will have reciepts..checking accounts to reconcile..How about the legal requirement in some areas of having a trust account for tenant security deposits? You will keep maintenance records..you may have employees with all the nightmares that entails.’
‘If you own real property, there is a high probablility you will be sued.’
‘No fire insurance, no liability insurance, no earthquake insurance. You may pay taxes..month in and month out. Do we really have to tell you our landlording horror stories?’
Yikes! They talked me out of being a landlord.
If you’re a flipper, that’s pretty good advice. Being a landlord is a lot of work, and if you’re going to do it right, you need enough units to get some economy of scale to cover your overhead.
They talked me out of ever playing musical chairs when real money is at stake…
This article discusses what I have come to refer to as the “money tree.” They are fantastic until the Fed suddenly sets the whole forest on fire…
“Mr. Tanner, whose business partner has declared bankruptcy, said he lay in bed at night, wondering where he went wrong.”
If he still doesn’t know, he’s hopeless.
It’s so very hard to imagine the absolute enormous stupidity out there in the world. How do these people even survive on a day to day basis. What companies would have idiots like this working for them? I’m totally baffled.
Companies like Enron and WorldCom.
Borrow from peter to pay paul is about the only thing I can think of
I’m not baffled at all. The next time you are serviced at a retail store, Micky D’s, or try to resolve an issue over the phone with a company ,you can see the frustration develop immediately when these people cannot resolve a simple problem. This has been the result of our wonderful EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM that continues to send graduates unprepaired for our business world. Sorry but I cannot feel sorry for the lack of common sense.
I used to believe that our brains were all more or less created equal and that people who applied themselves could learn. Then I took a job working with learning disabled students and found that is simply not the case. There are people in this world who have low intelligence and cannot be expected to understand or progress the way others of higher intelligence do. And there are those who are intelligent enough, but who have a glitch in their brain’s wiring which does not allow them to process information the same way most people do. In addition, there are people who are simply not good with money or math but may have genius level abilities in other areas.
I guess the most we can hope for these people is that they can come to recognize their own limits and find others who will help guide them away from trouble. They used to have some protection in the form of lending standards and laws against usury, but now it is open season on them.
I have more respect for armed robbers than I do for some of the slime bucket mortgage lenders who have profited from the bubble.
add to that a society that does everything it can to keep people as stupid as possible (through the news media, TV shows that target braindead viewers etc.) and you have a recipe for disaster.
Buying sight unseen reminds me of a situation in Carbon County, Wyoming. Wyoming law allows land to be subdivided into 35 acre tracts with no government approval required. Some of the large ranches are being divided up and sold sight unseen over the internet. The problem is that most of the tracts are located in the desert with no legal access and no possibility of drilling for water. Some could never even support human life and will always belong to the rattlesnakes. I remember seeing one of those tracts described on Craigslist as having endless vistas and views.
someone’s gotta own it!
You mean ’someones gotta owe it
Oh the messy stories that are going to come out of the Real Estate Boom Meltdown
I bought a fixer house in a small midwest town (pop. 300) a few years ago for $2000. I had planned to move it onto property I own and fix it up. I changed my mind and put it on ebay last July with several photos and an honest description of it. I got several bids and it finally sold to a guy from Texas for $6000. He didn’t look at the house until after we closed the deal at the lawyer’s office.
Yes they’re out there, all over.
That is amazing. It just shows how bad this has gotten.
not amazing to me considering the price. In my area, a small garage (for a car) in decent condition costs already $ 60.000.
If you are used to such prices $ 6000 is pocket change.
These idiots would buy the Brooklyn Bridge!!!
For $10k more, Comes with Guranteed legal rights of driving over it!
“Buying sight unseen reminds me of a situation in Carbon County, Wyoming. Wyoming law allows land to be subdivided into 35 acre tracts with no government approval required. Some of the large ranches are being divided up and sold sight unseen over the internet.”
I read an article about this happening in the Big Bend area of Texas. I drove through there last year, to the National Park. I had not realized it but that is one of the more remote areas of the U.S. The county recorder was being kept busy registering the deeds, they were incredulous. People buying over the internet. Same with rentals in Boise. People were rentals buying sight unseen and then handing the property over to a local property manager. How many of these buyers will still own the properties 2-5 years from now, and more important, how much will they lose?
Years ago, my late mother in law bought land from door to door salesman. One is now a lava field (the valcano went), another is near the proposed nuclear dump, and the third was in a “development” near Laughlin Nevada. I viewed the Laughlin lot and there were actually houses being built in the development. Finally disposed of the lot by giving it away to a charity. Attempts to sell it were fruitless.
Ben,
This has to be the FUNNIEST story yet.
The current real estate market reminds me of the old story of the man that stops to get gas and a guy comes up to him and says, ” Hey buddy. I got this here whole truck full of cans of tuna. I am down on my luck and I will sell you the whole truck full of tuna for just $500.”
So the guy jumps on it. He gives the guy $500. He doesn’t even get into the truck to drive it home when another fellow that overheard the conversation says, ” Hey Sir, I will buy that truck full of tuna from you. How much do you want?”
Well the man replies,” How about $1000? It’s still a great deal, I mean a whole truck full of cans of tun a fish,right?”
The second man does agree, it’s still a great deal. So he gives the first man the $1000 and buys the tuna.
So this man drives the truck home and parks in in his driveway. Well, his next door neighboor Sam sees this big truck next door and comes over to see what’s going on. They start talking and he eventually asks he he too can buy the truck full of tuna fish.
“Gee, I don’t know Sam,” Said his neighboor. Sam doesn’t take no for answer and after offering 2,3,4 thousand he finally buys the truck load of tunafish for only $10,000!
Sam is delighted. He has an entire truck load of tuna fish. He is going to make a fortune selling this to the grocery chain. There must be 50,000 cans of tuna! And even if he gets $1 a can… that’s $50,000!!!
Sam gets a little hungry later that night… Hey??!!! How about I just go and have a tuna sandwich? How much can one can make a difference in my profit..haha.
So Sam goes to the truck and opens up the back door and pulls out a box of cans. He brings the box into his house and takes out a can. He opens up a can and it give off the foulest, most rancid odor you ever smelled. He nearly passes out. All the tuna must be bad!
Sam, trying not to let his anger overcome him, goes next door and starts pounding on his neighboor’s door. His neighboor opens the door to Sam yelling, ” WHAT THE HELL KIND OF TUNA DID YOU SELL ME? IT’S ALL ROTTEN!!!”"
To which his neighboor quietly replies,”Sam , you idiot. That tuna is for SELLING, not for EATING.” And he closes the door.
Nice story! This really gets to the point which will amaze nearly everyone when this mania is viewed through the lense of history: What led these idiots to think that houses were a good asset to invest in, given how expensive they are to carry and maintain?
I think you are missing a BIG difference with the real estate market.
Sam is buying the tuna with his own money. People who are buying ‘normal’ real estate for 5 or 10x the price of some years ago are buying with free money from the bank. So maybe the story is a good analogy for the flippers who buy run-down crack houses for $ 1000,-, but certainly not representative of the normal real estate market
Be careful with the Ebay listings. I live in Pittsburgh, where homes are mostly cheap (some for good reason, others just cause of low cost of living, bankrupt city, 2nd oldest pop in US…) Anyway, I see homes listed in REALLY rundown areas (towns where recovery from 1970s-82 recessions never took place). I would imagine Buffalo to be similar in some regards. The blue-collar people from the rust belt w/o education, who could get out, did. The others still wander about aimlessly. There are towns up and down the rivers that are decimated from the last time we had a depression (Volcker, who did what HAD to be done…I consider the early 80s recession pretty darn severe ). NOT counted in the unemoyment numbers. I know dozens of people who are on “disability.” When the sh hits the fan, it will be a mess.
Yes, I just did a quick check of the ebay listings in Pittsburgh. Not much listed, but what’s there right now are pretty much in the ghettos- Homewood, Hazleton, and Wilkinsburg. Not that they are totaly unsafe places to live- well except for Homewood. The flipper from LA whose trying to unload the house in Hazelton w/a starting bit of 15,000 (it’s listed for 50,000 on their website) must be out of their mind. And their advertisement border’s on fraudulent (”owner is only responsible for collecting rent”) - yeah, and paying taxes and keeping the place livible. This was most likely a foreclosure and looks like it hasn’t been lived in for a long time (probably since they closed the coke works down in the mid 90’s- or whenever that was). But there’s always the greater fool out there.
The Pittsburgh market astounds me. If you know what to look for there are great deals around. There are wonderful, quaint older homes available in the leafy areas between the parks and universities for under $100k. These are places I know well and yearned for while I was getting my degree. Not far away the home my grandmother is proud to have owned outright for some time is worth a bit over $30k. Comparing that to my nearly $700k cali-silly-valley-mini-tract unit boggles the mind.
Zillow shows some bubbling going on. There is one corner lot showplace mansion that was for sale priced at nearly a million and Zillow says it is worth half that. Even around Pittsburgh there is bubbling going on? Or maybe people just wish for it.
As a follow up, I did a story on my blog about a month ago on all of these ‘investors” that bought condos here in South Florida looking to get rich. The sad part is that most of them are retirees that can’t afford them in the first place. One woman bought her condo SIGHT UNSEEN on the recommendation of the realtor. Many of them planned on renting them out or not occupying them for years!
http://southfloridarealestatebubble.blogspot.com
This is one of the signs, the equivalent of the first seal being broken. In the article I sent Ben last week I reviewed the similarities of the South Sea (Florida) bust of 1926-27. People there were buying “binders” on properties, sight unseen. This lead to wild exaggerations in the property descriptions like “near shore” when the property was 75 miles inland. In fact, some of the less scrupulous sellers at that time advertised the proximity of their properties to towns which didn’t yet exist - and after the bust, never did. Gailbraith says that when all the dust settled, oftentimes the original sellers got their property back at a fraction of the sale price, usually with some kind of improvements to boot. Most of the ridiculousness wasn’t discovered until much too late, of course.
Go to Realtor.com and read what’s for sale in Buffalo. For less than $20000. Not a type. That’s a twenty and three more zeros. That is a city flat on it’s back.
My sister says the same thing about Cleveland (her husband got a summer internship there).
I get depressed looking at the pictures.
Hmmm, maybe it WAS the Olympics that kept borrowers away…
This from a realtor covering Mission Viejo (south “The OC”), California:
“From the speed of hockey to the grace of figure skating to the oddity that is curling, late nights spent watching the Winter Olympics in Turin seem to be turning the focus of many potential buyers from real estate to the Winter Games, or so it would seem.”
“There are 9,038 homes currently on the market, levels not seen since November, 2004″
“So, where do we go from here? Spring officially begins March 20th and we can expect our market to be humming on all cylinders by that time.”
http://tinyurl.com/qtq5z
It’s now March 11th; nine more days until prime house selling season. Judgment day (the day of no more excuses) is nigh.
Oops, borrowers = buyers…dang!
nobody is going to buy in March, what with March Madness and all. April is tough, pro hockey and basketball teams are going to be vying for playoff spots.
March 20th, huh? Doesn’t that ring a bell with something to do with Iranian oil????????????
It only rings a bell with conspiracy kooks. The theory has already been debunked, by people who actually work in the energy trading business.
http://www.energybulletin.net/13192.html
When March 20 rolls along and nothing happens, will you admit that you are an idiot who falls for stupid conspiracy theories and apologize for spreading them, or will you latch on to the next conspiracy du jour?
I will admit that I am not well-read in the subject, if you will admit that one article from one person on a website does not completely prove or disprove squat. Here’s just ONE example:
http://www.energybulletin.net/12125.html
Hey, look! It’s YOUR chosen website with a dissenting article.
And ANOTHER from the same site!
http://www.energybulletin.net/7707.html
You ARE right, however, in claiming that a simple Google of “Iran oil bourse” likely gives a boatload of crackpot theories and opinions from who-knows-who. I don’t know that the author of your article works in the industry. Heck, maybe he’s a dollar trader. Sure, Iran only produces a fraction of the world’s oil exports - but the rest of the region’s America-hating nations make up a nicer lump as a whole. And, sure, the prices may still be determined in dollars for the foreseeable future - but the point is that EUROS will be bought and sold to purchase some of the oil. Doesn’t that decrease, if only slightly, the demand for dollars?
Honestly, I may be way off here - I just don’t know. But I’ll tell you something, little man, being called an “idiot” from someone arrogant prick who, in theory, has no emotional stake in any personal relationship with yours truly seems, what, childish?
The predictions on possible market effects of a new euro-denominated bourse may very well turn out to be wrong. But, I have one question for you: Do you understand the difference between a prediction and a theory?
Here you go, people, in his OWN words!
“Will this mess up the US economy and put us into a depression because everyone is switching out of dollars into euros? I don’t know. Perhaps there are some currency experts here.”
-posted by Lou Minatti
Then he comes over here and says, no, claims, no, DECLARES that this “conspiracy theory” has been debunked. What, haven’t had time to pull the comments off your own blog, yet, Lou - even though the wife is away?
Look, I ain’t saying either way on the impact of the oil issue, folks - I only know that I DON’T know. One thing’s for damn sure, though. Lou don’t know squat, either!
Iran opens their “Euro” bourse for oil on the 20th; FWIW the Fed stops reporting M3 on the 23rd.
And another one covering the same area (Mission Viejo, south OC California):
http://tinyurl.com/jmj57
“2006 Economic Report
Why the Housing Bubble is Bogus!
Updated on October 31st - 2005
The following is the outline Gary Watts is using in his current talk…and why real estate values throughout most of California should continue to grow at a 15% appreciation rate.”
Hey Frances!
Y.o.u.r. spells “Your!”
I shoulda been an English teacher.
I can’t help myself…this time, it’s Irvine, CA, *THE* OC. (Heh!)
http://tinyurl.com/os2wz
“It’s California, it’s Orange County, it’s HOT!!! We just keep going. There are about 535 homes on the market in Irvine right now. A little more than half of these are condos, giving us a little lower average list price; but that doesn’t mean our prices are going down! We had well over 100 sales last month. The market is predicted to increase 10 to 15 % beginning in 2006.”
“About Connie Bramble:
I have nearly 20 years in the industry with credentials in both Residential and Commercial Real Estate, truly keeping the clients best interest as my primary goal.”
Call me a stickler, but shouldn’t “clients” have an apostrophe?
A blog typo is one thing - but to screw up an ad!? (That wasn’t her only mistake, either)
Forget ebay and craigslist for sight unseen jokes, just open up the LA Times and you can find crackhouse adjacent shacks for the price of five homes in any given red state.
OK, for reals, this is the last one…really! This time I take you to Grover Beach, CA, on the central coast. (This is where that house with the seascape painted on the garage door is located):
http://tinyurl.com/r3daj
Look at the bottom of the page…the consensus opinion of the three realtors that report on the area are calling it a *falling price trend*. That’s the first time I’ve seen realtors actually calling falling prices in a coastal area of California…
Now Grover Beach is certainly no Laguna Beach, Del Mar, or Montecito…but I still find it interesting that a city in an area that I was told was “fall proof” (”it’s different here on the central coast”) has at least a little realtor consensus that prices will probably head down.
OK folks, for reals, this is the last one… maybe!
Spot the mistake in each RE Dork’s little sales pitch:
RE Dork #1:
My husband and I have raised two beautiful daughters and have been active within the school district. I teach Junior Acheivment even now that my own children are out of the house and in college.
RE Dork #2:
I was very fortunate to be welcomed into Mallory-Berryhill, Inc. MBI has been located in Arroyo Grande and for over 20 years.
RE Dork #3:
Having supervised the construction of over 350 homes on the Central Coast I have an in depth view of the real estate market that is hard to find anywhere else.
Give up?
#1: “Acheivment” (oh, is THAT what irony is?)
#2: What the hell is the “and” in there for?
#3: This was a little tougher to spot, but, the first half of the sentence (ending in Central Coast) is a dependent clause; it needs a comma.
Good night.
One thing worth considering is that the weather in Boston, New York, London, Paris, Moscow and so forth really isn’t much different from that of Buffalo, Rochester, Cleveland, Detroit, Pittsburg (or St Etienne in France, to cite just a typical French example). And yet all of these cities have similar climate and amenities, other than for the glamour factor, or lack thereof. And yet prices for housing in the glamourous cities is vastly more expensive than housing for cities in the frumpy cities. For people for whom money doesn’t matter, well, money doesn’t matter. But I think it’s really stupid for ordinary middle-class people to choose Boston over Buffalo just because Boston says “glamour” and Buffalo says “frumpy”.
Glamor says growth, growth says jobs, jobs say where you live. Housing in collapsed areas is undesirable because there is no way for most people to make it there, and people who can make it anywhere don’t want to be there.
The mistake this flipper made was not making the deal w/ the 14K investor go through…heck they already paid
A flipper with a ‘heart’ will never make any cash!
Having lived in the UK from 2002-2004, I can attest that the housing bubble there vastly exceeds anything seen on this side of the pond. The house we rented was typical British new construction: appalling quality. The builder, rather than hauling the scrap material to a dump (prohibitively expensive there) simply buried a lot of it in the backyard about two feet down. We went through lightbulbs like popcorn, due ot the Third World UK electrical grid and shoddy quality of the materials and workmanship in the house. Yet this cramped, charmless 3 bd/2 ba house could easily fetch 300 thousand pounds, or about half a million dollars. No wonder US housing still seems like a bargain to them. The flippers there make the ones here look like studies in caution and conservatism.
People do move to Detroit and the other rusting towns. Immigrants with nothing. People so poor they can’t figure out where else to go. A friend or relative tells them they can rent for $250 a month there, and they give it a shot. The lack of jobs doesn’t phase them since they didn’t have the job skills to find a steady life in a more affluent place.
You would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh at this man.
I found page after page of listings for houses selling for less than $1,000.
http://www.realtor.com/Prop/1055414759
http://www.realtor.com/Prop/1054494504
http://www.realtor.com/Prop/1055603018
I don’t know if these listings are incorrect or if they are real.
since, under the property features it states that unit#1 is renting for 690 and unit#2 is renting for 690 I would assume that this is a mistake somehow.
Cool. I get my entire purchase price back by only collecting 1 months rent. I’m going to guy it right now. Sight unseen!
Mr. Tanner would have to have the distinction of being one of the biggest fools in this whole bubble scenario. Anybody with a brain should know that Buffalo is a dying $HITHOLE. It makes news for worst weather (most snow), crackhouses, bad football, etc. He is lucky he ONLY lost $14K - now he can go buy crackhouses in LA, and Oakland and learn how to lose some serious money.
and Buffalo is still a $HITHOLE. Why does everyone go to the Canadian side to see Niagara Falls? Because it is clean, and tourist friendly there. The USA side is a dump.
Morons. I hope these people lose every dime they have. Simply unbelieveable.
http://www.novabubble.blogspot.com
You mean it’s a bad idea to buy a house I’ve never seen in a city I’ve never been in? Everyone know Buffalo is a tourist hotspot due to its balmy weather, beaches, and mountains, not to mention its booming economy.
I find it impossible to have pity/sympathy for anyone this dumb, naive, foolish.