People Keep Talking About Further Declines In Prices
A report from the Idaho Statesman. “With 2007 mercifully in the books, Treasure Valley housing industry insiders are hoping for a rebound in 2008. Their optimism is based on Intermountain MLS statistics indicating that show the housing inventory in Ada County is down by 1,000 homes since July and by 425 in Canyon County since August. That still leaves 6,470 Treasure Valley homes on the market.”
“‘I think the next 90 days are going to be critical. If we can shave another 16 percent off the inventory, that’s going to be huge. It might bring the market back in balance, if not swinging it back to a seller’s market,’ said associate broker Shaun Tracy.”
“Idaho chief economist Mike Ferguson said the MLS numbers don’t indicate whether the reduction in the housing inventory resulted from sales or frustrated owners who have taken their homes off the market.’
‘ “According to the MLS, 10,027 homes changed hands in 2007, or 35 percent fewer than the 15,470 transactions the previous year. The total was well below the 13,515 sales in 2004, the year industry members say is a typical sales year in the Treasure Valley.”
“For all the bad news last year, 2007 was still the fifth-best sales year on record, said Jere Webb of Jere Webb Publishing, which charts industry activity in the Treasure Valley. ‘So if it was the fifth-best year on record, why did it feel so lousy?’ Webb asked.”
“His theory is that many real-estate agents who made $300,000 in 2005 saw their income cut to $200,000 in ‘07. ‘I don’t know of anybody that can take a $100,000 pay cut and be happy about it,’ Webb said.”
“MLS Director Greg Manship said the Realtors association here has lost 600 agents since July 2006, when the market went into a swoon.”
“Broker Don McFarland said the agents who have left the business were mostly newcomers to housing sales and had never gone through a downturn. ‘It’s a matter of experience,’ McFarland said. ‘You have to be able to tell the seller what the (pricing) reality is and that they have to make price adjustments. But some of these (younger) agents were just as much in denial as the sellers.’”
“Meanwhile, the foreclosure problem in Idaho continues to get worse, with more and more filings piling up each month.”
“According to IdahoDataProviders.com, which tracks foreclosures daily, there were 85 filings in Ada County during January 2007. In December there were 190 filings, an increase of 137 percent. In Canyon County, the 59 filings in January grew to 121 in December, an increase of 51 percent.”
‘”I probably agree that things are not as bad out there as it seems. But it’s sure not good,’ said founder Charlie Nate.”
“The ill-fated Boise Tower/Boise Place project, whose developer filed for bankruptcy last summer, now faces possible foreclosure.”
“The trustee’s filing is the latest development in a long-running story that has left Boise with an open hole at the northwest corner of 8th and Main streets Downtown.”
“In 2006, Boise’s urban renewal agency named developer, Gary D. Rogers, of McCall, as the new developer of the site, ending developer Rick Peterson’s decade-long struggle to build his 25-story Boise Tower.”
“As originally envisioned by Peterson, the Boise Tower would have been a $62 million, 25-story mixed-use condominium project and Idaho’s tallest building. When Rogers took control, he renamed the project Boise Place and announced plans for an even bigger tower that would be Idaho’s tallest.”
“But Rogers’ company, Charterhouse Boise Downtown Properties LLC, quickly faced a struggle of its own. Last April, Charterhouse defaulted on a $2.57 million loan from an investor groupe. Charterhouse had taken out the loan to make a down payment on the site.”
“Ironically, the list of Charterhouse’s creditors includes Peterson. Charterhouse owes Peterson $7.6 million.”
The Olympian from Washington. “South Sound home builders rushed to meet the demand of a strong housing market in 2006, but in 2007 they generally took a more cautious approach, year-end building permit data show.”
“Year-end data show that the number of single-family building permits issued in 2007 dropped significantly compared to 2006. In Olympia, permits fell 62.9 percent to 85 from 229. In Lacey, permits fell 24.7 percent to 807 from 1,072. In the county, permits fell 19.3 percent to 815 from 1,010.”
“Also adding to the higher inventory levels were new homes put up for sale by investors who suddenly couldn’t ‘flip’ their homes as quickly as they once could, custom home builder Daimon Doyle of Olympia said.”
“The Northwest has fared much better than other housing markets nationally and the National Association of Home Builders expects a turnaround in housing in the second or third quarter of this year, he said. ‘Things will be picking up before we see any major slowdown here,’ Doyle said.”
“TransNorthwest Construction of Olympia also is carefully studying the housing market before it takes its next step, community relations contact Julie Brannberg said. Once TransNorthwest wraps up five more more single-level townhomes at Horizon Pointe in Lacey, the home builder won’t rush into its next job, she said.”
“‘We are cautious in moving forward in buying new lots,’ Brannberg said. ‘We will build out what we have but be smart about our next move.’”
“South Sound building professionals acknowledged that a cooler housing market has had an effect on the pace of residential construction. After two strong years of home building in 2005 and 2006, inventory levels surpassed 2,000 units in 2007, according to Northwest MLS.”
“With more homes to choose from, home buyers increasingly took time to shop for a house. As a result, year-over-year home sales dropped 14 percent in 2007.”
The Gazette Times from Oregon. “Builders of new homes are finding Corvallis buyers reluctant to jump into an uncertain market, causing construction on new houses to all but grind to a halt. Housing starts in Corvallis for 2007 were down nearly 60 percent. Sales of new homes around the mid-valley also declined by 15 percent when compared to 2006.”
“All told, the total number of houses reported sold in the mid-valley in 2007 was 14 percent behind 2006 totals. According to Willamette Valley MLS, 3,697 houses were sold in 2007, compared to 4,305 houses the previous year.”
“At the end of December, there were a total of 1,855 homes listed for sale in the mid-valley. At the same time a year ago, there were 1,690 homes for sale, a difference of 9 percent.”
“North Albany saw the highest median-prices for houses in Benton County in 2007, at $314,975 for the 12-month period ending in December. That market also saw the widest fluctuations as well, with a low of $251,000 in March and a high of $396,000 in September.”
“‘We’re seeing more buyers on the sidelines,’ said Mike Goodrich, VP of operations for Legend Homes in Corvallis. ‘We’ve not been building spec or inventory homes in the past couple of months.’”
The Oregonian. “Oregon carpenters, painters and plumbers, in high demand last summer, are having trouble finding and keeping work. Unions and staffing agencies report that this winter’s construction slowdown is worse than normal, especially for residential work as the housing market slows.”
“On Monday, officials confirmed their accounts, saying the state’s construction sector cut 5,100 jobs in December, twice the normal loss for the month.”
“‘We have a lot of folks out of work,’ said Randy Shelton, Portland recruiting manager at a staffing company. ‘I’m not optimistic that it’s going to improve much,’ when construction normally picks up with better weather in March.”
“Construction job cuts could have been deeper if not for the severe storms that hit northwest Oregon in December, spurring demand for repair work, said said David Cooke, an Employment Department economist.”
“Randy Pozdena, a member of the Governor’s Council of Economic Advisors, noted that he and other economists predicted in October that the state would see four quarters of construction job losses.”
“Nationally, said Pozdena, ‘You’ve got not just the bankers drawing in their horns, but you have consumers wary of taking a position in a new home. People keep talking about further declines in the prices of homes, and that’s not a recipe for encouraging demand.’”
The Sandy Post from Oregon. “Buena Vista Custom Homes sold 141 homes during the builder’s Dec. 15-16 auction at the Oregon Convention Center, including 28 homes from Sandy’s Cascadia Village and Hamilton Ridge subdivisions.”
“The homebuilder’s entire unsold inventory from across Oregon and southwest Washington, 240 homes, was up for grabs at the auction.”
“The lowest-priced house sold at the auction was a three-bedroom, 2.5-bath house in Sandy’s Cascadia Village neighborhood, which went for $195,000. The most expensive house was a 5,073-square-foot home in the Shadow Ridge subdivision in Happy Valley, which sold for $510,000.”
“Buena Vista spokesman Mike Higgins said the Sandy homes sold ‘pretty consistently’ 10 to 15 percent below the unpublished reserve prices. ‘Those homes in Sandy were bid on real aggressively and were very popular in the sale,’ Higgins said. ‘We were real pleased.’”
“Virtually all areas were strong sellers with two exceptions – the 29 homes that were offered in Bend and Buena Vista’s portfolio of rental homes. None of the homes in Bend sold, and few of the rentals found buyers. Four of the unsold homes were in the Hamilton Ridge subdivision.”
“Buena Vista set ‘reserve’ prices prior to the auction to reflect the homebuilder’s costs. The company announced after the auction that 96 percent of the 141 sold homes were sold below the reserve price.”
“‘We came to the auction to sell, and we did just that,’ Buena Vista owner Roger Pollock said in a written statement.”
“Sandy resident and home seeker Luke Lyons attended the auction in hopes that he might walk away with a deal in the Hamilton Ridge subdivision. Lyons, who stayed only for the auctioning of the first six Sandy houses, said he quickly realized that he wasn’t going to buy a home Dec. 15.”
“‘It was just amazing how rapidly the bids went up,’ Lyons said, noting that homes quickly blew past his predetermined price range and didn’t stay on the block longer than two minutes. ‘I don’t think anybody saved any money,’ Lyons said.”
“Worse than that, he said some people probably overpaid.”
“Lyons said he has been interested in the Hamilton Ridge subdivision for a couple years, ‘before they built any houses there,’ he said – and always had picked up fliers from the homes for sale.”
“He said he watched prices start at around $259,000 and top out at around $300,000. The cooling real estate market saw prices drop most recently to $279,000, just before the auction, he said.”
“But once the auction was announced, all the fliers were taken away, and Buena Vista announced that the homes were valued at about $350,000.”
“Indeed, a four-bedroom, 2.1-bath, 2,261-square-foot home in Hamilton Ridge was advertised with a ‘list price’ of $348,950, while a nearly identical home down the street sold in October for $267,950. Another comparable Hamilton Ridge house that had slightly less square footage sold for $262,651, according to real estate records.”
“Yet another house down the street sold for almost $221,000. Lyons thinks Buena Vista raised the list price before the auction to drive bids higher.”
“‘It seems to me like that was put there so that if people started doing research on Hamilton Ridge for the auction, they’d think they were worth a lot more,’ Lyons said. ‘I think they did it to make people think they were getting a bargain when they were paying $275,000 or $250,000.’”
“‘I had done my research and seen that they had accepted offers at $220,000,’ Lyons said. ‘The price shot past that (at the auction) in under 10 seconds. These people thought they probably saved some money, but they didn’t.’”
“‘If I had known people were going to be this crazy, I would have made an offer beforehand,’ Lyons continued, ‘and saved myself a lot of trouble. I just didn’t expect people to be that careless or carefree with such a serious matter.’”
“Higgins said that because of the 1-percent deposits that will be due soon for auction winners, it’s likely that a few of the deals will fall through. And when they do, he said the houses will be back on the market.”
“‘And then I’ll walk down and offer $220,000,’ Lyons said.”
‘With more homes to choose from, home buyers increasingly took time to shop for a house. As a result, year-over-year home sales dropped 14 percent in 2007′
I recall the line during the boom was, that if they had more houses available, they could have sold even more.
The Idaho Statesman article is BS. Inventory falls every winter- there is no turnaround. Inventory dropped less than last year, 16% vs 19%, plus inventory is higher and sales are still down.
The newspaper always calls a RE office to get a quote for these puff pieces and never looks further into the data.
I laughed at that one too. In this part of the country there is almost NOTHING on the market over Xmas in a normal year. In Pullman, WA (8 mi from the ID border) we had ~15 homes on the market this time last year vs. 92 today. But by the logic cited above, our inventory has dropped 20% from July so perhaps things are picking up? Nice try!
“Their optimism is based on Intermountain MLS statistics indicating that show the housing inventory in Ada County is down by 1,000 homes since July and by 425 in Canyon County since August”
Were these houses that actually sold? Part of the normal winter dropoff or what? Otherwise, these numbers mean absolutely nothing.
Mostly winter drop-off. 1206 homes sold in Ada county in the 4th quarter, compared with 1901 in Q4 2006. Of course, no mention in the story that sales are off 37% compared to last year.
I’d like to meet the realtor who made 300k or even 200K in Idaho. What a complete crock of BS.
I only got a third of the way through this article and already I’m busting a gut laughing. I worked in the REIC for Sales and Marketing managers, they were the creme de la creme selling pricey new construction…and they didn’t earn 200k annually, in the PHL metro. The Veep who headed the dept. may have been closing in on 200k, but not the agents under her. (the veep got a cut of her subordinates’ sales).
and then this gem:
“His theory is that many real-estate agents who made $300,000 in 2005 saw their income cut to $200,000 in ‘07. ‘I don’t know of anybody that can take a $100,000 pay cut and be happy about it,’ Webb said.”
txchick57-
You sure got that right… I was so po’d when I read that I ran out and did a quick google search:
Earnings
The median annual earnings, including commissions, of salaried real estate sales agents were $39,760 in May 2006. The middle 50 percent earned between $26,790 and $65,270 a year. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $20,170, and the highest 10 percent earned more than $111,500.
BLS Data (2006)
Maybe 07 was a “banner” year for RE??
sarcasm off-
you ever get to minneapolis? it’d be fun to do a HBB meeting here (ok, maybe when it is warmer and we can sit outside at a sidewalk cafe on Nicollet Mall in downtown).
I love Minneapolis. In the summer or fall
Okay here’s a number for ya. The average American now owes the Chinese $4,000
http://agonist.org/sean_paul_kelley/20080111/average_american_owes_average_chinese_4000
Well, at least we owe them dollars. Suckers.
Yes, the average is some where in the $30k range. Probably less in ‘07! I’m thinking this guy added a zero. He is a realtor and they do have problems with math…I think we’ve established that.
Anyway here is some cocktail napkin numbers.
10,027 homes sold
average home price in Boise $310k (looked it up)
let’s be really generous and give the average commission 4% of sale price to realtor assuming no fees to the agency they work for, costs, etc.
Assuming this fools $200k/income claim that would mean a total of 621 realtors are working in the Treasure Valley region (defined as:Treasure Valley is a region in southwestern Idaho which includes the five-county Boise Metropolitan Area — Ada, Boise, Canyon, Gem and Owyhee, as well as Payette County and Washington County in Idaho and portions of Malheur County in eastern Oregon)
What a joke! But we all know that. More lies from the “experts”…
He must have misspoken 300k = 30k and 200k = 20k, that’s more believable.
BTW, what do you get in a .1 bath? A sponge?
“Indeed, a four-bedroom, 2.1-bath”
I can see a few people making over the last few years. Remember back a few years ago when Ben posted a story about Idaho RE agents going to Cali and closing millions in deals on their laptops for “investment homes”. Home prices in the better suburban areas of Boise shot up to$300k-500k to even $800k and up in pleaces like Eagle. Home prices in the highlands above Boise shot up to $1 million plus. With all of the equity and investory money coming into the state a few years ago, I can see how a few agents did pretty well.
Yep, people buying 6 or 7 houses over the phone, etc.
Ben, I actually was thinking along similar lines to Brandon, because of the chi-chi Idaho locales. (You know, don’t they ski there?)
However, the way the commission gets divvied up among the participating agents, brokers, and listing offices, an agent would have to sell 10 one million dollar homes a year to earn 200k, less their advertising and marketing expenses .
Even in the heat of the boom, I don’t know if inventory was turning over that fast.
Ben..That would be laughable if it was not so damm true .
Phillygal, right. Even the top top gun realtors here in Dallas making that are few and far between. And there is not shortage of houses @5M and up.
Its possible!!! The outright fraud in this industry is beyond belief.
The vested interest had lots of propaganda pumped out to the media for some time now. You would think everyone had 2-3 vacation homes they purchased just for themselfs. The realtors were just making hand over fist on commissions.
TORONTO REAL ESTATE
TheStar.com | GTA | The secret’s out on phantom bids
The secret’s out on phantom bids
The secret’s out on phantom bids ‘(The phantom bid) is one of the oldest tricks in the book’
MIKE DONIA, veteran Toronto realtor Registry, open bidding needed to stamp out phony offer scams, some realtors say
The incoming head of the Toronto Real Estate Board has come out swinging against phantom bidding tactics after denying they even existed when she ran for the job three months ago.
“It’s dirty realty, it really is,” Maureen O’Neill said of agents who fabricate offers during bidding wars. She is now calling on the Real Estate Council of Ontario (RECO) to yank the licences of agents convicted of using phony bids.
“Boot them out, we don’t need them in the business,” O’Neill said. “I don’t think these people should be allowed to sell real estate.”
Phantom bids can be used by selling agents to spark extra rounds of bidding or to spook potential buyers into rushing or raising offers. The practice is considered a breach of ethics under the Real Estate and Business Brokers’ Act of Ontario – administered by the Ontario council – and realtors who are caught can face hefty fines.
There are more than 52,000 real estate agents in Ontario (26,000 in Toronto) and last year they sold 194,793 existing homes in Ontario (84,872 in the Toronto market).
This phantom bidding crap can work both ways, y’know. We could line up our friends to underbid our lowball offers, and then we can underbid them!
“His theory is that many real-estate agents who made $300,000 in 2005 saw their income cut to $200,000 in ‘07. ‘I don’t know of anybody that can take a $100,000 pay cut and be happy about it,’ Webb said.”
I have a hard time thinking that someone who makes $200,000 isn’t happy with it. My salary is augmented by some rather generous bonuses on occasion. That doesn’t make the lean years any less rewarding. I’m paid well and I enjoy it regardless of how much better the year before was.
I hope whoever isn’t happy with $200k loses it all!
Incidentally one woman went from $268k down to a final $55k on deal or no deal. We see morons like her all the time
It made sense for her to try one more when she still had two $1M tickets out of the six remaining. When her next move eliminated one of the $1M tickets, she should’ve taken the $175K that was still being offered. I feel bad for the husband, who kept whining, “Take the deal. Take the deal.”
I told my parents that I would have “deal” at $268k. $175k was her last chance at serious money. She should have listened to her husband. I would seriously contemplete divorce with her greedy, selfish attitude. Ive heard on other message boards that at least 3 marriages soon failed after the contestant lost most/all of the fortune. I don’t blame them, I would divorce someone if they defied my pleas to walk away with a fortune and gambled it all. I do not want to be around stupid people like her kind, makes me and my parents so mad.
In lieu of a trout thrashing Webb should just be thrown into the Snake River. How pathetic.
I should clarify that I’m happy on well UNDER $200k per year. I figure that anything over the median for your area is pretty good, 2x the median is really good. Anything over 3x median is rich whether you decide to appreciate it or not.
I think I have a sure fire indicator as to when the property market has hit bottom: For the last 5 years, every 2 weeks to 1 month, several realtors in my area have been dropping promo-crap on my doorstep. Usually, in the form of a scratch pad or a calender or a key chain along with a news letter telling the reader that, “Now is a great time to buy.” For the last 4 months, not one piece of promo-crap has been dropped off outside my door. As a secondary indicator, I have noticed very few (if any) new For Sale signs in this area. However, a few For Sale signs have been replaced with For Lease signs. Obviously, the For Lease signs are put up by FB’s hop[ing to stay above water. I figure the lack of For Sale signs are because the property owner calls in the realtor, tells them they are looking to get “X” amount of dollars but the realtor tells them they can only get “Y” (less) amount of dollars IF they are lucky. If a realtor thinks the house will not sell for “X”, he/she sure isn’t going to accept the listing. Looks like phase 3 of the Elisabeth Kubler Ross “5 stages of grief” has either reached Stage One (Denial) or Stage Three (Bargaining)
noticed the same decreasing amount of real estate spin literature in my neck of woods cul-de-sacramento also. fewer door to door window sales peddlers also. maybe just the colder winter season but its not that cold around here. plenty of newspaper van loads of people still parking at the nearby community pool parking lot disgorging their cargo of doorknockers.
have noticed that walmart & lowes parking lots are getting swarmed by crews of hustlers pushing housing products, from home products to ARM mortgages. they pester you on the way in & the way out. irritating as hell - and whats amusing is when you bring it to the managers attn they claim ingnorance, yet the parking lot has many cart gatherers shuffling about in their drug induced comas oblivious to the world.
typical of retail managers attitude of dont care if it aint a problem right now I got better things on my bonus radar . . . !!
(at least the lowes in Citrus Heights is clean & orderly . . . the surrounding area Home Depots are effin PIGSTYES w/lazy clusters of bored employees. )
hillaryious - actually
My wife and I have enjoyed getting three calenders every year from three different realtoRs for some time now. It’s kind of been an ongoing joke, we put the calenders on our fridge (the small magnet kind of calenders) in a row and have one on the current month, one on the next month and one on the month after.
So, sometimes when we are standing around in the kitchen, we look and behold, the month has changed to the one shown on the second calender, so we rip off the page on all three calenders, so it shows the current month and the next two months.
Kinda stupid, but funny for us I guess. Anyway, we are now down to one calender this year. To be honest, I’m a bit disappointed.
I get postcards from one local agent. She’s been in the biz for almost 40 years, and I’ve talked to her several times over the years. Seems to be a straight shooter, and when it comes time to put the Arizona Slim Ranch on the market, I’ll definitely consider her.
az slim
thats a good real estate person to know; one that is in it for the long haul, values good transactions, and probably doesnt care much about one-night-stand deals that rip off the buyer!
people like that are truly agents & deserve respect. now, on balance, i have to say also maybe not quite 6% comish but at least a decent income. but she will easily make it up in volume w/repeat customers, not to mention all the good referrals.
My parents are also in denial that prices will fall more than another 10% then go back up “soon”
They argue that south Florida is “different” and “desirable” and has the warmest winter weather(true but irrevelent) I just shook my head and gave up arguing. I am not staying in Florida so it’s a moot point. I am not spending one dime on a house in Florida because those prices are a major ripoff.
My dad thinks Oil City/Franklin is a “hole in the ground” so I mentioned Pittsburgh and mom and dad say it’s cold.
I told them $200k will get you a 1200 square feet dump in the ghetto in south Florida or an upper class 3000+ square feet historic brick house on a big lot in a Pittsburgh suburb(or somewhere in Dallas/Houston) Who in their right mind would choose the dump?
also…..
TXchick, one important rule is never get emotionally attracted to a house. I think I said $125k would be fair price. I doubt they will short sell for $175k and besides that would still be overpriced, more so than many other houses I see for sale.
I would wait another year and im sure you can find your dream house for $125k by then.
It seems strange that a small percentage of houses in Texas are a ripoff but most of them are only slightly overpriced. Here in south Florida, every house is a ripoff!
(no one reads the boards at midnight so this is a repost)
Warmest winter = sweatiest summer, yuk!
FL is a horrible place to live year-round.
Not necessarily. It’s not in Florida in the summer, but it’s livable and rarely breaches 100 F, unlike Arizona or New Mexico. How do people stay alive in those states with 110 F being a common daytime temp?
I would take a stable 80-100F in the summer and 60-80F in the winter over the desert climate any day of the week, though I prefer temperate climate even better.
Ive yet to see “only” 80 degrees in the summer during the day in south FL. It’s always around 90 degrees give or take 3. I will agree that the desert climate is the worst, people die in 110 degree without a/c on 24/7
Id like to see my parents complain about the hot climate without a/c I have challenged people to go without a/c for a week in the summer in Florida and no one can do it. I did it for a week during the hurricane and it was the most miserable week ever, I was sweating nonstop and couldn’t sleep for more than a few hours. I would take 0 degrees over this, at least I can use firewood and a jacket to keep warm but you can’t keep cool without being immersed in water and I wasn’t about to fall asleep in the pool or tub(not safe)
I lived in So Fla 11 years without a/c. Instead of being 90 plus or minus 3 every day, it was 90 plus or minus 1 every day. We just got used to moving very slowly … and spending the hot part of the day in our (air-conditioned) places of business, or else at the beach.
I can’t stand anything over 70 degrees outside or over 78 degrees inside. I might not like the occasional cold winter day in Pennsylvania but I wouldn’t be surprised if this is more tolerable than the miserable Florida heat.
Well let your dad know that lenders like Chevy Chase are no longer originating in FL because the value/risk isn’t there. Major lenders pulling out of FL? that’ll leave a mark.
I also just saw that Indymac is closing 4 offices. 1100 people now on the job market.
Opps make that 5
Kansas City
Boston
Tampa
Philadelphia
Columbia
RE: 1100 people now on the job market.
Piker’s compared to the inital 24k let loose from Citi.
FED 5% unemployment totally bogus-given all the self-employed sub contractors employed in the boom.
Watch for SS revenues to crash.
As I just posted in another thread I’m worried about an investor friend. She went to a seminar last Saturday where the guru is signing people up to go south and buy condos in Biloxi, Mississippi and south Florida. She was excited because “so-and-so said Florida’s coming back ’cause foreigners from around the world are going to be coming in to buy there.” She was a bit taken aback by my skepticism and challenged it…..”what, you been reading something about it”??
Have tried introducing her to the HBB with no success so far.
Get out your clippers, this guy’s going to shave the inventory:
“‘I think the next 90 days are going to be critical. If we can shave another 16 percent off the inventory, that’s going to be huge.
Wanna bet inventory shoots up dramatically over the next 90 days? As it does EVERY spring.
I can see how he’s thinking along the lines of barber tools, cause reducing this inventory is going to require a slow bleed.
“At the age of 14, a Zoroastrian named Wilma ritualistically shaved my testicles — there really is nothing like a shorn scrotum — it’s breathtaking… I suggest you try it.”
Dr. Evil in Austin Powers
LMAO! Thanks for helping me get over the mid-afternoon blahs…
After todays market close a shorn scrotum sounds pretty good in comparison. Funny Stuff !
“not as bad out there as it seems”> if 12 houses are on a block and 8 are occupied that leaves 4 empty it seems that the block isn’t that bad 8 people live on this street? This is car salesman talk at its best, i hope i never go to a doctor and he says you got cancer but it is not as bad as it seems however it is just now entering a vital organ?
From the Jan 8, 2008 Daily Evergreen cover (WSU student newspaper):
“Spring challenges subleasers”
Summary: Pullman vacancy rates have shot up from a low of 1.1% at the start of 2005 to 6.4% at the start of 2007 and now it is almost impossible to sublet apartments. Apparently the bigger outfits are slashing rents mid-year to get space filled and students who rented at the start of the year can’t compete. (Okay, they can compete, but have to write a check every month to do so.)
So much for those rising rents… funny how the vacancy rate chart seems to follow the local housing bubble (the wave reached Pullman in 2004).
“four-bedroom, 2.1-bath, 2,261-square-foot home”
What do you get with a .1 bath?
Must be a stand alone toilet. Seen it before. One house had two extra toliets in the basement and a retractable plastic curtain to censor the user. 1.2 bathrooms
I grew up in a 30-foot silver bullet trailer. The bathroom was so small, that Daddy said you could shit, shower, and shave at the same time!
We once rented a house that had the (only) toilet sticking right out of the wall in the middle of the laundry room. In case you’re wondering, yeah, rent was cheap. There was an outdoor dunny to use as well, in case someone was ironing in the laundry when nature called.
Maybe it is a bedpan
Or a urinal in a closet.
a very low sink in the living room?
Naw, a foot bath for potential muslim buyers….
A bucket?
Open any window and “hang it out”. It makes for a very flexible 0.1 bathroom as most windows will work.
LOLOL I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought of that.
The number after the decimal point is for half-baths (toilet and sink). 3.2 baths is three full baths and two half-baths (powder rooms in builder-speak).
Then why do we see so many 2.5’s and 3.5 around here?
OK, I guess if it’s an x.5, that’s special and means 1 half bath. I always did wonder if 2 full + 2 half = 3.0 bath, and I guess not, eh?
And if half-bath is toilet-and-sink, is a shower-and-sink also a half bath? I lived in an apartment once where one of the half baths was the latter. (Would have rather a toilet than another shower, to be honest…) We even lived in (old) places where the toilet and shower were in separate rooms, European style I guess?
His theory is that many real-estate agents who made $300,000 in 2005 saw their income cut to $200,000 in ‘07. ‘I don’t know of anybody that can take a $100,000 pay cut and be happy about it,’ Webb said.”
I would have been happy to make $300K in 2005 and $200K in 2006. I think most people would be really happy to hit 100K for a year. Of course no one likes a decrease. But no sympathy for some clown that made that much and didn’t save a significant part for a ‘rainy’ day.
I’m sure even the 200k a year RE agent is sweting since I bet they dabbled in real estate and and probably holding on to a couple “upside down” house plus a lease on an Escalade, ski boat payments, snowmobile payment, timeshare at Tamarack Ski Resort, etc.
Intel reports bad numbers. Techs are being hammered. INTC, AMD, HPQ, DELL, CSCO, AAPL etc…
After being down 277 points today, we will open sharply lower tomorrow.
Watch out shorts, FED will make an emergency rate cut before options expiration on Friday… just a hunch…
Also, WCI is facing liquidity issues. Seriously down today. I heard a rumor that they reworked some lending arrangements out with their lenders and they just sold a $250 Million property. This will buy them some time. Might be a gamble but maybe you roll the dice with it so cheap and throw a few hundred or thousand at them?
american dream ?
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080115/rust_belt_woes.html?.v=3
So, if the poverty rate and unemployment rate of this town is so high, where is all the money coming from that is going into drugs?
People come in from other areas to make buys. Remember the movie Traffic? The scenes showing nice kids from the ‘burbs coming to the crummy section of Cincinnati to purchase drugs are what I’m referring to.
Yep, for 3 years running in the mid-1990’s East Palo Alto had the highest murder rate the country. It was due to all of the rich white folks from Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Atherton, etc… coming in to buy drugs, and poor blacks killing one another for market share.