Bits Bucket And Craigslist Finds For July 6, 2007
Please post off-topic idas, links and Craigslist finds here.
The Housing Bubble
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Raines…Sues. This POS should be doing a perp walk.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/05/AR2007070501941.html
It’s a shame that Johnnie Cochran is dead…
Great lawyer but this was not his forte re litigation, as most informed folks know. Why do some here insist on hidden and not so hidden race baiting? Mr. Raines is playing the game that all the “big boys” play; that he happens to be black does not mean that automatically a black lawyer must be involved. Of course folks like Scotter(sp?) have their own white president to bail them out.
“race baiting?”
so you think he should get a free pass? Sorry, but that’s a little too much political correctness for me.
Not saying that he should get a free pass; I do not think Raines deserves the money he is seeking, I am disgusted with folks like that regardless of color etc. My response however was directly related to the Johnnie Cochran comment which was unnecessarrily and obviously focused on race.
Not saying that he should get a free pass; I do not think Raines deserves the money he is seeking, I am disgusted with folks like that regardless of color etc. My response however was directly related to the Johnnie Cochran comment which was unnecessarrily and obviously focused on race.
Well, when it comes to financial flim-flammery, there’s only one color that really matters, and that’s the “long green”.
Profits were pumped up with bookkeeping so fake its taken years to straighten out, yet he wants his bonus based on that fake bookkeeping.
Another government pig at the trough.
Raines ought to be in jail, but so should Libby. But since Libby was the lawyer for Marc Rich, he knows all about tax evasion and slimey accounting scams.
Raines knows where the bodies are buried over at Fannie. I expect to see a settlement because although he is guilty as hell of something, the FED won’t want the coverup exposed. Bad for the sanitization game. IMO
Spike — I didn’t know that Scooter Libby was the lawyer for Marc Rich (whom Clinton pardoned).
Google Libby, and check it out…he negotiated Rich’s pardon with Clinton. Once you’re in the big leagues,you’re all on the same team.
“Once you’re in the big leagues,you’re all on the same team.”
That I do believe, and is a large part of why I’m a Libertarian.
carefull with Libertarian
your just not good at voting yet…
if you wre really goood, youd actully be a registered voting member of the OPPOSING PARTY.
if you dont knoe why, then youy have never voted against anything.
Im so happy to be a tax paying chump lining the pockets of not only all the worthless government emplyees but the crooks at Fannie,Freddie,HUD,FHA,VA.
Can we start more programs to funnel taxpayer money to the REIC and make housing unaffordable? Why not have gubbermint handle healthcare too, whata great job with housing they are doing.
I pay taxes too.
Dont be jaded…just vote.
Learn the rules and use them to your advantage.
• UBS fires CEO on hedge fund woes
http://tinyurl.com/2kgu6w
Oh, so THAT was the problem with the fund. Good thing they figured it out and got that corrected. Now that we’ve got that bum out of there, this whole thing should turn right around….
They are not actually trying to fix the hedge funds problem. What they are trying to do is fix the people who control UBS problem. That problem is that they don’t want to be blamed, so they fire the CEO and then they can act “Shocked, Shocked, at how the hedge fund was being run, if they had known how things were being run they would never have allowed it”.
Its all about who gets the blame
United Bank of Switzerland….dealing in subprime….what are the Swiss thinking?
Maybe it is time for a subprime hedge fund implode-o-meter?
Moin from Gerrmany,
UBS was the first that has shut down its hedge funds. month before this was a bigger issue. With their move they have limited their losses. smart move.
On top of this they are not participating in the LBO madness……
So far this year, UBS ranks 10th among LBO advisers after participating in 7.7 percent of announced deals by value, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Goldman, the No. 1 M&A arranger for the past six years, is first, with 62 percent. Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Credit Suisse Group, all commercial banks like UBS, each have more than 42 percent.
UBS is also making the majority of their earnings from the very stable asset management (biggest in the world).
I think they will outperform when the times are not longer “perfect”
long ubs/short gs
should have shorted bears sterns instead
Bought some SKF. Spread the risk. Goes nicely with my SRS. Looking to average in over the next few weeks/months.
Im averging into bonds
SOCKPUPPETT COMMENT
only on the 5.2 5.3 days
And here I’m holding some Swiss francs for security from all of this…
Why play the “I hope i’ve picked the right country’s paper money” game?
All fiat currencies are doomed to fail.
And here I’m holding some Swiss francs for security from all of this…
“Maybe it is time for a subprime hedge fund implode-o-meter?”
Already exists - someone posted a link yesterday though I didn’t save it.
and then hope they don’t get sued for actually reporting. That suit against the Implode-o-meter just steams me.
As of today, it stands at 11.
“Hedge fund Failometer”:
http://wasatchecon.blogspot.com/2007/06/hedge-fund-failometer.html
sf jack is well informed.
palmetto is my dad
txchick is my mom
From the Bloomberg article quoted here yesterday:
Ratings downgrades in CDOs containing asset-backed securities “are inevitable and material,” the Morgan Stanley analysts said in the report. “The shoe is still waiting to drop.”
A total of 11 percent of the loan collateral for all subprime mortgage bonds had payments at least 90 days late, were in foreclosure or had the underlying property seized, according to a June 1 report by Friedman, Billings, Ramsey Group Inc., a securities firm in Arlington, Virginia. In May 2005, that amount was 5.4 percent.
`Petri Dish’
The increase in delinquencies means CDO investors, who sometimes use borrowed money to magnify their bets, may be holding securities that are riskier than their ratings indicate, said Bill Gross, chief investment officer at Pacific Investment Management Co., based in Newport Beach, California.
“The Petri dish turns from a benign experiment in financial engineering to a destructive virus,” Gross, who oversees the world’s biggest bond fund, said this week in a commentary on the firm’s Web site. The companies gave the mortgage bonds investment-grade ratings, duped by the “six-inch hooker heels” of collateral that can’t be trusted, he said.
CDOs aren’t required to disclose the contents of their holdings to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and most can change them after the bonds are sold.
Losses reflect the decline of the U.S. housing market, where the national median home sale price is poised for its first annual drop since the Great Depression, according to the National Association of Realtors.
So now the NARs own spin comes full circle, and kicks ‘em in their own arses, as it is used as the final word in an article to highlight the gravity of the RE sector. Look for more MSM usage of this NAR quote in similar context.
Got 10% down?
How a f***ed home buyer is created:
http://louminatti.blogspot.com/2007/07/how-fed-home-buyer-is-created.html
And that one required a 20% down payment - or a second mortgage to cover the other 20%. it converted to full interest payments (from neg am payments) once the LTV reached 90-95% due to accumulating interest. No info as to whether the LTV could be reassed because of falling value.
SoCal MLS - DOM / CDOM No Longer In Client Reports
http://tinyurl.com/2kbtnl
“To that end, the SoCalMLS BOD, after getting input from MLS Committees and other practitioners, have decided to remove the DOM and CDOM fields from all Client reports. You will still have this information available to you in the Agent reports, which also link to the history report for each listing. The history report gives you a much more precise overview of what transpired for a particular listing. With that ammunition you should be prepared to better explain to your client the ramifications of the DOM data.”
I think this is probably a good thing. They’re removing the ability to show clients just the one number for DOM. Now one has to use a report that produces the whole history.
lemme get this straight, Remove Days On Market…..from reports to public.
Oh, kinda like removing M3 from reported statistics….
I love that, When the purpose of the information is suitable for the Cartel, always show it, and vice-versa.
Next up?
SOCKPUPPET
arent rules and regulations good>?
Just wondering how some of the bubble bloggers are faring in the Southwest with the widely reported heat wave and in Texas/Oklahoma/Kansas with all the precipitation. Everybody OK?
There’s no heat wave in Texas. We’re floating away.
Right, that’s what I meant about the precipitation (rainfall). It seems like it just won’t let up.
Palmetto,
Everything is fine here in the Mile High City, as you will see from the next HBB compilation. Sunny & 85 today, 30% humidity, seen a lot of FL license plates driving our city recently. You all might even have CA beat at that, too.
“seen a lot of FL license plates driving our city recently.”
That’s a shocker. In the summer, the Florida license plates are usually seen in the North Carolina mountains, like around Asheville. Floridians get nosebleeds if they venture any higher than that.
Lake Grapevine is 27 ft below my driveway and going up about 2 ft per day. Luckily, it has only 4 ft to go until going over the spillway… Look out below: Valley Ranch.
(The lake is up about 30 ft since the drought a couple of months ago.)
I wonder as well about the folks in Baker CA where it was 125 yesterday. I thought it was hot at my house where at 6 PM last night it was 103 in the shade, but that 125 must have been unbearable.
It was 111 degrees as we suffered not a bit, hanging out in our shaded swimming hole on the river.
The water was a perfect 81 degrees.
Us too - the husband took off the rest of the week, and we’ve been living on the beach for the last few days.
Sometimes, its just wonderful that the Pacific is a chilly ocean….
And, back at home, in the literal centre of the San Fernando Valley, my backyard thermometer went over 130f yesterday afternoon.
OT: on the drive home, we noticed three houses for sale on our block.
So much for that it is all dry heat theory
125 is 125 dry heat or not
it is about to get hot in nyc this weekend.
lately everytime we have a few 90 degree plus days in a row the power goes out with con ed.
my feeling on this is all the overdevelopment and and crowding in this city is to blame. they just do not have the power to keep all the eltricity running when the demand is peak and it will only get worse as the years go on
I’ve been waiting for a similar thing to happen here in Florida. I had a conversation the other day with someone regarding the older Florida homes that were built with the Florida weather in mind. If the power goes out, they are actually somewhat livable without AC.
The houses that were built in Fla during the bubble are another matter. They’re just delivery systems for power company profits and potential death traps in the event of power outage.
Concrete and asphalt exacerbate high temps by perhaps 5 to 10 degrees…
So it really was around 125 degrees in vegas yesterday.
108 in Sacramento. I stayed at work until 7 to beat it then hit the gym. It was only 90 when I got home at 9 - yuck.
“Concrete and asphalt exacerbate high temps by perhaps 5 to 10 degrees…”
Testify, brothah! I think the housing bubble has been a contributor to global warming.
Pal,
I was just talking about this with some of the enviro folks in my dept. You do get a radiant heat effect in the cities. The questions is does it create a bubble effect in concentrated area that forces light breezes to “move around them” and therefore contribute further to the warming of the city interiors.
At that point the discussion broke down into language I couldn’t keep up with. I really miss working in socio-economics.
According to a ‘manifesto’ of sorts on Global Warming published in Skeptical Inquirer last month, climate scientists who have studied the urban heating effect don’t believe it contributes overall to global climate change.
On a local level, of course, it’s no picnic.
I love Boston … in the summer the sea breeze makes it cooler than the ‘burbs. They say Edo used to be the same way, but they filled the bay and overbuilt such that the sea breezes stopped.
from a physcist….who drives a bus because the Union benfits are better.
MGNYC,
remember the huge blackout that shorted out the northeast a couple of years ago? Follow-up investigations revealed aging infrastructure in more than a dozen states that needed to be upgraded/replaced–as the system remained at risk for melt-downs. Result–nada. Infrastructure continues to decay.
MGNYC:
A story on NPR last night about how NY state is going to run some gigantic power lines through a tiny community to feed a borough(?)
Oops. Should have read through before posting - not the state, the Fed
who says the CIvil War was about slavery?
WE Still have Major Electricity problem in NYC…we have far too many people working at 4PM, and not enough at 4 AM
I think bloomberg is wrong about charging people to come into the city during the day.
We need to eliminate ALL tax breaks for business that work 9-5 M-F and base tax breaks on the number of 2nd 3rd shift workers hired….
Bloomberg had like 5500 employees yet probably 1/3 actually work 9-5 these are the kinds of businesses we need to attract to NYC…. Long Island city is dead after 6pm and there is TONS of FREE parking!l
TOLLS!
taxi on a bridge
rail under ground
plane on a runnway
count a coin
I wonder as well about the folks in Baker CA where it was 125 yesterday
Don’t worry, they both work at the Bun Boy and it has A/C.
Yeah, what is it with Baker? The Mad Greek restaurant, the Bun Boy motel, and the world’s largest thermometer. Is my perception skewed by my pop-culture poisoned brain or is this town just a haven for butt freaks?
I’m in the west and doing fine, haven’t even turned on my AC (oh wait a second, I don’t have AC, I’m a mile from the coast).
The rain is great. Keeps my a/c bill way down and I don’t have to water the lawn.
I don’t think Florida would survive the sustained rainfall that Texas/Oklahoma/Kansas has had, I was thinking about that. It would be even more of a disaster here. Much of the state would truly be underwater. And I think all the potential sewer problems caused by overbuilding would show up pretty fast.
We had a two year drought in North Central Florida, and the recent rain hasn’t been enough. Bring it on!
Paynes Prairie used to be a lake … now it’s a drying swamp. We have plenty of room for all that water. Only question is if the sewers can handle it in those new growth areas near I-75.
I’ll laugh if they can’t, though. That’s what they get for taking forest and agricultural land in the county and demanding city services on a county budget. You get what you pay for. (And in this case, it was only a 10% discount … ouch.)
We’ve certainly enjoyed a milder than normal summer so far here in North Texas. All this rains means lots of mowing though and I am afraid we’re gonna have a real problem with misquitos and West Nile too.
“Just wondering how some of the bubble bloggers are faring in the Southwest with the widely reported heat wave and in Texas/Oklahoma/Kansas with all the precipitation. Everybody OK?”
It’s a piece of cake. Anyone here ever heard of air conditioning?
Bill, I think they’re referring to people who spend more than 4 minutes a day outside.
I’ve managed to score a project in south america for the entirety of this hateful summer, thank goodness. Middle of winter here in Sao Paulo (talk about overcrowded, though). I do get to hear all about the heat in Vegas from my wife every night, though. The twelve townhouses (out of 100) in our neighborhood that have been for sale for the last five months or so still sit in the sun, no lookers. Still asking over $200/square ft. Ought to be one heck of a dead summer for the Realtors if this weather keeps up.
Do people really buy more houses when the weather is nice? That notion seems a bit hard to swallow. Can anyone think of a data-based way to find out?
Southern NM is OK.
Rains for the past 3 days (not incl today). Rain, thunder & lightning on July 4 - some just kept launching fireworks with the lightning which I think is ill-advised, but whatever.
Lots of water in the Rio Grande.
~Misstrial
Wow! Only 40,000 new government jobs created out of 132,000 new jobs created. What’s going on?
U.S. June construction payrolls up 12,000
lol!
Birth/death model added 26 k constructionn jobs (25k in 2006)
Can´t wait for the 1 year revision…..
So, is the birth/death model based on Mexican population trendlines?
Cal-Ari-Texicons….. the new job growth indicator.
The item that is neglected is that 1.3M graduated college and 3M graduated high school. Where are the jobs for these folks? They cannot be unemployed - they haven’t been employed!
132,000 X 12 = 1.6M or so = a significant shortfall in jobs.
Yes. Population growth is 0 in the US except for immigration.
pollution growth is US is ZERO…same as population among EDUCATED AMERICANS……relative to 3rd world.
We only lost 18,000 manufacturing jobs. Thank goodness for the growth in government. It’s a cottage industry that I’ve got my money on.
The spin was that a weaker $ should benefit manufacturing jobs…..
Why the obsession with manufacturing jobs?
Manufacturing is a key, value-added activity, that “creates” things and helps build wealth - it is a “productive” activity and tends to pay better than Walmart, that’s why.
So we either choose between manufacturing jobs or jobs at walmart? That’s absurd. Besides, lots of service jobs are “key, value-added” jobs….where would we be without doctors, nurses, police, architects, engineers, landscapers and, yes, all those folks who work in the retail industry?
Also, have you ever done a manufacturing job? Go try bending metal in a filthy, windowless plant in the midwest somewhere and you’ll wish you were a real estate agent after about a week.
The problem is that most of the jobs we are creating are in non-tradeable goods and services. An Applebees on every corner won’t help with the trade deficit.
Also, have you ever done a manufacturing job? Go try bending metal in a filthy, windowless plant in the midwest somewhere and you’ll wish you were a real estate agent after about a week.
I did that for a summer back in my college days (not so long ago). It was an enjoyable job. It was a little dirty, but not windowless. Even on 100 degree days it was never stuffy. Anyway, I was pretty good at it while simultaneously being lost in thought. That job paid for a lot of beer the next fall.
You can’t export a domestic service economy. And if this domestic service economy depends on imports of oil and manufactured items the only way it can pay for the imports is by printing money and hoping the people who sell us oil and toys take it. For every barrel of oil we take in we give them a pile of paper that every years is worth less than before.
When Europeans and Asians take a barrel of oil they give the Arabs (and all the other oil exporters) Luxury Cars, Electronics, High End Fashion and Jelwery, you know stuff they want more and more of.
I have two friends, one bends and welds metal for a living. He fixes up heavy equipment that gets shipped out of the country. He has a steady job for years to come.
My other friend is a realtor, he sold one house in the last 3 months. He doesn’t know what he will be doing next week.
I started working for Burroughs Corp at age 19 building B7800 mainframe computers. It was in an air conditioned factory and paid fairly well for a 19 year old. I stayed through the early Unisys days even though the manufacturing plant shut down in 1990. When we were going strong in the mid-1980’s we had three shifts working with over 400 hourly employees. We also had purchasing, accounting, data processing, etc departments that had another few hundred salaried positions. All of the jobs had 401k matches, full healthcare and paid vacations. For many years it was a great place to work. We built computers that were shipped around the world. Also 95% of everything that went into those computers was built at that plant. That does not happen much anymore in this country and is a big problem.
“Also 95% of everything that went into those computers was built at that plant. That does not happen much anymore in this country and is a big problem.”
Yes, outsourcing manufacturing has really killed Apple.
“I have two friends, one bends and welds metal for a living. He fixes up heavy equipment that gets shipped out of the country. He has a steady job for years to come.
My other friend is a realtor, he sold one house in the last 3 months. He doesn’t know what he will be doing next week. ”
You make it sound like manufacturing employment in the US is robust.
The only point that I’m trying to make is that there is nothing inherently better about manufacturing jobs relative to other forms of work. And services can be exported…in fact we run a services surplus to the tune of about $100 billion a year.
http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/international/transactions/transnewsrelease.htm
I should elaborate on my example of what my metal worker does. Becuase I want to assure you that I have no delusions of a robust US industry.
All those earth moving machines that used to build housing tracts and infrastructure are getting dumped at auctions and an ever increasing amount are exported out of the country. These pieces of equipment used to work here in the US creating our GDP. No one here can afford to let them sit idle so they sell to anyone who needs it.
We cant ship out houses.
Having a $100 billion surplus in services is not going to help when we borrow money to import an $800 billion deficit worth of goods. We only live this well because foreigners buy our bonds to fund the deficits.
For every $1 of services surplus we also send out a $7 IOU in Bonds. How long can that last?
I read one of the top exports to china are bales of hay.
We import electronics, clothes, lamps, etc. and in return they get HAY!!! How long can this go on? Seems like a fraud perpetrated on them somehow…
No, sounds like the ancient colonial dream: raw materials exchanged for finished goods.
We were once a colony of industrialized Britain. Now we’re a colony of China!
Yes, outsourcing manufacturing has really killed Apple.
What’s good for Apple isn’t necessarily good for the US economy.
For every $1 of services surplus we also send out a $7 IOU in Bonds. How long can that last?
Until our trading partners have had their fill of buying dollar based assets with the paper money we send them. And you can buy a LOT of assets with 800B.
You were never a colony of industrialised Britain. The Industrial Revolution is commonly considered to have started in 1780.
Well manufactured goods can be exported or imported, so that goes towards balance of trade issues.
My John Deere tractor is made in China and my Kubota tractor is made in Georgia. The profit from John Deere comes back to America, the profit from Kubota goes to Japan.
But the wages for the Kubota are spent in the US and the wages for Deere are spend in China. My first car was a Mercury assembled in Cologne Germany and my current car is a BMW assembled in Spartanburg SC.
FYI on those SUV’s that the foreign brands make here in the US. They are worth more to them if they sell them outside the US. In fact if a Mercedes SUV is sold here in the US and it somehow ends up in another country the US dealer has to pay a $10,000 penalty to Mercedes. Our debasement of the dollar is our only hope for a rebirth of manufacturing,
My first car was a Mercury assembled in Cologne Germany
Did you like your XR4Ti?
Colorado, I may be a bit older than you. It was a 1977 Capri II, bought used when I was in college. I could go faxt, at least compared to my friend’s B210, but the thrthle was either ACCELERATE or IDLE with very little in between, which made it difficult to drive, especially in snow. Sporty looking except for the rust spots and a perpetually damp section of carpet in front of the passenger seat where the RF wheel well was rusting through. But I could play “Tank Commander” by driving with my head out of the sunroof so… a nice first car.
Sounds about right, considering we pay 40% of our income to the gubment.
wait til Hil-Bama hits office, you havent begun to see govt growth.
Our current accounts deficit and unfunded liabilities are so large, we will have to pay one way or another.
Your pal the chimp made the day of reckoning much, much closer, however.
Not that I, in retrospect, am any longer a fan of Greenspan & Clinton’s airy-fairy economy.
spoken like a blue blood college educated physicist from BAAAston who drives a fricken bus..
Lemme tell bout gubmint.
Conservatives like LESS
dude
I’m guessing those numbers came out of a pneumatic tube from Winston Smith at the Ministry of Truth
BB sez numbers are doubleplusgood. Proles bellyful Ingsoc.
My dad gave me a coy of 1984 when I was 12. Scared the crap out of me. Still does.
Employment growth is always double-plus good in Oceania.
But it’s too bad that we’ve always been at war with Estasia.
Oceania is at war with Eastasia….Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
Thoughtcrime…..otherwise….off to Miniluv with you Comrade.
MiniPlenty reporting plusgood housing figures for 2nd quarter. Miniluv investigating “housing bubble blog” for crimethink.
This has to be a typo. $11 million?…
http://philadelphia.craigslist.org/rfs/365772420.html
Stainless Steel appliances can’t be overlooked. I’ve seen on HGTV that if you install them, they cost about $4k, but add about $2.5m to the value of the home.
Don’t get me started on Granite countertops…
1.1 million. good luck on that one.
$1,100,000
That was changed - it was $11,000,000 when I first saw it…
The ecology of toxic mortgages…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eugene-linden/the-ecology-of-toxic-mort_b_55105.html
I went to a BBQ in Cambridge, MA, on July 4 at the home of a friend of a friend. It’s an older home that looked brand new–it was clearly completely renovated. The house is in the Cambridgeport section, a traditionally undesirable part of town.
I’m wondering whether this recent bubble has caused areas like that to gentrify enough so that when the prices fall, they won’t fall as much. Or are these people truly f#$%ed and will they see their $700,000 home fall in value to $300,000?
It depends on the willingness and ability of people who want to buy in that area. If there is someone who is willing to buy at $700,000 then it will be a $700,000 house, if not then it will be whatever someone is willing to buy it at. So the local economy is a major factor since RE is about location, though some areas do get a boost from outsiders wanting to buy in.
If you have ten $700,000 houses but only five people who will pay that price then prices are heading down until they reach a level people will buy at. You can paper this over with speculation but in the long run prices will match peoples willingness and ability to pay.
D,
Good post. My wife and I see a lot of young families going to new towns outside of Boston. Where Concord, Lexington, Westwood are all traditionally desirable, we see a lot of friends and friends-of-friends moving to towns like Amesbury, Medfield, Needham, much more affordable. These are all families that have two good incomes.
They are driving up the prices in those towns, but they are also driving the elementary schools to be better and making a real investment in the towns.
Will this investment last? I don’t know…If it does, we could see some new towns emerging with high MCAS and SAT scores.
With your friend, Cambridgeport has a real reputation as not a great family area. When your friend wants to hear the pitter-patter, he/she may want to get out of there…it hasn’t happened yet, but I still think Condos around beantown are in line for a rude awakening.
Needham has been on the commuter rail since the late 1980’s. It started to run up in value in the 1990’s as a result.
No way. Long-term value depends on two things: 1) Proximity to gainful employment, and 2) Pleasant surroundings, such as good weather or a beautiful view. The only reason why so many middle-class people are starting to move out the skirts is because the innards have become unaffordable. Once the innards start to get cheaper, the middle-class will move back in.
sounds like the pioneers who are buying million dollar plus gut job brownstones in bed-stuy brooklyn (aka do or die)
hey its the hometown of biggie smalls (rip)
Just my opinion, but bed stuy and east new york suck–dirty, dangerous and crime-ridden. Sure, move in, pay a million, upgrade for 500k and bring your wife and toddlers too. You’ll never be target for the predators in the nabe…never.
How is bed stuy doing these days? Has it held up as well as Manhattan apartments?
A lot of manufacturing (including NECCO) high-tailed it out of Cambridge in the last ten years. Some moved to Charleston after the state prison closed, from what I understand.
Thus, formerly industrial areas in Cambridge can be converted to office use.
So in this case you may be looking at a permanent (on order of decades) change in an area.
Then again, I could be wrong … I’m from Newton so Cambridge was always on the “wrong” side of the Charles for me.
Treasuries up big again this morning -
http://tinyurl.com/3dxea2
With mortgage rates not far behind I’m sure. Between rates being up, standards being tightened (at least relative to what they were), and the spring/summer foreclosure surge - I’d say we’re poised for another serious leg down in prices this fall & winter.
Actually, “treasuries up” would imply that the offering price of an existing treasury issue is up, and its yield is down. “Treasury yields up” is more accurate here.
Yeah, I know. Nit-picking. But to someone who reads the WSJ every day, it stood out.
money still running AT treasuries…….
you gotta ask yourself…
when its ALL up…….
WHAT THE F%^K is up?
Yeah yeah
All’s quiet on the Sarasota realty front. No lookers!
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20070706/REALESTATE/707060380
“We’ll have refreshments, and we’re putting out balloons and signs,” Moore said. “We’re hoping to get people talking again.”
Now that’s what you call thinking outside the box! Never heard of ballons and signs being put out. Hope they remember the cupcakes&brownies
LOL
Ice cream. If they’re not giving out ice cream, then I’m not gonna show up.
Remember a year or two ago somebody posted pics of a condo “sales event” where they had hired models to lounge around half-dressed in units visible from the walkthrough unit.
Ha ha - I hadn’t heard about that. Not a bad idea! However if you bought one of those condos, could you then sue the builder for false advertising when your neighbor turns out to be a 70-year-old 250-lb guy that likes to hang out in his speedo?
You might attract lookers. Buyers don’t need an open house to see a property. Plus they’re not going to wait for an open house if they’re interested.
A good article on FNMA:
http://www.mises.org/story/2627
From the Washington Times Home Guide today:
Mr Fannon [bank manager] recently worked with a family who bought another property and listed their original Kingstowne home for $900,000. They received a contract for $880,000 but they turned it down. Nine months later — after the market had cooled substantially — the sellers finally sold their home for $780,000.
Ouch! And all because they would budge 2% on their original list price! Doh!
The article goes on to say that they actually lost more than the $100k because of the payments on the empty property, taxes, insurance, and the like.
And then they go on to say that if you really want to buy first and sell the old one later, why not get a HELOC on the old one before you start? So then you can “afford” to make double payments! Aiiiieee!!!
But at least the article is there as an object lesson for the masses: These days, sell your house BEFORE you buy the new one, or if you won’t do that, at least be prepared for the financial pain.
“Ouch! And all because they would budge 2% on their original list price! Doh!”
These are the type of folks I’ll never understand. I’ve never been one to turn down a fair offer, sometimes I’ll even accept an unfair offer, if I need the cash flow (in the “stuff” business).
People who can’t be flexible in negotiation deserve a good boning, IMHO.
when the $ signs are bulging cartoonishly out of your pea sized head….and RE agent whispering “dont give the house away”…
viola’…
I’d bet the agent was urging them to take it. If you don’t sell it, 0% of 0 is still 0. Usually it’s the sellers who are greedy and trying to wring the last penny out of their property, and no one seems to understand that every month you pay interest, insurance and taxes is less money that you get. All they see is the end number on the sales contract.
SoCal MLS is hiding DOM from clients!
http://www.socalmls.com/DispArticle.cfm?ARTICLE_ID=19628
and hiding doom as well.
Right there is a lawsuit if I ever saw one. Hide it and hope the bad publicity goes away. Without that info, I’d be more prone to talk to the neighbors, do diligent research on the internet on the property (if it exists) and lowball even further. Idiots think they are doing a “service”.
…“The bottom line is that you, the real estate professional are in the best position to explain to your customer - buyer or seller - what the true DOM figure is and what it means.”
Oh, please.
This just reminds me of the clowns who put listings on ZipRealty without a ‘proper’ address (so you can’t look it up on Zillow etc..)
Rather than piqueing my interest and making me enquire about this little mysterious gem, it just makes me go ‘meh, keep it’.
So many places here in L.A get relisted. Fortunately, I keep a spreadsheet of all the places I’m interested in that keeps a CDOM, all I need to do it subtract the ‘new’ DOM from the CDOM and I’ll have a (not very pretty) number, with or without the ‘advice’ of a Real Estate Professional.
Rearrange the words “Door, Horse, Stable, Bolt” and see what you get….
Marketwatch is recording that 10 year bond is up to 5.19% and oil is pegged at $72.60 a barrel….
I think this is going to be our last “good” summer…hope to God I am wrong.
I hope you are wrong, too. All I ever wanted to see out of the housing bust was a steep decline in prices and all the idiots who participated get burned. Not really looking forward to some sort of global depression.
If you want to make an omelet you have to break some eggs.
Yes, but you DON’T want to make them by setting fire to the henhouse.
Both oil and rates are still too low in real terms. They only seem high to our overleveraged, SUV-driving casino-mentality society. We had the gain, now here comes the pain.
oil at $72 a barrel isnt my idea of Manna from Heaven….
IT’ll bust out of $78 before the summer of fun closes out…. $68 gonna feal cheap come September.
Am I evil for wishing for a 7% T-bill?
why would that make you evil?
I saw a spot on the ABC evening news last night about sign spinners. They showed how these spinners are trained and all. And, they said that the ones who master all the spinning techniques can earn about $70k. Who knew that could be so lucrative?
That has to be BS. Who would pay a sign spinner $35/hr?
We’ve had sign spinners in Southern Cal for about the last 18 months or so. What’s funny is that some of them are so good — it looks kind of like a form of breakdancing — you can’t tell which direction the sign is pointing because it’s always being tossed and spinned!
I looked up the story on ABC.com. Here it is:
http://tinyurl.com/2wnt3h
Note the video on the top left.
Silver lining in every cloud. Spin off jobs (sign spinning).
This is a good read about the weather and California real Estate.
See you all at Earth Live this weekend.
http://www.cashill.com/regional/midwest_cooling.htm
Yep, 3 weeks of cooler than normal temperatures in KC and the whole global warming theory goes up in smoke.
Give me a break. Anyway, consider the source.
Enjoy the 90 degree temps all week in KC.
How to form a RE bubble by Sir Howard Davies, director of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and former deputy governor of Bank of England.
“…Asked about how the country may curb bubbles in the stock market, Davies said in fact there is no proven method to control such bubbles. All countries are trying their best on a trial-and-error basis to do so, he said. Improved regulation and supervision is needed….Sir Davies disagreed that speculative international “hot” money has pushed up China’s property prices, to bet on the renminbi’s appreciation. Davies said such a conclusion is groundless as there is no available statistic to prove how much international money has contributed to the price rises. In addition, the property prices in China, considering the rapid economic growth, are rather low, especially compared with international standards….”
Maybe low by international standards, but very expensive by China’s standards.
http://tinyurl.com/ypfuq9
Good old “trial & error” methodology…
I would submit that that’s the essence of free markets, and that Sir Davies’ conclusion that “improved” regulation and supervision is needed is not a logical conclusion.
I would submit that bubbles are indeed a natural way of life in a free market economy - and are actually a good thing overall, in that they’re learning experiences. Artificial control of bubbles (read: regulation of markets) only causes less-frequent but larger and more harmful bubbles - e.g. the one we’re in now.
A most interesting thought, the lengthy history of bubbles would tend to support this idea except for one thing. History did not support free market ideas until the late 18th century. A minor skirmish ~1776 was fought over the rights to import from countries other than England. I agree more regulation is detrimental.
Seems to me that some of the biggest bubbles in history were heralded with no regulation but plenty of fraud.
It’s loose money that causes bubbles, and de-regulation, if anything, not regulation, which is usually the post-bubble reaction to the fallout from bubble frauds.
Read up on the events leading up to and resulting from the 1929 crash. Quite instructive.
The ill effects of the 1929 stock market crash were directly attributable to the Federal Reserve Bank.
“As everyone here knows, in their Monetary History Friedman and Schwartz made the case that the economic collapse of 1929-33 was the product of the nation’s monetary mechanism gone wrong….The first episode analyzed by Friedman and Schwartz was the deliberate tightening of monetary policy that began in the spring of 1928 and continued until the stock market crash of October 1929. This policy tightening occurred in conditions that we would not today normally consider conducive to tighter money:….Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Rose: Regarding the Great Depression. You’re right, we did it. We’re very sorry. But thanks to you, we won’t do it again.”…
Ben Bernanke
November 8, 2002
http://tinyurl.com/3b326h
So a speculative bubble enhanced by the Federal Reserve and then brutally crushed by same … “we won’t do it again”….
But before we get to complacent with Fed policy
“We are the people who take away the punch bowl just when the party is getting good.” Mr. Wm Martin, Chairman of the Federal Reserve 1951 -1970.
Interesting note on Mr. Martin, he threatened to veto President Kennedy’s tax cut by refusing to finance the governments deficit. The last fed chairman to defy the executive branch.
I guess thats tooo complicated for a physicist.
I thought I had heard everything…posted today on SFgate:
A new way to tap equity without going into debt-homeowners can sell a share of future appreciation
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/06/BUGHQQRLUC1.DTL
Must be some pretty good drugs they are taking in Marin County….what happens if 2 million quatloo house becomes a 500K quatloo crapshack by the bay in a Depression?
Had to read that twice….Rex and Company….going go same way as Tyranesaurus Rex and Company with that operating procedure.
This is how you finance things in Islamic countries were it is illegal to charge interest.
And don’t forget the “fees” — they are allowed to charge “fees.”
Sh*t is going to hit the fan in the UK soon. Nearly all mortgages there are adjustable, fixed to increases in the Prime.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/06/nrates106.xml&DCMP=EMC-new_06072007
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/07/06/do0601.xml&DCMP=EMC-new_06072007
I spent a lot of time in England in the 1980s and there was no such thing as a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage. “Fixed” in the terminology meant only the small number of years at the front end, before it re-set, just like our ARMs. Does anyone know if English lenders today loan mortgage money for 30 years at a fixed interest rate for the entire 30 years?
Oh boys and girls of this blog … you are going to love this one:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/06/BUGHQQRLUC1.DTL
Another idea of how to get FREE money from your home and it’s not a loan with a monthly payment dude … this is soooo cool (NOT).
My favorite part of this article:
“Now, of course, the market is cooling rapidly.”
As little as a year ago, such talk would have been nearly impossible to find in any MSM outlet.
“Chrisman said he could picture a scenario where Rex would turn its equity-sharing agreements into securities and sell them to other investors, just as mortgages are now routinely packaged and sold to Wall Street”.
ESA’s… the new CDOs
If I read sfgate article right you also share in the loss. So what will someone do if their $500k house is now worth only $250. Still upside down as far as I can see.
you=?
1099 for what?
Aladin sane, since you have a vested interest in gold. Does Newmont’s closing of its hedging operations mean that the company is going to withhold gold from the market?
Newmont is a later day Fort Knox of sorts and they’ve sold forward for a long time now…
A BIG development.
when the big money cant or is confused about where the money is going…..eveything is up….
treasuries up? I mean YIELD
gold up?
equities up?
short hedge funds are up?
WHATS REALLY UP?
A Lad Insane