Local Market Observations!
What do you see in your housing market this weekend? Lower prices? “Sales of single family homes in May were off 21% when compared to last year as the market is still trying to find its legs. The Florida Association of Realtors reports that 992 homes were sold during May with the median priced home being $193,200 down 7%.”
“Longtime Jacksonville realtor, Gene Jones, believes the market is hitting bottom. Builders according to Jones are slashing prices to move inventory. ‘We are getting calls from them every day, you know, they dropped their price again,’ said Jones.”
Condo reversions? “In emerging neighborhoods, more and more developers are changing course, renting apartments that were originally slated for sale. ‘The Bridges’ in East Harlem is a building that just made the switch to rental units.”
“‘Developers are finding more and more that it is probably a better route to convert sales into rentals if they are not having success that they would like to,’ says Leo Munoz of Halstead Property. ‘And maybe put those condos on market a few years down the road when the market has either picked up or stabilized and they can get prices more suitable to what their needs are.’”
Or foreclosures? “Foreclosures dropped 25.6 percent from May to June in New Hampshire, according to RealtyTrac, but New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority is standing by its earlier projection of 3,000 foreclosures statewide for the year.”
“The June figure was still 17.25 percent higher than reported the same month a year ago. ‘The way the trend is working now, we’re definitely going to hit that 3,000 number before the end of the year,’ said Dean Christon, NHHFA’s executive director. ‘When they (homeowners) do get into difficulty paying a mortgage, they have fewer options now than they did a year ago.’”
“Tarrant County has 1,430 homes posted for the August foreclosure auction. So far for the year, the county has had 10,787 homes posted for foreclosure, up 22 percent from the first eight months of 2007.”
“The February number is considered the most foreclosure postings since the real estate crash that started recovering in the early 1990s. The homes will be sold Aug. 5.”
Legal actions? “Arvin Weiss has been found guilty of mortgage fraud and witness tampering, U.S. Attorney Troy Eid said today. A U.S. District Court jury found Weiss, of Englewood, guilty late Wednesday in a complicated mortgage fraud scheme that primarily targeted Hispanics. Many of the people involved were in the U.S. illegally, Eid said, and did not understand the mortgage loan process.”
“‘Commit mortgage fraud and you may land in federal prison,’ Eid said in a statement. ‘Enough is enough.’”
“Weiss arranged for buyers to acquire mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration so they could purchase homes his company owned.”
“Knowing that the buyers he targeted could not afford to buy houses or legitimately qualify for home loans, Weiss allegedly arranged for false information about the buyers’ qualifications and the sources of their down payments to be provided to various mortgage companies and HUD, making it appear that the buyers were qualified to receive FHA-insured loans when they were not.”
“Weiss usually sold his properties for two or three times what Reserve Capital had recently paid for them.”
“For millions of homeowners, the property slump could mean years of hardship. For John Gizzi it could mean years of hard labour.”
“At the time of his sentence for fraud, he was ordered to pay back £2.6 million he earned as a criminal or face an eight-year extension on his prison sentence. To meet the bill, he has been trying to sell his nine-bedroom mansion. But the market crash has cut its value from £1.75 million to just £900,000 - and a buyer is yet to be found.”
“Gizzi’s £100,000 Bentley Continental has already been sold under the order. His next forfeit was due to be the Bronwylfa Hall country estate in St Asaph, Denbighshire, North Wales, where he had lived the life of a playboy millionaire in his criminal heyday.”
“It was originally put on the market for £1.75 million at the time of Gizzi’s sentencing, then reduced to £1.3 million. Now the property is available for £900,000, but estate agents handling the sale say they are looking to accept ‘best and final offers’ by the end of the month.”
“Another estate agent in the area said: ‘He could not be trying to sell at a worse time. The housing market has collapsed. It’s an impressive looking property and a bit nicer than where he is currently living. But just because he’s behind bars doesn’t mean he’s immune from the drop in house prices.’”
“‘Commit mortgage fraud and you may land in federal prison,’ Eid said in a statement. ‘Enough is enough.’”
There’s an honest person. Someone else would have said that those committing mortgage fraud “will” land in prison. I wonder what the odds are?
One out of 1000 that committed fraud will likely land in jail. Remember, even overstating your income is fraud; it’s all a matter of degree, especially when looking at the bubble years.
I would guess that 50% of the MTG apps that went through during the bubble had some sort of fraud on them. The only one’s going to jail will be those that were truly “above and beyond” the rest. And something tells me that’s going to be a hard hurdle to cross.
“Well, this guy only inflated his income by 3X, we’re only prosecuting those who are 5X and above”.
In China they actually execute people for financial crimes.
http://chinadaily.com.cn/en/doc/2003-12/30/content_294409.htm
“The Intermediate People’s Court in Jinan, capital city of East China’s Shandong Province, Monday sentenced a former provincial vice-governor to death for accepting bribes and holding large amounts of assets he could not account for. ”
http://www.cfonet.com/article.cfm/8435283
“A Chinese high court allowed the death penalty to stand for an accountant who was involved in defrauding bank customers out of hundreds of millions of dollars, reported the Associated Press. Earlier this week, accountant Liu Yibing, and Zhou Limin, the former head of the China Construction Bank branch in the city of Xi’an, lost their appeal of a case that dates back to 2003.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/feb/16/china.justinmccurry
“China stepped up its war on white-collar crime yesterday when the chairman of a trading company was sentenced to death for conning investors out of three billion yuan (£200m) in an ant-breeding scam.”
I’m guessing their real crime was getting to greedy and not splitting enough of the loot with well-connected Communist Party apparatchiks.
That’s right. Just make sure that the politicians and law enforcement are well taken care of and you will be fine. Don’t flaunt your stolen wealth too much.
No one who just overstated their income to buy their primary residence will go to jail. Not a one.
The only people who will face hard time are those who bought dozens of houses or who committed fraud via straw buyers or other such nonsense.
I think the odds are close to zero because it is usually white collar crime, and many high level people profit from it. I think this is a common problem all over the world.
In the Netherlands a report was published last week explaining that many notaries and other RE/mortgage professionals are involved in elaborate mortgage fraud networks. At least 30 of these networks are known to the office that does the investigations, but they are NOT allowed to report these people (they have all the names) to the Justice Department. Justice simply does not want to know, so no one gets prosecuted.
It works probably like in most other countries: a home gets passed quickly through several buyers and is finally sold at a strongly inflated price (with inflated appraisal, often more than 100% over real value) to a straw man who simply does not make any mortgage payments. The persons involved pocket the money from the sale, the property gets foreclosed and often purchased back by the original seller at 25-50% of the last sales price. Of course the professionals involved can pocket fat fees for doing almost nothing with every transaction.
Just looking at the official home sales registry (the ‘Kadaster’ in Netherlands, which records all home sales and mortgage details) is enough to spot many of these sales and the people involved (always the same crooks).
Although this fraud is very clear, no one gets convicted, never. Of course not, with the Netherlands being housing bubble country number 1 or so in the world
Well, the good ol’US is trying to take that number 1 title from them.
However, from what I read, we’re not even close.
Oh well, another strike against our great country, we can’t even commit fraud as well as the European countries.
Come on Michael,
We’re only 232 years old. We still need to catch-up. We are getting there.
Kool-Aid’s on the house, in Jonestown
“Longtime Jacksonville realtor, Gene Jones, believes the market is hitting bottom. Builders according to Jones are slashing prices to move inventory. ‘We are getting calls from them every day, you know, they dropped their price again,’ said Jones.”
Our local AM radio stations are bombarding the air waves with a loud obnoxious commercial stating that 2008 will go down in History as the last great/best time to buy a home. Riiiight! I’d say right now is a craptastic time to buy.
At the local mall today traffic was lighter than usual, while in West Marine I asked the manager how business was. He said June was a little slow, but so far July was very busy. High volume of repair supplies sold.
I can see a pair of major east/west rail lines from the backyard. It’s interesting to note what is getting shipped and which direction. In the past couple of months the number of automobile containers has dropped off to almost nothing.
I have a friend that is a Lexus/Toyota dealer he tells me that high end car sales are very,very slow. However they have a 90 day waiting list for the Prius. Our Mercedes Dealer tells me me it’s on and off with C class sales doing the best.
I want the C63AMG.
It’s a ton of money though, and I am hoping at the recession deepens, I will be able to find one of them distressed for sale.
Just one year ago we were able to purchase a Prius off the lot with our choice of color AND negotiate $2k off the asking price.
The Prius is the 1979 VW Rabbit diesel of our time….
There were no restrictions on getting diesel and it was about 2/3rds the price of gas, back then.
Very good point, Ben.
Over the last two years here in s. central CA., I’ve seen southbound flat car after southbound flat car of cut lumber replaced with flat car after flat car of military vehicles. Now it’s just empty flat cars and a huge increase in the number of hoboes riding the rails and camping along the outskirts of the stock yards. Similarly, the truck traffic on I-5 southbound has gone from huge purple sewage pipes, to heavy lumber, to 2x’s and plyboard, to minimal truck traffic at all this season.
The northbound traffic UP from Mexico, (cargo containers, mostly,) however, has increased exponentially.
Our local RE flyer wrote: If you are a first-time buyer, now is a great time to buy!
Implying if you are a first timer, you are easy bait and we haven’t had much luck with second timers who are already smarting.
While driving around yesterday in Charlotte, NC I heard a similar radio ad from a local car dealer.
The voice on the radio said, “In my 32 years in the car business, it’s never been a better time to be a car buyer…blah blah blah…”
You never hear these people tell you to wait because the incentives will get better, do you?
Ah, I love this logic!
“Buy now or be priced out forever!”
So… in the future, my house will be “worth” a fortune… but nobody will be able to afford to buy it? How is that going to work? Oh, wait - it didn’t work, hence the Bursting Bubble!
The clock struck midnight in East Harlem…
Cinderella has gone AWOL
______________________________________________________________
“In emerging neighborhoods, more and more developers are changing course, renting apartments that were originally slated for sale. ‘The Bridges’ in East Harlem is a building that just made the switch to rental units.”
http://nyctheblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/bridges-nyc-east-harlems-newest.html
Got a kick out of the cuddling couple at the end of the page:) Not
$4,000 a month rent… ok its a big apartment..
But a Goodwill store opening up right next door…priceless!
‘A U.S. District Court jury found Weiss, of Englewood, guilty late Wednesday in a complicated mortgage fraud scheme that primarily targeted Hispanics. Many of the people involved were in the U.S. illegally, Eid said, and did not understand the mortgage loan process.”
I would like to know more about this subject. How many illegals did buy houses in the bubble? Not just at the behest of a*swipes like this Weiss-guy, but in general weren’t many, many illegals able to get mortgages easily? What’re they doing now the bubble’s popped, and where’re they going? Pulling out the toilet and the light-fixtures and going back to Mexico? What?
To Colorado’s credit, they are doing the most on a state level to clean up the lending business. But they have a lot to clean up, with guys in prison flipping houses.
That’s a good question, Olympiagal….one that our government avoids like the plague and I’m not sure we really want to know the answer to. Methinks that this topic is one wherein the truth wouldn’t set us free, but rather make American taxpayers realize that our biggest housing market and economic nightmares have only just begun.
The fraud case involving Weiss was hinted at in a 2003 story by Michelle Malkin on the topic of illegal immigrants buying homes with FHA loans. Being a Colorado appraiser, it made my hair stand straight up. Two years after Ms. Malkin’s story came out Weiss was arrested (2005) and now, finally, justice is being served.
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=3051
In Malkin’s editorial she stated:
“Another easy avenue to home ownership is through the use of bogus Social Security cards. Moneylenders have no access to a verification system to check Social Security numbers before approving loans. A Department of Homeland Security investigator informs me that an ongoing federal probe of FHA/HUD-backed loans found that “a staggering number were approved to persons with false Social Security numbers.” The Denver metro area alone accounted for 20,000 to 40,000 of the FHA-approved loans for suspected illegal aliens. “Even if a small percentage of the loans were foreclosed, HUD could be bankrupted,” the homeland security official said.”
Not sure about the percentages, however, from my experience in Coastal CA, I would guess 50 per cent of illegals were given mortgages. Some illegals were very wealthy with assets approaching $1M. Granted the assets were all leveraged or obtained with loans, but hey….
Just my own observation: about 2 weeks ago I was driving on the 10 freeway on my way out of Tucson (Slim Ranch country) past the airport and I saw *another* Mexican family apparently leaving town driving in the direction of an obscure port-of-entry. Pick-up truck, piled high with furniture and other personal items, towing a trailer also loaded with stuff. Bungee cords everywhere used as tie-downs. Mexican driver hunched over the wheel as I passed, as though he didn’t want to be ID’d.There were passengers in the truck however, I couldn’t determine their gender/nationality.
Those of you may remember the last time I reported something similar only on that occasion an apparently stolen U-Haul was being used.
I need to start taking photos of this sort of thing - I forget about my cell having that capability.
~Misstrial
Note to the Border Patrol (in the event any of you read this blog):
Seen about 1:30 p.m. 07/07/08 heading East on the 10. Between Kolb and Houghton.
~Misstrial
Border patrol: Thanks Misstrial, will be on the lookout for them to see if there’s anything we can do to make them more comfortable, free water, etc.
“….will be on the lookout for them to see if there’s anything we can do to make them more comfortable, free water, etc.”
Not in AZ.
~Misstrial
Back in the old days, to loot a nation or empire, you had to show up with weapons. These days, the illegals show up (usually!) unarmed, and we handhold them as they loot our nation. Unreal…
I did a big ‘drive-around’ yesterday. I was surprised and a bit dismayed to see a lot of “Sold!” signs around, but on further investigation it was pretty much only homes in the $200-300K range, virtually all of which had been reduced from a higher price or ‘priced to sell’ from the beginning. Anything above $400K just languishes…
Spoke to a guy who just sold his home for $230K…transitional and unglamorous neighborhood, well-kept but dinky house. He said the only people who made offers were doctors, lawyers, and people with big downpayments.
If only doctors and lawyers were offering on a house in the low $200s, presumably they were looking for investment property. A CPA buddy of mine once told me that doctors, dentists and lawyers generally were terrible at finances and bookkeeping and made a lot of really lousy investment decisions.
I’ve watched Bridges in East Harlem since last year. This housing bubble has ignited some of the least gifted imaginations. This building is located in a derelict central. The only viable businesses around are community outreach for drug addicts and HIV. When you look outside from your window you will be the witness to concentration of social problems that will disturb most people. Don’t think about bringing any children, car, friends over at night unless you are interested in headache. There is a fire station and police near but in NY that does not mean there is order:)
http://www.nypost.com/seven/07192008/news/regionalnews/lap_dance_bordello_120559.htm
A bigger deterrent than a fence or law enforcement to reduce illegal immigration is a bad US economy.
Well, it looks like Compton is finally starting to move down. I better buy now or I’ll be burned out forever.
ATLANTA:
Costco: Long lines…Lots of seniors with nothing in their carts shuffling from free food sample to free food sample…Steaks up $1 per pound ….And oddly, a BIG stack of a new book out on what I call “extreme” survival skills—kind of a Reader’s Digest version of How To Do Things I Never Want To Do, like build a mud hut to live in, carding wool, making furniture out of sticks, etc.—approximately 1 page devoted to each skill, but nothing on what I would consider to be the most import thing for surviving in the wild, which would be how not to get carried off by mosquitoes before you can find an Amish family to adopt you.
The local Kroger is still dead in the water….I bought pastrami from their deli & ate it for lunch today—it looked kinda questionable—if I die HBBers will know why.
The entrances to every side street in Dunwoody are absolutely plastered with for sale signs. Nothing is selling.
I heard about a commissioned sales rep for building materials that made a ton of money during the bubble, because he was selling to a whole bunch of different builders. Now ALL of the builders he was selling to have gone under, and he is 3 months behind on his mortgage & 2 months behind on his car payment.
I am finding Joe6Pack types that I wouldn’t normally think would be interested in following the national financial issues that are effecting us, are in fact paying pretty close attention. This week a granite installer told me all about how IndyMac failed because they had no capital. And a check out clerk told me how she was watching Bernake’s testimony before Congress on C-Span because she was trying to decide if now was really a good time to buy a house.
On another blog I saw a post about how subprime’s effects on neighborhoods was the “social equivalent of the bass-o-matic.” LOL.
Fellow HBB gang - I will be spending the next month in Argentina and will explore the housing market and economic situation there and post first-hand reports. My purpose there is specifically to do some economic work and I hope I can add something to this blog while I’m there.
Some of you might remember that I have a second residence in Bogota, Colombia, and it’s much different than the suburban sprawl we have here in the States.
Moman,
That would be interesting. Please keep us posted.
Please keep us informed since the US is heading in the same economic direction. Not sure if we will be reduced to eating tree leaves or combing the dump, but you never know.
~Misstrial
I’m also extremely interested.
My posting name is no lie - I’m young, no kids, in NOVA, and constantly debating whether my savings will go into a down payment for a house in the US or whether I’ll rent until I retire at 40 and split the country. Buenos Aires is near the top of my list for potential destinations and I’m open to any suggestions.
Spent some time with a new tax planner this AM. In the 40-minute meeting, she told us at least three times to “buy a house”. We told her after the first time that wasn’t in the cards this year. The numbers were right in front of her: essentially we’d have to pay around $20,000/yr. in interest & property taxes to *save* less than $4,000 on taxes.
I walked out of there grinding my teeth.
I would’ve fired her on the spot.
Remember who’s boss! She’s the tax planner, and she can’t even figure out this much? She’s plain ol’ incompetent.
Sorry, OT… Thought taxmeupthebooty and others may enjoy this train of thought…
Dear Internal Revenue Service:
Enclosed you will find my 2008 tax return showing that I owe $3,407.00 in
taxes.
Please note the attached article from the USA Today newspaper; dated 12
November, wherein you will see the Pentagon (Department of Defense) is
paying $171.50 per hammer, and NASA has paid $600.00 per toilet seat.
I am enclosing four (4) toilet seats (valued @ $2,400) and six (6) hammers
(valued @ $1,029), which I secured at Home Depot, bringing my total
remittance to $3,429.00.
Please apply the overpayment of $22.00 to the “Presidential Election Fund,”
as noted on my return.
You can do this inexpensively by sending them one (1) 1.5″ Phillips Head
screw (see aforementioned article from USA Today newspaper, detailing how
H.U.D. pays $22.00 each for 1.5″ Phillips Head Screws).
One screw is enclosed for your convenience.
It has been a pleasure to pay my tax bill this year, and I look forward to
paying it again next year.
Sincerely,
A Satisfied Taxpayer
: )
We’re starting to see bigger and bigger cracks in the market here in the “never had a huge run up in price so things are different” Raleigh-Durham Triangle area of NC. For the first time I’ve seen sales have decreased from May to June of this year and are down nearly 40% year over year. We’re in the middle of our peak RE season and there are 10 months of inventory on the market. March and April actually showed a normal if somewhat below peak, selling season so the recent numbers are a bit of a surprise.
http://www.trianglemls.com/tmls-stats-market-dynamics.html?&label_stage=TMLS%20Statistical%20Resources~TMLS%20Statistical%20Resources for anyone who enjoys numbers.
Prices are sort of holding here, but considering we only started slowing down late last summer I don’t think that means too much other than the message isn’t widespread yet. Based on the reactions of the local RE shills on various local web sites and blogs, I think things have taken a decided turn for the worse in the last few months. We’ll see what happens.
Thanks for the report, KC. I have a cousin who moved to Raleigh at the start of the year, anxious to buy a house. I talked him out of it. This helps me help him understand why it was good to rent and wait. Ten months of inventory is a super-clear signal about where prices will be headed.
local observation for the Netherlands: still in complete denial.
More and more people are complaining that their home isn’t selling and that the government should do something (of course, every Dutch homeowner knows they are entitled to gains equivalent to many years of hard work when selling their home). Homeprices are still rising on a yoy basis, but realtors admit that maybe this year - for the first time in 20 years or so - Dutch homeprices will increase a bit less than inflation.
Inventory for sale is at a record high in most areas, but I almost never see sellers lowering their asking price. The free rental market is getting squeezed even further and rents are rising strongly (not in the gov-regulated rental market which is far bigger, but this is only available to a selected group, often people who get everything for free from the government).
Mortgage rates AND rates on savings accounts have finally started to move up slightly. The big banks seems to be getting more cautious in providing mortgages (difficult to get a 10x income loan from them, but 6.5-8x is still easy). This is mostly a result of the credit crunch, not because they realise that the crazy lending has to stop.
Even corrected for inflation, Dutch home prices are at a 350-year high. Estimated downside risk from a quick look at the charts: at least 50-75% inflation corrected, 75-90% nominal. The Dutch bubble seems one of the very last to pop, I guess they are holding out for the world housing bubble record
Some “high-end” condos have been going up here in the past year but they don’t seem to be moving. I’ve been watching these three over-the-store units that have been for sale for a year. I don’t think any of them has sold. They’re right smack downtown on a busy corner. Someone who checked it out said they weren’t very insulated for sound either.
So I’m looking at craigslist and some poor sap listed 12 different properties with no contact addy for any of them, including, surprise, the units above. He’s trying to sell the whole mess.
BTW, “adjacent” to UM is a stretch since the campus is about a mile away.
Austin downtown condo tower project cancelled (from Austintowers.net)
“First, AquaTerra was cancelled. Then the Monarch converted from condos to rental units. 1155 Barton Springs was indefinitely postponed. Now, the Metropolitan has decided to throw in the towel and shut down prior to construction.
“The Metropolitan was conceptualized as a $50m 8 floor condo project on 11th Street near the Capital. With units priced from $250k to $1 million, the 84 unit project was expected to be completed in 2010. Like many real estate developers, the team behind the Metropolitan was facing tough times and a tough market. In fact, the developer — Mote Group Real Estate Partners LLC — filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy June 30. As a result, the land for the project will be point up for sale soon.
“As the credit crunch continues, there is less margin of error for poorly conceived projects. While Austin has seen some big recent successes - tthe Shore and 360, both of which sold out before completion — other projects have struggled. As with other project cancellations — the market worked quite well: the project was unable to get enough interested buyers to secure funding, leading to cancellation prior to ground-breaking. Outside of collapsing markets like Miami and Las Vegas, it is very uncommon for projects to be cancelled once ground has been broken. With more than a dozen planned condo projects and an uncertain market, the Metropolitan won’t be the last cancellation. That said, the success of recent projects likely means that new buildings will continue to be announced.”
I think that will depend on whether the “success of recent projects” means that satisfied buyers will be living in places that they can afford - or whether that “success” means that there are a bunch of stuck specuvestors.
Thats great news. Though, I still thinks its going to be extremely difficult for them to fill out those massive towers that have been built.
The locals are certainly pissed about the nature of the city changing. I’ve concluded the only way they could of filled those condos was with illegal aliens. I’m sure the governor would of applauded that idea.
Sometime next week I’ll try to take some photos of the skyline and post them. Unbelievable.
The number of for sale signs in a row in front of the Kinney Ave. Lofts has gone up to 9. $350,000 2 bedroom 2.5 baths. Except for the street side units, that have a view of the houses across the street, the view from one unit is across a driveway to the windows of the opposite unit sitting on top of its garage. I’ve never been in one, but I’ve ridden my bike through the complex - pretty claustrophobic. But they are “luxury” - granite countertops, etc.
From Atlantic City, NJ: Hold fire on “The Donald” flames, but I have a soft spot in my heart for his Marina Casino only because it consistently has brought in great classic rock acts to attract boomer gamblers. I am much too cheap– errr– frugal actually to gamble, but I will shell out <$50 for a ticket, pay exorbinant prices for half-a-dozen beers, pay for parking, etc. to hear live the music with which I grew up. Anyway, I was sorry to see today the Marina’s latest promotion to draw gamblers to the casino: 3d prize- Payment of your mortgage for one month; 2d prize- Payment of your mortgage for six months; 1st prize- Payment of your mortgage for one year. I guess “The Donald” figures if someone is stupid enough to get him/herself in trouble with the mortgage, he/she will be stupid enough to gamble over his/her head. Have a good weekend.
I AM TIRED TO HEARING ALL THE WHINING AMONG PEOPLE LIKE YOU ALL. I THINK ALL OF YOU ARE JEALOUS ABOUT SEEING OTHER PEOPLE ARE MAKING MONEY.
INSTEAD OF FEEDING YOURSELF WITH ALL THE NEGATIVE NEWS ABOUT REAL ESTATE, COME TO EL PASO, TEXAS. PEOPLE ARE GETTING RICHER AND RICHER EACH DAY BECAUSE OF SKYROCKETING EQUITY THEY HAVE.
AFTER YOU COME TO EL PASO, YOU WILL STOP WHINING AND ENJOY YOUR LIFE.
OK then let me rent from you…what do you have available?
I sure hate throwing away my money on a mortgage.
But then we would have to live in El Paso. Ew.
Now tell me what kind of “rich guy” would be trolling a housing blog….. maybe a scared asswipe with evaporating equity and empty bank accounts?
Nah, he’s probably a 14 year old, pimping us in ALL CAPS. The kind of prank I’d pull at that age….
Man, we haven’t a good troll in a long time. I miss those people .
Sigh.
It’s a sad state of affairs when you can’t even get a good troll in this country any more. This country is going to the dogs.
I would guess that the Troll population is suffering from rapidly diminishing funds. This is leading to loss of internet connectivity and sadly, their absence as entertainment.
i think he’s a flipper that is having trouble flipping now. he just needs someone to blame for his financial flop!
Bwahhahahhaahhahaaaahhahhahahahaaa.
What’s going up? The houses in Smeltertown? Maybe a shack on the sandy hills near the copper facility. Oh, maybe something down wind from the twin oil refineries? Hope monsoon season doesn’t make those hills start sliding …
How’s the drug war going? You know, the one that’s brawling in the streets on both sides of the border? Does that mean the serial murder rate has dropped? Or has no one been finding the bodies lately, too busy dodging their own deaths?
Keep a spot warm for me, mmkay? Don’t move, I promise I’ll be right there. Don’t move! Really! Not one inch ..
If you are not worried about declining property values, why did you google “housing bubble” and why do the posts on here upset you? It would be reasonable for you to expect to lose at least 10% of the current market price of each house you hold for the next few years. That is best case scenario. Hope you are not pulling that proclaimed “equity out.” I dont want to be footing the bill for your welfare checks.
Only asshats post in all caps, El Paso troll.
I wasn’t aware that Phil Gramm is from El Paso.
Note from Oak Park, IL: some slippage in prices–the end unit (complete with tower and wee medieval turret) of the local overpriced townhouse lot has finally had $100K knocked off its listed price (from $899K to $799K)–still no one is buying. The units in our condo are still selling–gradually. They discounted the last set by an extra $20K or so to get them off their hands which ends up being about 10%.
All the Victorians and other historical stuff is still up there at $700K to over $1.5M…urk.
What we’re really wondering is whether the putative condo/whatever project near the Colt building will ever get off the ground. (The developers came in with a plan far over budget and tried to wheedle more tax breaks out of the Township. Township told them to go pound sand and furthermore, get the budget back down.) I predict a long, long catfight on this one…
With the new set of condos in River Forest, I think the Oak Park Township authorities aren’t too interested in expensive new stuff going up at present, given what we’re already trying to unload. Libertarians will hiss between their teeth at “not leaving it up to the market”, but one of the reasons Oak Park is holding up pretty well is the damping the authorities already did on building permits.
Florida thinks it’s California again. Drove through a few gated communities. Weed-ridden lawns with raggedy dead spots. Thriving greenery between luxurious paver stones (note: this is Not Wanted).
People complaining that smaller homes are being built and offered in subsequent phases of communities. Proclaiming this and that is “bad for you” and then sitting down with an investment in their diabetic future.
It’s going to be a long recession. I’m trying to remember why I moved here …
Yes, yes… buying McMansion you can’t afford is “good for you and good for ‘merika!” Instead, building smaller, more economical houses that are less wasteful is BAD for ‘merika! Right…
Local observations:
I took a ride in my realtor friend’s extremely cool new Jeep (he’s doing well, thank you,) this morning, 11 miles up the side of the mountain to see a property he has listed for sale. I’ve ridden this road on horseback probably a hundred times over the last couple of decades, and am familiar with both the area (rugged, not always accessible by vehicle,) and the features of the land in question…it’s definitely not for sissies. The property itself has a rickety hunting cabin on 20 acres, a once-producing gold mine, (now caved in, but with the narrow gauge tracks still leading to the mine entrance,) and a marvelous 5 gpm spring that flows reliably all year round. That’s about it.
The owner has had it since the mid-sixties and a recent heart attack has prodded him to sell it. Listed price is 120K. Apparently he will “settle” for 85 and carry the note. I offered 50K (which is 20K too much, but it’s really good water.) We’ll see.
While we were pacing off the acreage, I was surprised to see three brand new SUV’s (BMW, Lexux, Toyota hybrid,) came tooling up the narrow dirt road laden with lumber…headed for points unknown even further back into the forest. On the way back down, we passed two neighbors driving home from LA where they just purchased a new “King Ranch” Canyonero-type pickup truck. Bragging about the 11K they saved on the monster, they said they paid “only 42K” for the behemoth because the “dealers are dealing.”
My friend told me that he is getting a huge uptick in these rich survivalists from LA buying wilderness property to prepare for the “Rapture” or the 2012 thing, or the Mexican invasion or whatever is coming down/up when the water stops flowing and the magnetic polar inversion misaligns with increased solar flares…or whatever.
At the other end of the spectrum, we both remarked on the alarming number of shanty town enclaves we’ve observed growing back in the remote hills; basically homeless camps inhabited by armed squatters and assorted severe psychcases on SSI, roaming about unmolested. The Kern Kounty Sheriff doesn’t want/can’t legally do much to remove them, KC code compliance is helpless, and besides the obvious health hazards posed by large numbers of humans in close contact with no civil accountability, (or sanitation or cooking, or water facilities,) they pose a major fire danger…as evidenced by the month-long 40,000 acres that just burned.
It’s possible we may be seeing the vanguard of a real social upheaval…not just the ordinary cyclic real estate boom/bust we get every ten years or so, but an honest-to-god Grapes of Wrath relocation to the hills by folks with a nasty premonition and either too much or too little discretionary income. It’s certainly a phenomenon unprecedented in my hillbilly experience. Anyway, that’s the report from the hinterlands.
Anyone on rural outskirts noticing these camps developing, too?
Gosh, I hope they know how to grow corn for ethanol, or these rich survivalists will have to resort to pack mules once they run out of fuel in this dystopian future they envision they’re escaping. A great summer read which imagines this off-the-grid, affluent “lifestyle” is T.C. Boyle’s, A Friend of the Earth.
Rec that you check out the Bass Lake area for shanty-towns.
~Misstrial
“My friend told me that he is getting a huge uptick in these rich survivalists from LA buying wilderness property to prepare for the “Rapture” or the 2012 thing, or the Mexican invasion or whatever is coming down/up when the water stops flowing and the magnetic polar inversion misaligns with increased solar flares…or whatever.”
Sounds like the lame brain from upstate NY who believe the only place RE had tripled in price was upstate NY. Of course it was because of 9/11 he claims. When I told him prepare for a deep steep decline in housing, he angrily blurted out “what if there is another 9/11. This took place in 2006.
This reminds me a bit of the bomb shelters people build in the 1950s and even the early 1960s. There was one in particular in Osceola County (FL), I think toward St. Cloud. The owner lived in it - looked like something out of a sci-fi movie.
These Lexus-types who are building shacks in the hills might be like the pseudo-bikers who put on their bad-a** looking leathers on weekends. They haven’t yet dealt with the ransacking of their places when they’re in town during the week and they think that bringing a few guns to the place will keep them safe 24/7 if hungry-enough folks wanted what they have in a bad-enough way.
Nevertheless I agree with AHansen that these folks will not need to do that which would not work out for them anyway. They’ll just have wasted some more money.
Let em “waste” the money on their paranoia. It goes back into the pockets of everyone else. I’d rather see the money flow from these folks to others than sitting in bank accounts feeding the banksters.
A rare astronomical/astrological alignment takes place in 2012: the Earth moves into the equitorial plane of the Milky Way at 0 degrees.
The social ulcers and handwringing might pick up in the mid teens when Uranus in Aries squares Pluto in Capricorn.
Former Vanity Fair, now Huffington Post, astrologer Michael Lutin says the mid teens will be a time of the greatest social upheaval in the U.S. since the Civil War. I always used to scoff at his predictions, but over the years the things the has said that have engendered the biggest “Naw, never happen!” hoots of laughter from me have always later turned out to be eerily correct.
…Stopping on the Ms.gulf coast: are many condos repaired after the storm with more big ” coming soon ” condo signs every few miles along the whole coast. The condos that are finished are virtually empty, build more? I think total wishful thinking. Even two new casinos going in but I hear anectdotally that the layoffs are increasing at the others already….even casino stocks took a hit in the past weeks. Seems like the train is losing steam daily…No offense but 400k for a condo in Ms.?
I’ve seen a few very fancy custom tricked-out hunting vehicles for sale around Austin.
“Longtime Jacksonville realtor, Gene Jones, believes the market is hitting bottom.
Every realtor thinks the market is hitting bottom, but not one realtor has been correct. The only interest the realtors have is to fool the public into believing the market has hit bottom to line their own pockets with commisions from the unsuspecting consumer.
I might have posted this before ? Guy I work with is going to try and sell his house at Auction realtor says its the way to go, realtor advised him to get his friends to shill bid the price up. I guess you just write your bid in a book. I’ll report back on in about 2 weeks tell you how it goes… and no I won’t write a shill bid for this clown.
Weather report hot and humid in Phoenix expect a cooling trend in November. bees are going wild at the cactus flowers and small frogs or maybe toads all over he place.
A house around the corner from me is for sale for $495,000. 1,400 sq. ft. not in good condition (hasn’t been renovated since 70s, has been a rental for a few years), foundation problems (pier and beam, so fixable). It’s on a large lot for around here (1/3 acre) and some of my land appears to be part of its backyard. I am going to get the surveyors in and put in a simple wire fence this week. The RE agent considers it a tear-down, but I’ve talked to two looking couples who are looking for a house to live in (a $495,000 fixer-upper?). I go out when I see someone back there, to point out my property line. I haven’t seen any developer type out there yet, which is a big change from a couple of years ago.
In the neighborhood, there are still a few huge places under construction. A couple of big new construction houses that were asking $650,000 - $850,000 have people living in them now. Most are still just sitting. A modernist duplex project (they have some other name, but to me they are duplexes) that is asking $617,000 for each side seems to be in a construction slowdown.
I walked down the driveway of one modernist duplex project that has one unit behind the other on a narrow deep lot. It doesn’t look to me like they left the required amount of permeable cover on the lot. And I don’t think it would be physically possible to pull a car into the garage of the front unit - at least you’d have to have a very very very small car and make a many many pointed turn.
A sort-of craftsman style older house with pretty nice landscaping in front is for sale for $545,000. The info paper on it stresses how it is still in the original style. It is attractive, but the outside isn’t even fixed up very well - you can see patches in the stucco and the paint coverage on the wood trim isn’t very good. So it has been fixed up, but my guess is you would probably still have to redo a lot.
The neighbor who is trying to sell his $545,000 townhouse (part of a duplex, way out of place with its surroundings, he has only lived there about a year, trying to sell it for months) doesn’t seem to be getting any lookers. He had it off the market for a while, now back on.
I can’t imagine what it must be like for someone holding a spec McMansion here. After over a month of 100+ degree weather and no rain, none of the surrounding yards look any good, so that makes the remaining older homes look a little shabby. The streets are all torn up because of the water / wastewater / sewer line replacement that has been going on for a year. So this “hot” neighborhood looks kind of crappy at the moment, and I doubt that even the Kool-Aid drinkers still imagine that all the old housing and apartment stock will get torn down and be replaced by McMansions, McTownhouses, and McLofts soon.
What kind of a scam is this?
http://austin.craigslist.org/rfs/761620630.html
Maybe a “give us your credit to use” scam? No idea but I’d run not walk from this “offer.”
That makes sense. I remember reading about that one in one of Ben’s posts a few weeks ago.
Prices in the area I scout most intently, near Atlanta, are sticky, but nothing sells. At the rate of sales in 2008, I calculate that there is a 15-year supply of houses. Relatively few people in the area makes the kind of money required for a sensible post-bubble mortgage - and they already have a house. So I watch and I wait and I rent a very nice place here in Florida.
A relative asked me what I thought about property over in Cape Coral (FL) where there are just under 5,000 houses for sale in the range from $40K to $300K. In reply, I borrowed a phrase Texas Chick first used here long ago, about some place in north Texas IIRC: “It’s where money goes to die.”