There Is Only One Place To Go From Where We Are
It’s Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. “Nassau’s foreclosure-related filings last month jumped 113 percent from a year ago. Broker David Farrell, who on Saturday took house hunters on his first Long Island Foreclosure Tour in Nassau, said the higher figures reflect the bigger price increases in Nassau home sales during the boom years.”
“People who bought high during the hot market of three and four years ago now see their property values falling and are walking away from houses with mortgages worth more than their homes, Farrell said.”
“‘Last year at this time, people would ask you about foreclosures and you’d say, ‘Yeah, there are dozens of foreclosures, but there’s no use to them because they’re basically priced the same as the house next door.’ Now, all of a sudden, it’s insane. We went to a house in East Meadow, where the house next door was the identical split at $549,000 and we had the foreclosure to the right of it and it was $429,000,’ he said.”
“‘We have a fact where people now say, ‘I have a house. I paid $600,000 for it, and my next-door neighbor is paying $429,000. What am I doing here?,’ Farrell said.”
“Last month, St. Lucie County saw 1,529 homes entering some stage of foreclosure, up from 174 homes a year earlier. Some novice investors have walked away from homes that were worth less than what was owed on them, said Brad Hunter, director of West Palm Beach-based Metrostudy.”
“‘Even though it’s not official at the national level, it sure feels like a recession down here in these parts. Some people are just giving the keys back to the bank,’ Hunter said.”
“High-end auctions have become more common in affluent areas of Atlanta, where owners aren’t necessarily financially strapped, but want an option that can unload properties quickly.”
“A developer will auction 36 acres in north Fulton County approved for 23 home sites. The minimum bid is $1.5 million, about what the owner said he paid three years ago. The last asking price, when the property was offered through a conventional real estate sale, was $3.6 million.”
“Owner Steve Williams hired an auctioneer after the property languished for six months with a real estate agent. ‘I’m looking down the road,’ he said. ‘I’m carrying a lot of inventory. I want to handle it now.’”
“Britons on the Costa del Sol are suffering a measure of the pain which the end of the housing boom is causing across the wider Spanish economy. Sarah Smart is facing losing the home she thought would provide for her retirement.”
“‘We bought our house four years ago when everything was booming and there was plenty of work,’ says Sarah. ‘We bought it as a pension really and things have dried up and we are waiting for it to be repossessed. Its been on the market for two years. It started out at 495,000 euros and its now down to 360,000 and still we can’t sell it.’”
“Thousands of new flats in the Czech Republic are waiting for owners. Bankers and real estate brokers estimate the number to be higher than 5,000. Analysts say the number of empty flats will increase in the years to come.”
“‘Demand for new homes is already falling. This is due not only to more expensive mortgages, but also to the reform which has raised costs,’ says Jaroslav Novotný, president of the Association of Real Estate Offices.”
“The Association of Real Estate Investment Companies organizes the Eight Turkish Real Estate Summit on June 4-5 at the Swissotel Istanbul. ‘Turkey’s real estate sector has developed within the last three years and it is continuing to grow. We see nothing to fear about concerning the growth of the sector. Istanbul will keep to be the star of the real estate. And also Turkey have a great real estate potential which guarantees the next 100 years,’ said Nurhan Azizoğlu, GYODER’s vice chairman.”
“Some NT$120 billion worth of new houses will be on sale from May 15 to June 15, a property market research firm said yesterday, dispelling fears that Taiwan’s housing market is facing a bubble.”
“Ni Tsu-jen, R&D director of My Housing, said in Taipei City, prices will continue to be at a high due to a lack of land and strong demand from mainland China real estate developers who have expressed tremendous interest in Taipei City’s housing market.”
“‘Taipei City will only see a rise in housing prices,’ Ni said. ‘Talks about a bubble are baseless.’”
“The real estate market on Guam slowed during the first quarter of 2008, compared to its performance during the same period last year, according to a report. The same report, however, noted that housing prices hit an ‘all-time high’ here on Guam, which is in stark contrast to the situation on the mainland.”
“Canada’s cooling real-estate sector is slowly moving toward a more balanced market - but there won’t be any bust like that seen in the U.S. following the subprime mortgage crisis, Scotiabank economist Adrienne Warren said.”
“‘First, home prices in Canada are not substantially overvalued,’ she pointed out. ‘Second, there is still little evidence of widespread speculative home buying that often accompanies the late stages of a housing boom.’”
“Manhattan meets the Prairies in a commercial-residential building on Broadway Avenue that developers are calling ‘hip’ and ‘contemporary.’”
“The LUXE, as it has been dubbed, is firmly aimed at the higher-end condo apartment market in Saskatoon, although Meridian partner Colleen Wilson says the starting price for 15 units is competitive with other projects, starting at around $450,000. In total, 24 condo units will be developed, with the three penthouse ’sky estates’ units likely priced at more than $1.3 million.”
“The company was working on plans for a building at least four storeys higher. However, the company backed off because construction costs are much greater for structural work the higher a building goes, partner Karl Miller said.”
“‘The (condo) pricing in Saskatoon at that time — a year and a half ago — was nowhere near where it is today,’ he said. ‘If we had known where the pricing was going for housing in Saskatoon we would have been fine to build that building. At the time, the indication was that pricing would never get to this level.’”
“The only thing everyone seems to be able to agree on, is that 2008 is certainly different from the previous two years in the real estate industry in Calgary. Record numbers of homes are for sale.”
“‘That clearly shows speculators who had been in the market are trying to sell now,’ says Don Campbell, who has written a couple of books on Canadian real estate. ‘There will always be ‘Chicken Littles.’ The market is cyclical, and it’s just taking a deeper breath right now.’”
“It’s becoming more difficult to sell your house in Tulsa and across the state. Kevin Gullett says he’s enjoyed living in his midtown home for about eight years, but for the last six months, Kevin has been trying to get someone else to do the same. ‘I have some big time medical bills and I’m not able to make the payments on it, so I’m selling it so I can get my equity back before foreclosure… I had two price reductions and I’m going to do another one here next week.”
“Kevin says he’s not alone. Many of his neighbors are also having trouble selling their houses. Realtor Darryl Baskin says the economy is part of the equation. ‘Things like the financing, the availability of funds, has changed. So where you have ready willing and able buyers, the able might not be there.’”
“The housing market is struggling and the economy is limping along at a snail’s pace. Not exactly the best time to launch a showcase of $1 million-plus homes, right? Actually, the timing is great, according to organizers of the upcoming Twin Cities Luxury Home Tour.”
“Jeff Schoenwetter, principal of an Eden Prairie-based luxury home builder, concedes that the housing industry is ‘definitely in a recession.’ Still, he’s confident that the darkest days for local homebuilders are in the rearview mirror.”
“‘History will prove that the summer of 2008 was the very best time to make a housing investment,’ said Schoenwetter. ‘The fortunate thing is there is only one place to go from where we are, and that is up.’”
“Construction of U.S. single-family houses in April dropped to the lowest level in 17 years. Lower prices and other incentives have yet to revive demand for houses, indicating builders will need to come up with even more discounts to attract buyers.”
“‘The trends are horrific,’ said economist Ian Shepherdson. ‘There’s just no reason things are getting any better. Why would you buy a house? Why would you spend money to buy a depreciating asset?’”
“The victimization narrative that is turning turbulence in the housing market into a morality tale involves borrowers victimized by ‘predatory’ lenders. The narrative remains murky because there is scant information about the percentage of currently distressed borrowers who were untruthful about their incomes or net worth when talking to lenders.”
“One symptom of the ‘crisis’ is that housing prices have fallen. Do young couples struggling to purchase their first homes concur with the sudden consensus that the decline in prices is a national misfortune?”
“The Economist reports: ‘Monthly payments on a typical house with a 30-year mortgage and 20 percent downpayment were 18.5 percent of the median family’s income in February, down from almost 26 percent at the peak.’ By this measure of housing affordability, the ‘crisis’ is welcome.”
“Are we to assume that last year, when housing prices were, say, 10 percent higher than they are now, they were exactly right? If so, why is that so? Because the market had set those prices, therefore they were where they belonged? But if the market was the proper arbiter of value then, why is it not the proper arbiter now? Whatever happened to the belief, way back in 2007, that there was a housing ‘bubble?’”
Kind of a hectic end of another great week, with the software change and all. My thanks to those who support this blog. Be sure and check back this weekend. And if you are having any problems posting, please let me know and keep trying; that’s the only way I can fix the system.
Ben,
I just cant say thanks enough. The reason I came here was to learn, the reason I come back is to keep learning. The blog has become, for me, one of the better tools in my meager toolbox.
Time well spent.
I came for the oven-baked brownies and stayed to feed the squirrels.
ZING!
Seriously though, you have no idea how difficult these squirrels can be.
http://kwc.org/blog/archives/resources/2006/jedi.squirrels.jpg
–
“‘History will prove that the summer of 2008 was the very best time to make a housing investment,’ said Schoenwetter. ‘The fortunate thing is there is only one place to go from where we are, and that is up.’”
Is this guy desperate or morally bankrupt?
Jas
He is a moron, just like many of the other idiots the MSM likes to quote in their real estate shill pieces.
Real estate shill pieces?
For nostalgia, or just for fun, here’s an MSM real estate MORON list:
-Alan Greenspan
-Janet Yellen
-Senator Dodd
-Rep Frank
-David Leareh
-Leslie Appleton-Young
-Fun Yun
-Mark Zandi
-Sean Snaith
-Barbara Corcoran
-Lots of white males in their 30’s, 40’s and 50’s on CNBC, led by Jim Cramer
-Alan Gin
-Lots, but not all, of REIC members quoted by the “real estate” writers/columnists at The New York Times, the Boston Globe and the San Francisco Chronicle
-Diane Swonk
Please feel free to add others…
Gary Watts
How about that lady in the purple suit who was arguing with Peter Schiff because “You can’t talk to people about numbers” and “I’ve been talking to people on the streets”?
Dick Gaylord, the new NAR president
jeff from SDICA
How about “Suzanne who reasearched this”
I think a lot of people will think what he is saying is right as the media has been touting that the worst is OVER for financials. The stock market has rebounded and doing well all over the world basically Chindia and all these new ETFs are playing a role in it. Moreover FNM has lowered down payment requirements that speculators can get in again. WTF is going on? I just can’t get a house that is priced right. I have been thinking about getting for the last 7-8 years and a lot of these MFers have wasted 8 years of my useful life and another 2-3 more to go.
I think you need to get a grip. Just be glad the mob hasn’t gone facist yet. It could be worse. We have had no Mao, Stalin or Hitler, life is good.
You would’ve made an excellent red coat.
Yeah, and my breasts are getting perkier with age, too.
Pictures for evidence ?
Link??
“‘History will prove that the summer of 2008 was the very best time to make a housing investment,’ said Schoenwetter. ‘The fortunate thing is there is only one place to go from where we are, and that is up.’”
I think he will need a lots of VIAGRA to move it up from here …
“‘History will prove that the summer of 2008 was the very best time to make a housing investment,’ said Schoenwetter. ‘The fortunate thing is there is only one place to go from where we are, and that is up.’”
He might need a lots of VIAGRA to move it up from here…
I finally closed on a 3/2.5 short sale in S. Florida for 260k. This house sold in late 05′ for 410k. I put 20% down and my monthly payment is $2100. Rentals in this area go for about $1800-$2200.
For the people who think I am a moron, I will say that I am really sick of paying rent. This is something that has to be considered. I was writing a rent check every month to a company that was rasing my rent 5% a year. Eventually the deal makes sense. I thought that I would share my experience here with others. Good luck to the people looking to buy. I would reccomend looking into short sales. Despite taking three months, the process went fast once it was approved.
K
“I finally closed on a 3/2.5 short sale in S. Florida for 260k. This house sold in late 05′ for 410k. I put 20% down and my monthly payment is $2100. Rentals in this area go for about $1800-$2200.”
Is your mortgage rate 12%?
Mortgage is a 30 year fixed @ 6.125%.
K
Result:
Monthly payment: 30 Years
Interest rate: 6.125%
Loan amount: $ 208,000.00
$ 1,263.83 a month
..and the other $800+ would be for..?
I have a tax bill based on the 2005 selling price - 7K per year. I need to work on getting this down. There is an appeal process.
K
It’s a family responsibility to put a happy spin on everything. His name, in German, means, “Beautiful Weather”.
“‘History will prove that the summer of 2008 was the very best time to make a housing investment,’ said Schoenwetter. ‘The fortunate thing is there is only one place to go from where we are, and that is up.’”
This MoFo has me rip snortin’ pissed off. Hey NYCB, doesn’t this moron hail from your stompin’ grounds? WTF!!!
Shouldn’t there be some sort of inflection point in the statistics before before we declare the summer of ‘08 the bottom? Every month the numbers get worse: sales lower, prices lower, inventory up, and foreclosures up. And what fundamentals will make the summer of ‘08 the bottom?
Fundamentals? Data? That makes too much sense.
Arent ppl below a certain income level getting $500 or some such from the government soon? Problem solved.
And what fundamentals will make the summer of ‘08 the bottom?
Santa is scheduled to come early.. around July. He’s going to gather up all the builder’s unsold homes and condos, toss them in his bag and take them to the North Pole.
That could happen in a certain way. Hurricanes may come and gather up homes and condos and toss them in the ocean. It’s a little less efficient since a hurricane can’t tell which houses are on the market.
At this point, the bottom callers/serial optimists seem to be reassuring themselves by touting decreases in the magnitude of the rate of acceleration. It’s a shame that math edumacation in this country is so sorely lacking or someone in the MSM might actually bring up that calling a bottom is nonsensical until the second derivative changes sign.
“At this point, the bottom callers/serial optimists seem to be reassuring themselves…”
Last year it was soft landing and flat prices. Now it’s calling the bottom. Just more MSM dribble.
Ahhh, the second derivative. My favorite calculus concept.
Not the second derivative - the first derivative (also called slope): negative = down, positive = up.
Help me remember - any math/physics teachers/wonks out there?? Is this correct??:
First derivative= the rate of change or acceleration
Second derivative=the rate of the rate of change??? or velocity
(Yes, I could look it up but I have problems with momentum (aka laziness…)
In simple terms, a derivative is the rate of change of the thing it is deriving…
The first derivative is the rate of change of something at a point of time (eg slope of the line.)
The second derivative is the rate of change in the first derivative at a point in time, or the rate that the slope is actually changing (ie acceleration or deceleration)
The third derives the second, so it’s the rate of change in the rate of change in the slope of the line,
etc…
“‘History will prove that the summer of 2008 was the very best time to make a housing investment,’ said Schoenwetter. ‘The fortunate thing is there is only one place to go from where we are, and that is up.’”
Unless the price has fallen to zero or the property or land is toxic, there is still room to go down. For most areas, there is still plenty of room to go down and plenty of factors to keep pushing it in that direction.
“‘History will prove that the summer of
20082015 was the very best time to make a housing investment,’Sorry, but I just couldn’t let that typo persist.
Got Popcorn?
Neil
“Sarah Smart is facing losing the home she thought would provide for her retirement.”
Is Sarah’s middle name Notso?
She wrote that she figured it would act as a pension? What the eff?
Homes are not investments. They are assets which depreciate. They require huge debt services and constant maintinence. They increase in price along the lines of inflation. Local prices may cause a home’s value to increase if something about that location changes, a.k.a. some profitable company moves in or they find oil under the foundation. But you’d have to time the market to buy when prices are normalized and then sell after the value of the area went up due to that circumstance.
People thinking their homes could just spout cash get exactly what they deserve, a losing play.
No, she meant the other definition of pension -
pension 2 [pon-syon]
Noun
(in France and some other countries) a relatively cheap boarding house [French: extended meaning of pension grant]
I noticed that also.
I have to confess, I take great delight in seeing the names of the dipsh1ts quoted. Usually, they are the SurRealtors.
I got a chuckle today from a license plate. It was a Virginia tag with a “realtor” plate….and on it was written simply “Ethics”. I literally laughed out loud.
No, her middle name is Get.
“Second, there is still little evidence of widespread speculative home buying that often accompanies the late stages of a housing boom.’”
“Record numbers of homes are for sale.” ‘That clearly shows speculators who had been in the market are trying to sell now,”
These two quotes in the same posting. I love it Ben!!!
Alberta’s doubling and tripling of prices over the past 5 years is starting to bust up big time, but the talking heads and “economists” are so clueless! It’s actually sad to read about the same bs in the US media 2 years ago, and our publicly quoted retards do not see the pattern.
“‘The trends are horrific,’ said economist Ian Shepherdson. ‘There’s just no reason things are getting any better. Why would you buy a house? Why would you spend money to buy a depreciating asset?’”
Maybe because you have little skin in the game, as your down payment is artificially low due to govt policy, in violation of prudent lending principles.
Heard from someone that I trust, that works for a national company that has an interest in knowing…..
Nationwide Foreclosure filings, April 2008 = 230,000
This person trusts and believes the number. Any place to verify?
Ben should be able to help with this one. He has a foreclosure website: http://getforeclosures.blogspot.com/
Oooo! Look at the Ben photo! We need that one for the official Ben Beefcake Calendar.
The dipshits at FNMA certainly aren’t winning any IQ points with that one. They probably think that they can prevent embarrassing foreclosures by allowing new FBs into the market. All that’s gonna happen is they will exacerbate their own financial diarrhea and possibly provide the DA a little more ammunition to use when the people start to get really angry.
“One symptom of the ‘crisis’ is that housing prices have fallen. Do young couples struggling to purchase their first homes concur with the sudden consensus that the decline in prices is a national misfortune?”
*****
I’ll leave it to others to define whether we are “young”, but we seem as if we are the only people I know who think house price declines are a positive development.
The Real Estate Kool-Aid in California is made with a thick syrup, particularly in the Alt-A Bay.
The “entitlement” feeling I get from those who cannot recall the last housing downturn is astounding. Even the very well educated still expect aggressive FFR rate cuts to be forthcoming and for them to invigorate the housing market.
Others still say the slowdown in house price growth in SF and in Marin “is temporary” and will climb back up again.
I know the various Dodd-Schumer-Frank-Clinton proposals are designed to do all this, to lift a falling market - but c’mon.
Where is the reality? Why does most everyone here seem to be in a state of denial? To even those who financially, in the end even with a good recession, it will hardly matter?
It has to be the local flavor of Kool-Aid.
Those many years being served by our beloved members of the REIC?
Or is it just that the serial bubble riding locally seems to go on forever? That the Fed will always “bail” with lower rates?
Wake up San Francisco Bay Area!!
This housing bubble and era of credit expansion is over. For good.
Amen.
My wife and I are moving to jobs in Walnut Creek, great salaries, secure positions, and we looked briefly at some houses in the Lamorinda area and were shocked. We’re coming from NYC, so we are familiar with overpricing, but the level of delusion was pretty incredible. 3/2 on .35 acre plot $1.3-1.4 million, very little available under $800,000. Our agent took us to see a couple of “higher-end” (as he referred to them) properties, including a $1.7 million 4 bedroom ranch on about 0.7 acres in Lafayette. The house was quite nice, modern, comfortable, and the family, with 3 kids, had moved south. But $1.7 million??
So the interesting thing is that I just saw the house listed on Craigslist for rent for $6800 a month (also crazy). The house previously had languished on MLS for about 6 months without a price drop. I’ve seen several other properties, even ones well over $1 million, that recently have started showing up on CL with exorbitant rents, probably just enough to cover their mortgage nut. The thing is, I don’t think there is a market for these kinds of rental prices. Eventually these crazy prices will come down, I’m thinking into the fall/winter ‘08 as reality starts to hit that these prices are completely out of line with stagnant incomes and stricter lending standards.
Must hurt to write a check every month for $6000 plus on an empty house… We’ll be happy renters for a year.
Every now in then, I drink too much diet Coke and go on a craigslist harassment campaign. Whenever I find a wishful LL like the one you described, I send him an eReaming. You should try it, it is SO FUN.
It sounds like he actually has a life and better things to do with his time. Try it.
Hi txchick57.
Good to see you’re out and about.
-Big V
Good thing I’m not drinking a Diet Coke. Or anything else, for that matter. Woulda snorted it out thru my nose :-).
Oooooh - Is this going to be a Friday night drinking and verbally catfighting for the girls?
Diet Coke is nice but it gives me hangovers. (Really - the stuff gives me serious headaches.)
Might be the aspertame. Try Diet Coke with Splenda - my headaches stopped.
Try mixing some Capt. Morgan in that Diet Coke for more fun !
Yeah, but if you keep making me laugh, I’ll snort it out through my nose.
eReaming?
What’s that?
Lamorinda has not gone down yet and things are still selling. WHY? Because they have some of the best public schools in the state, lots of stay home moms volenteering in the classrooms and hugh amounts of money donated to schools by parents. The $3200 a month I pay in rent is way less than 3 kids in private school
As long as the rent-to-buy calculation doesn’t work out, then there is a bubble and it will pop. From DataQuick:
- Lafayette median price per square foot: -21.8% y-o-y
- Moraga median price per square foot: -5.1% y-o-y
- Orinda median price per square foot: -8,3% y-o-y
Lamorinda absolutely has gone down yet.
sf jack, I hear you.
These Bay Areaholes have got to go. Hopefully to Arizona (no offense, Ben). Let them remain in denial till they turn blue in the face. Reality is, prices are falling, and falling prices beget falling prices. I know plenty who are elated at the crash, but they are afraid to say anything for fear of their baby boomer bosses and parents showering scorn upon them. If you speak in hushed tones and communicate through secure channels, you can find them. They are OUT THERE.
I know one baby boomer who is happy RE prices are falling
“Last month, St. Lucie County saw 1,529 homes entering some stage of foreclosure, up from 174 homes a year earlier.”
And it is only going to get worse from there. Already, in some of Ben’s past posts, we’re hearing that some counties in Florida are struggling to keep up on the paperwork and are seriously backlogged. And yet there’s a whole tsunami of foreclosures ready to come down the pipeline. I’ve been wondering what THAT’s going to look like in Florida. Not to mention the situation at the many condos and HOAs where order is breaking down already. Even in my relatively stable, older condo where I’m renting, some owners are stiffing the association and renting their units out without permission, thumbing their noses at the system. When people feel like they’ve got nothing left to lose, they’ll do whatever they want. The mortgage fraud is so rampant, essentially nothing is being done about it.
I don’t mean to be alarmist, but these are some serious cracks in the facade known as the rule of law. Well, what did anyone expect? When there are no real penalties, when the fraudsters get rewarded for what they are doing, when the FED props up investment banks that are parasitic and deserve to die an ugly death, when it gets so crazy that something like illegal immigration is actually even up for debate and similar points of law are flouted, we’ve pretty much had it.
Meanwhile, I’m gonna start looking for a sqaut ahead of the expiration of my lease.
Don’t worry, Palmie. When the going gets tough, us Californians will just swoop in and take Florida over. Then we can all just get stoned together, and everything will be fine. No worries.
Palmy - that St. Lucie number is a 9X increase - what else can we imagine that (a) matters a lot to everyone who reads the rag and (b) could go up by a factor of 9 in a year and not be front-page headlines for days on end?
Recently I ran into an old acquaintance who is an agent and he was proud to have sold someone a condo in a building that I’m guessing was 95% flipper-owned. Very few lights at night. Wonder how he’s gonna feel when that client gives him feedback on how owners are not paying up and monthly fees are skyrocketing.
Got a tip on the guy that bought 20 houses in 6 months in 2005 and has now had 6 taken in foreclosure….
Emilio M Justo
http://recorder.maricopa.gov/recdocdata/GetRecDataPgDn.aspx?&rec=0&suf=&nm=justo+emilio+&bdt=01/01/1947&edt=5/16/2008&cde=ALL+TYPES&set=250&res=True
Laser eye doc and cosmetic laser center.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mvC1SoH7tg
What’s his sister’s name? Just Emily?
“‘We have a fact where people now say, ‘I have a house. I paid $600,000 for it, and my next-door neighbor is paying $429,000. What am I doing here?,’ Farrell said.”
……
I believe the term is “losing money”. Baseball players call it “taking one for the team”. Prisoners call it “being the wife”. The NAR calls it “building equity, one decade at a time.” Good luck with that doubling of your home every ten years.
Prisoners call it “being the wife”.
We call it taking the Joshua Tree. With cayenne pepper.
Time for all of those who planned to screw the next generation to pay up.
Its not done. The latest, the first coworker who is ‘underwater’ is going to buy a McMansion! Oh… nice and convenient to his primary work location, single floor living, etc. Its even a low ball bid to the bank that owns the foreclosure. But… He already owns a home nearby that, as he put it, he’ll never be able to sell.
I’m going to plow through this bottle of Merlot until I understand that line of thinking. (Shakes head and realizes one more tidbit on why real estate downturns are so slow…)
Got Popcorn?
Neil
“until I understand that line of thinking.”
Heads I win, tails you lose.
Buys this new home and lets the old one he can never sell go back to the bank. I just wonder what bank will loan him money when he has a mortgage already?
Just draw up some fake lease documents… pooof, no problem.
“Not exactly the best time to launch a showcase of $1 million-plus homes, right? Actually, the timing is great, according to organizers of the upcoming Twin Cities Luxury Home Tour.”
Tornado hits, great time to buy !
Flooding, great time to buy !
Record snowfall, great time to buy !
Zombie attack, great time to…..Argh my brains !
LMAO! Thanks, I needed a good zombie attack joke.
rob
I know Big V will share my sadness today with the passing of Robert Mondavi. Just like with the grapes he smashed to produce the choicest California wines, may his prune-esque body be a symbol of a worthy life nourished in the sun. I can clearly remember my first taste of that sweet nectar, the smell of that cork, and the oak-like finish that still brings tears to my eyes. So yes, I salute you Robert Mondavi, for showing the world the best of what California has to offer. Corks up everybody for our fallen comrade in grapes!
Let’s ferment the corpse.
Did someone say prune juice? I feel an intestinal movement just thinking about it. Delicate yet fortified, that is how I like my juice. One last toast to the wine master, the closest thing we have to royalty here in California!
Er, excuse my wasted youth but didn’t he and Gallo brothers popularize
(Shudder) “Jug” Wines in the 70’s ? I remember stocking huge gallon jugs of the stuff when I worked in a discount liquor store in HS.
I believe that lovely eulogy calls for uncorking a bottle now. There are such interesting family stories, intrigue and feuds in one of the big wine families - I think it’s them. Rock on Vintner Mondavi!
wiki has a page on the man.. seems to have been a nice enough fellow, deserved of some respect.. and a smart businessman. Sold out for $1.4 billion or so a few years ago.
There’s no wine around here, but I’ll take a swig of Remy in his honor. Salud!
Istanbul will keep to be the star of the real estate. And also Turkey have a great real estate potential which guarantees the next 100 years,’ said Nurhan Azizoğlu, GYODER’s vice chairman.”
“‘Taipei City will only see a rise in housing prices,’ Ni said. ‘Talks about a bubble are baseless.’”
I see we passed to Cool Aide to Turkey and Taiwan for the next 100 years….good!
I can’t think of a more charming place I would want to be at night than in a 40 story condo overlooking the Taipei mudflats when the big one comes in the middle of the night Ni Tsu-jen.
“Hey honey…What’s Mandarin for Oh $h@T Momma …Earthquake !?!?!”
De-Fawlty Towers…
“Britons on the Costa del Sol are suffering a measure of the pain which the end of the housing boom is causing across the wider Spanish economy. Sarah Smart is facing losing the home she thought would provide for her retirement.”
“‘We bought our house four years ago when everything was booming and there was plenty of work,’ says Sarah. ‘We bought it as a pension really and things have dried up and we are waiting for it to be repossessed. Its been on the market for two years. It started out at 495,000 euros and its now down to 360,000 and still we can’t sell it.’”
“‘We bought our house four years ago when everything was booming and there was plenty of work,’ says Sarah. ‘We bought it as a pension really and things have dried up and we are waiting for it to be repossessed. Its been on the market for two years. It started out at 495,000 euros and its now down to 360,000 and still we can’t sell it.’”
Economically spain scares me. More than Florida. More than the bubble in Bentonville. For its going to change more mentalities around the globe than “its a US downturn.”
Got Popcorn?
Neil
OK, so it’s not a crash, then? It’s just the painful end of a boom. That makes me feel like eating ice cream. Peach ice cream, to be precise. How blessed we all are to be sitting here on a hot day at the end of a boom with peaches on the trees thinking in our brains about all the booming boomfullness of our times and in our futures because there will always be demand for maps so you should you buy now or be lost forever, you know, but if a man has his map then he can always find the peaches and then he’ll always be able to find the good surf spots too, and then he can show me and I can watch him surf and we can use our good will to help people with less-than-perfect credit. That’s where I’m coming from.
Is there some giant, intergalactic real estate school out there taught by aliens from outer space who have studied the human condition long enough to figure out that this line never stops working?
Coming SOON , Constantinople Condos from the Byzantium Brothers ! Reserve your Condo now and avoid The Iconoclast controversy sure to be suffered by later buyers !
This has been my claim for a while now. The affordability crisis is ending. The real crisis was that prices were too high. Not the other way around.
“The Economist reports: ‘Monthly payments on a typical house with a 30-year mortgage and 20 percent downpayment were 18.5 percent of the median family’s income in February, down from almost 26 percent at the peak.’ By this measure of housing affordability, the ‘crisis’ is welcome.”
“Are we to assume that last year, when housing prices were, say, 10 percent higher than they are now, they were exactly right? If so, why is that so? Because the market had set those prices, therefore they were where they belonged? But if the market was the proper arbiter of value then, why is it not the proper arbiter now? Whatever happened to the belief, way back in 2007, that there was a housing ‘bubble?’”
He is still playing games. He is picking February for a reason. As the SocGen rouge trader story was about to break, rates went crazy low. I locked in 15 year loan at 4.75%. 30 year were dang close to 5%. They are now back above 6%.
Much of the improved affordability is again gone. It will take another 20% drop in prices to get it back.
Re the Atlanta high-end “auction”:
“…he feels he’ll do better just to sell it, and take his lumps if he has to, but hopefully not.”
Wanna bet he takes his lumps? Bet he considers that breaking even, which ain’t gonna happen. And I wager he won’t get that place sold, because he’ll keep a reserve price on it. Auction, my a–.
Here in Atltanta, the market is as frustrating as ever. We are seeing some nice reductions in pricing but more common is the listing that has languished for 6 months and the owner / agent shaving 10k off the price. I have news for you honey, if your house is priced at 600k and you’re not getting any offers, you may want to consider taking more than 10k off the asking price. Just a thought.
Is anyone else seeing this in their markets? This is so common here, it boggles the mind. It is laughable but also infuriating at the same time. Infuriating because of the lack of logic it implies more than anything else.
If your house were merely 10k over priced, you probably would get an offer. If your not getting an offer on your “$600K” house, more than likely, it is time to visit the confessional.
Enjoy the weekend.
Here in Tucson, there’s a house that’s had a “reduced price” rider on its sign since September 2006.
Here in Tucson, there’s a house that’s had a “reduced price” rider on its sign since September 2006.
LMAO. Those are my favorite. I think we’ve all seen those in our neighborhoods. Here in a nice part of ATL, this old guy has this old ranch style house on about an acre FSBO. I called him on it as we’re lookin’.
It’s down the street from where I’m renting a place for the time being, and as I was speaking with him, I realized he had the price written on the sign: $875k
I politely told him that was out of our price range. I think he is under the impression that a builder was going to take him out. Could happen, but not likely as metro ATL has a 10 yr supply of lots for sale. This is a particularly nice neighborhood and one of the last to realize, as a whole, what was happening all around them. I’ve seen tear downs go for 450k as recently as 4 months ago. No kidding.
Anyway, it has been for sale for almost 2 years now. I see that same “reduced” sign every time my dog shits on his lawn.
Man, I love this dog.
I think he is “down” to like 575 or some bullshit number like that. I’m sure in his mind, he is taking a beatin’.
What a joke.
possible dup posting:
Here in Tucson, there’s a house that’s had a “reduced price” rider on its sign since September 2006.
LMAO. There is an old guy in my hood with an old rancher FSBO on about an acre. It’s been on the market for 2 years. Originally, it was listed at $825k or in that range. It’s a beautiful part of ATL and one of the last to feel/acknowledge the downturn, even though it was apparent with 120 plus spec homes in a few blocks all over 500k for sale.
Well, this guy has had a “reduced” sign on his lot for the past 18 months or so. Reduced to 575k or something like that. We walk by his house every night, and my dog loves to take a big shit right on his lawn. Man, I love this dog.
I digress; anyway, this hood is so toast. The last lot I saw here sell was a tear down for 450k. No kidding. That was about 4-5 months ago.
I’m sure this old guy with the rancher feels like he is taking a beating too; reducing his price from 825k to the 500’s.
Now even the kool aid drinkers here in town realize the market is screwed, even in the nicest sub markets.
If you want to see people in denial, check out zip 30319 and search houses for sale over 500k.
Wow, you’re not kidding! I thought Atlanta was supposed to be a “non-bubbling” area.
My sister is attempting to sell her house. It’s been on the market for 9 months with very few showings. We are now in prime selling season for VT, it’s on MLS, and still no showings. I’ve told her so often that she needs to lower the price that she anticipates my advice when she complains about the selling process. *grin*
My sister is a fairly rational person, I think, but she’s just not budging on significantly on the price. The problem is that people feel financial savvy for “waiting it out”, even with no lookers, even if they themselves were in a bidding war to buy the house. (My sister “snatched up” her house before it was listed in MLS.)
My very speculative guess is that at some point people will get as panicky all together as they were manic to buy houses. At that point the floor will drop out completely. The hard part is waiting for that moment because it’s hard to predict when it will happen or what actual piece of news/event might cause people to think that they’ll be trapped in/by their houses.
I looked at houses in VT a while back when I was contemplating a job move back to the east coast. I’ve never seen such run down, oddly designed and expensive crap houses before and I live in San Jose for god sake. I would have needed to buy an empty lot and build something and that killed the deal. What is with VT being expensive ? , it’s cold cold cold and has short summers and is literally the boondocks of America.
Where were you looking? The area you were looking in makes a big difference. VT has crappy old houses in expensive areas, some nice old houses in cheap areas, and a ton of mobile homes.
VT is in part so expensive because of the “I wanna second/vacation home in VT” phenomena from NYC and the Boston area. At the height of the bubble it was totally possible to buy extract the equity from a house in that area and buy a house in VT outright. If the market was just locals, I suspect the housing market would look much more like upstate NY or the Ohio/mid-west/Detriot area.
Another reason in non-tourist areas is that it has gotten significantly more complex to buy/build a house in the last 20 years or so. There are now layers of regulation, zoning, etc that go with even small building projects. I don’t know how difficult/easy it is to build compared to other states but it does have an affect on costs.
anyone else seeing this ..my guess is everyone who bothers to look is seeing it.
Sellers are kinda like the wildebeest who ran into a pack of lions. He runs like hell but a set of jaws clamps onto his hindquarters.. Something heavy jumps onto his back. He’s tough and loves life and is not going down voluntarily.. to do so is to die. There’s still hope of shaking them off. Another lion jumps on .. and another.. one grabs his throat and cuts off his air supply. Finally he succumbs to his fate.
Similarly, prices won’t fall unless and until they are dragged down by the weight of numbers.
.. all of which puts me in the mood for a thick, juicy steak.. make it rare, please.
Even out in Villa Rica, which is a heck of a commute with gas so high, look at all the houses priced over $350K. No way, no how there is enough salary being paid to sell most of those houses at anywhere near what they’re asking. There’s just too much land, closer in, that is still available and I suspect it currently is noticeably cheaper to have an identical new house built than to pay what these FBs owe on theirs.
I’ll clear a bit of desk myself:
Got an update from North Kohala, Big Island, Hawaii.
News is not good, the lay-offs have begun at the local hotels, business is shutting down, and low and behold….house prices are tanking.
This is a really tiny community, when I left about 3 years ago…the concensus was…we are all gonna be millionairs. Turns out…gonna be just like everybody else.
It really is different on the Big Island, its hard to get too and out of, its hard to make a living….and now the VOG has arrived in the north. The Vog and the croaky frog to North Kohala, glad I made it out realtively unscathed.
I wonder if high fuel costs will kill tourism substantially ?
Already under way. My brother-in-law works for a major resort on Maui and says they are “hosed”. Cancellations for conventions/gatherings are rolling in daily. Why? “Cheap” airfare from our neck of the woods to Maui once was $475 per person. With ATA and Aloha having gone under, the cheapest is now about $675 per person. When a company is planning to send dozens or hundreds of people to the island for a convention/etc that really adds up. Vegas is much cheaper…
I just came back from the supermarket. I checked the shelves for the same mid-level wine and bourbon that they usually tout at “top shelf”. It’s all gone. Now the crap they usually tout as mid-end is on the top shelf, and they just have twice as much of the wood alcohol. It’s also all on sale. Ugly yellow stickers.
“……are walking away from houses with mortgages worth more than their homes, Farrell said.”
Not real sure that is true!!
“…The market is cyclical, and it’s just taking a deeper breath right now.”
Previously:
GS, reminds me of a story about Mr. Lincoln and a race horse contest…seems Ol’ Abe bet on a horse and lost…there was a braggart that kept throwin’ it in Abe’s face…”you see that horse that won…it didn’t even take a long breath”…”did you see that horse run, I’m telling ya, it didn’t draw a long breath”…on and on he goes.
Finally, Abe turns to the fella and says: Well, why don’t ya tell us all how many “short” breaths he took.
“I have a house. I paid $600,000 for it, and my next-door neighbor is paying $429,000. What am I doing here?,’ Farrell said.”
Looks like Farrell picked the wrong week to quit drinking/sniffing glue.
Texas again…now what is that story about Shrub & the Texas Rangers baseball stadium…
http://www.bushfiles.com/bushfiles/SweetheartDeal.html
“They hoodwinked property owners” into waiving their property rights, Schey said.
“This whole thing has been built on a foundation of lawlessness,” he said.
Texas officials sue US over border fence:
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jE_bOUpQb6MxrxSQno3N6gEdY-MAD90N36A00
test
“‘First, home prices in Canada are not substantially overvalued,’ she pointed out. ‘Second, there is still little evidence of widespread speculative home buying that often accompanies the late stages of a housing boom.’”
hahahahahahaha
Let’s see now - price/rent in Vancouver over 300, price/household income over 10. No bubble here, no siree.
Prices falling in Alberta (where the oil is) since last summer, down over 10% in less than a year.
Lineups for condo presales in Vancouver and Toronto. Party already over in Alberta. Many empty condos in all these markets.
I will say that in the East minus Toronto (where 1/2 the population lives) there is no bubble.