Today’s Hit-And-Miss Parade
A report from Florida Today. “Conventional wisdom advises home sellers to examine recent sales of comparable homes in their area, and price their home in line with those selling prices. But today’s market is anything but conventional. ‘There’s no pattern,’ Realtor Cindy Kelley said of sales prices. ‘Here’s what we’re up against,’ she said. If the seller isn’t willing to set what she considers a realistic price, she’ll turn down the listing. ‘I don’t care what you paid for it. It doesn’t matter,’ said Kelley, an agent in Cocoa Beach and Merritt Island and president of the Space Coast Association of Realtors. ‘It’s a hard pill for many sellers to swallow.’”
“Greg Bublitz and his wife, Michele, started out asking $1.165 million for the canal-front, 4,162-square-foot home. The price was based on an in-depth market analysis, including the sale of the home next door for $1.45 million. They’ve gotten a lot of interest, but no sale. They lowered the price to $925,000, and recently dropped it to $795,000.”
“That’s more than the couple paid for the home seven years ago, but not enough to recoup their investment in renovations. ‘There are still a lot of people kicking the tires,’ Bublitz said. ‘I don’t understand why people who want to move up aren’t buying. Now’s the time.’”
“He and his wife make a habit of buying, renovating and selling the homes they live in, and the slow market hasn’t changed their minds. They’ve already bought a riverfront home on Merritt Island that they plan to update. ‘If I had a lot of money right now, I’d buy. I really would,’ Bublitz said.”
The Naples News from Florida. “Michele Greenwood has lost two homes in Naples. She might lose another. All of the homes carried mortgages from Countrywide Financial Corp. She describes the mortgages as ‘weird,’ ‘funky’ and ‘pitiful.’ The mortgages all had adjustable rates. She had ’stated income’ loans, which required no proof of her wages.”
“Even when she was unemployed, Countrywide was able to ‘finagle approvals on loans,’ she said. ‘I never had to put anything down,’ Michele Greenwood said.”
“She really didn’t understand what she was getting into when she signed off on the loans, she said. ‘You just give them what they ask you for and if they say you’re approved you don’t ask questions,’ she said. ‘That’s the way I looked at it.’”
“‘Right now all I can do is pay what I can pay and hope I don’t get a foreclosure notice. What else can I do? I can’t borrow any more money. I just have to gamble and hope we’re able to catch up before they foreclose on me,’ she said.”
The Miami Herald in Florida. “Orson Benn, once a vice president at the nation’s largest subprime lender, spent three years during the height of the housing boom tutoring Florida mortgage brokers in the art of fraud. From his office in New York, he taught them how to doctor credit reports, coached them to inflate income on loan applications, and helped them invent phantom jobs for borrowers.”
“Benn and several associates were convicted of racketeering this year, but Valdes still sells mortgages from a nondescript storefront in Homestead. While prosecutors looked at roughly $100 million in loans written by Benn and a cadre of co-workers, that represents just a portion of the loans they approved during his aggressive expansion into Florida.”
“The Miami Herald found that Benn’s network approved more than $550 million in home loans from Tampa to West Palm Beach to Miami, according to an analysis of court records. In Miami-Dade County alone, Benn’s office approved more than $349 million in loans on 1,913 homes — more than one in three have since fallen into foreclosure, the analysis shows.”
“When Kendale Lakes couple Monica Gaviria and Stacy Duthely applied for a loan through Sandkick in January 2005, they declared a combined income of $68,000 a year. She was a hair stylist; he, an interpreter. When the loan went through a few months later, the documents showed more than a fivefold increase, to $384,000.”
“Gaviria said that figure is grossly inflated, but said she knew nothing about the change on her mortgage application until this year when she fell behind on her payments and the bank called her. She said the bank representative demanded, ‘What’s the problem? You make $17,000 a month.”’
The St Petersburg Times from Florida. “For the dozen state economists huddled around a table this month to fine-tune Florida’s annual revenue forecast, something was different and disturbing. Their new math: In the next four years, the state will collect $31.4 billion less in taxes than expected. That’s more than six times the Pinellas and Hillsborough county budgets combined, the cost of more than 60 waterfront stadiums for the Tampa Bay Rays, and almost half of this year’s state budget.”
“With the mortgage crisis, the credit crunch and the flatlining of the population, the twin industries that buffered Florida through two previous recessions, real estate and construction, are weighing down Florida’s economy. ‘This recession is not only going to be bad for us. It’s going to be worse than the nation’s,’ said David Denslow, a University of Florida economist. The primary reason: Florida’s residential construction boom grew at twice its normal rate and ‘we got overbuilt.’”
“‘We are in trouble,’ Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, who pays the state’s bills, said earlier this month. ‘We’re writing checks like crazy and the money isn’t coming in.’”
“During a single week in November, she said, the state took in a half-billion dollars in tax revenue and wrote checks totaling $1.3 billion, a recipe for fiscal disaster. ‘We can’t rely any more on attracting fixed-income retirees from up north and selling them cheap land,’ Sink said. ‘Those days are over.’”
The Athens Banner Herald from Georgia. “The country’s uncertain financial state of affairs hit various sectors of the U.S. economy hard, with losses of money, homes and jobs the top three entries on today’s hit-and-miss parade. Companies everywhere are being forced to cut expenses in a variety of ways in order to make the bottom line tolerable.”
“In these shaky fiscal times, is it best to pull back, ramp up or maintain the status quo when it comes to touting one’s business? Such is the dilemma Bonnie Jones is wrestling with. Jones, the director of public relations and communications for Jackson EMC, said she’s not sure which direction the electric cooperative will turn, but she’s well aware of the difficulties all power providers are facing.”
“‘We’re at status quo right now, but the downturn in the housing market is affecting us, Georgia Power and others,’ Jones said. ‘What we’re seeing now is that people aren’t buying new homes, there are plenty of foreclosures and builders who have finished homes that haven’t sold are cutting the power until they can sell the houses.’”
From the State in South Carolina. “Almost one in 10 S.C. homeowners was behind on mortgage payments or in foreclosure at the end of September. And the state’s high unemployment rate indicates more people will have trouble making payments next year.”
“Sam Waters, a shareholder at Rogers, Townsend and Thomas law firm, said his practice has seen foreclosures rise because of the many adjustable rate mortgages in the state. ‘Each time you have a period of resetting, you have people who can’t make payments,’ said Waters, whose firm represents lenders.”
“He, too, said growing unemployment numbers will cause more people to get behind on their loans. ‘Job losses lead to foreclosures. That’s inevitable.’”
“At Consumer Credit Counseling Services of Columbia, financial counselors have seen a growing number of clients who face foreclosure, said Wayne Odom, the director. ‘Our focus was on people who wanted to become homeowners,’ Odom said. ‘Now, it’s people wanting to get out of it.’”
“It’s important that people who are behind on payments call their mortgage companies and ask for options to work out payments, Odom said. They need to ask for help as soon as they miss a payment. Otherwise, the debt gets out of control. ‘If people can’t pay one month, they can’t pay two at the same time,’ he said. ‘I call it chasing the house. At some point, it’s outrun you.’”
The Wall Street Journal. “As the glut of foreclosed homes swells, banks and other lenders are starting to warm to the idea of selling some of the homes in bulk to investors, a departure from the practice of selling homes one at a time. Barclays Capital estimates that banks and loan investors owned 871,000 foreclosed homes as of Nov. 1, up from 414,000 a year earlier. Barclays forecasts that this inventory will peak at around 1.4 million homes in mid-2010.”
“James Odell Barnes, an investor in South Carolina, says he and a group of investor partners recently paid about $1.2 million for a bulk purchase of about 800 homes from Fannie Mae. That works out to about $1,500 apiece on average. A large share of the homes were in Detroit and other depressed Michigan cities; others were in cities including Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Memphis, Tenn., and Toledo, Ohio. Barnes says he quickly resold for about $50,000 one of the Detroit homes purchased from Fannie for $1,800.”
“Some homes get sold at least twice before new occupants move in. An example is a three-bedroom house on Burnt Leaf Lane in Snellville, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta. The home had sold in March 2007 for $116,900. After the owners defaulted, Saxon Mortgage, owned by Morgan Stanley, acquired it through foreclosure in April 2008. Saxon sold the home to Gibraltar for $39,000 in September. Two weeks later, Gibraltar sold the home for $50,000 to Real Property Investment Group LLC of Atlanta. Gibraltar’s Jim Simon says his firm’s profit on the transaction after commissions and other costs was $4,600.”
The Miami Herald article is worth taking the time to read in full.
Wow, that was a stunning article…
Might have done some good if they had sussed out all the fraud 3 years ago, instead of today.
But better late than never.
“Benn told Steinhauser to create a phony deed to help a borrower get a loan. But Steinhauser said he had trouble finding someone in Tampa willing to help him because the deed would be filed in court.
So, Benn referred him to Valdes at Sandkick Mortgage.”
Wow, gotta love the name. Complete joke, just like her business.
“Terry Straub, the OFR’s director of finance, acknowledged that his agency had evidence against Valdez. ”I don’t have any explanation for why we didn’t pursue it,” he said.”
The DIRECTOR doesn’t know why they don’t pursue it? Grow a pair, Straub, and get on the stick. Of course, Bill McCollum has got to be THE MOST CLUELESS state Attorney General, EVER.
I’m guessing that if you look at who Valdez’s generous campaign contributions went to, you’ll get a pretty good indication of why corrupt local and State officials never went after him. He had plenty of top cover to carry out his racketeering.
The Miami Herald has been put up for sale, according to the International Herald-Tribune. Unfortunately, one of their biggest assets - a big spread downtown next to MacArthur Causeway - has probably depreciated even faster than their newspaper franchise, where circulation drop is among the fastest in the country for major newspapers.
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20081207/ARTICLE/812070347/2055/NEWS?Title=McClatchy_puts_Miami_Herald_up_for_sale
“Argent succumbed to the troubles of the subprime market and was bought by Citibank last year.”
… and by bailout extension - this garbage has now been bought by the citizens of the U.S.
When things don’t add up there’s usually something’s missing in the story.
Perhaps Valdez ratted everyone out and is stuck working with the feds, and the clueless newspaper provides perfect cover for an ongoing sting.
“Their new math: In the next four years, the state will collect $31.4 billion less in taxes than expected.”
Sounds like a new paradigm we’re working off of.
“the state took in a half-billion dollars in tax revenue and wrote checks totaling $1.3 billion, a recipe for fiscal disaster.”
Now, if you were to do the same, some self-righteous prick from the overdrawn govmint would come after you. You’d be hauled into court, etc. That is, if you don’t declare bankruptcy first. Florida, like Big Uncle, is BK. These govmints need to tighten their belts, big time. Don’t spend what you don’t have. If that means kids who don’t even understand English don’t get to sit in front of brand, spanking new computers, so be it.
There’s a completely ridiculous attitude toward this whole bust. Everyone’s offended and horrified that they can’t spend money like they used to and instead of cutting back drastically if they have to, it’s all this hand wringing and searching for places to get replacement funds.
“Everyone’s offended and horrified that they can’t spend money like they used to…”
That last paragraph of yours pretty much hits the nail on the head.
When I was in the production biz back in the day, I knew this fellow who was a manager at a TV station. Every year they got a budget for entertaining advertisers and he had to figure out how to spend it. The trick was to spend it all and maybe a little more, so it didn’t get cut back. He’d even tell his suppliers NOT to give him a deal.
Govmint managers think the same way. Power generally equals how much of the budget they can control and they don’t want to give up so much as a penny. Florida was a much better place when there was less money to spend, so I have high hopes it will improve as the $$ dry up. Of course, there will always be law enforcement blackmail. In other words, don’t cut back in this area, because your streets will be filled with gangbangers. Think about it. Law enforcement has very little incentive to handle crime. The more crime, the more bucks.
Academia works the same way.
That’s why a $100M physics grant demand beats out the paltry $50K grant of the mathematician (who only needs his brains, and maybe a few airline tickets to visit colleagues.)
If it costs that much, it must be important.
Agree Edgewater. What the heck is wrong with a quiet classroom with kids sitting behind desks, facing the front of the room, and having BOOKS open (books…those paper thingies that they take kids to see in museums these days).
It really isn’t that hard, and once this country is formally bankrupt, it will probably be all we can afford. And who knows…maybe the kids will learn something for once (other than how to apply a condom).
Have you bought a book lately? They don’t come cheap–at least, the good ones don’t. I admit, though, they last a lot longer than software, if handled appropriately.
IAT
Gotrocks,
Do you have kids in school? I do, and can tell you that a quiet, well-disciplined classroom is a thing of the past. First of all, the caliber of most teachers, thanks to the NEA, leaves a lot to be desired. Even the very few good, competent ones have few tools to deal with disruptive and unruly kids in overcrowded classrooms. Plus, each classroom seems to have an average of half a dozen “special needs” kids - either borderline retarded, can’t speak English, autistic, ADHD, or just plain unteachable - who take up most of the teacher’s time and cause so many distractions and interruptions that a lot of bright students just tune out and wish they were someplace else.
Educators seem to place far more emphasis on students’ “self-esteem” than actually imparting the core knowledge and skills they need to function at the appropriate grade level, much less become productive members of society. It’s becoming almost impossible to send your kids to pubic school and expect them to get a satisfactory education.
Well, my brother teaches and he can tell you stories about parents too. Too many parents view the schools as a babysitting service, and don’t give a rats about the quality of the education. And if the teacher tries to discipline the kids the parents come in and cuss out the teacher.
My brother told me a story about how he was calling a parent to let them know that their child was doing well in school, and the parent didn’t even let him get a word out of his mouth and instead started to cuss out my brother.
Parents are the biggest part of the problem.
and keep ,and give raises to the “dozen state economists”
The state’s allegedly most brilliant minds in the field of economics no doubt will be placed on retainer. In fact, now that Fishkind’s clients are cutting back, I’m sure my favorite captive intellectual will be needing a new gig soon, only this time it will be my tax dollars paying him when he pulls out his charts and calls a bottom for the fiftieth time. Cue the seal.
I can’t believe Florida Today found a couple named Greg and Michele Bubbleditz.
Where can I buy 800 homes for $1800.00 a piece? I bet that transaction is worth investigating. Its only people in the know and who you know that get deals like this.
Yeah, you won’t see that on Craigslist. Speaking of which, Daniel Ruth (recently laid-off, long-time columnist for the Tampa Tribune) is on TV right now discussing how Craigslist has really taken out local paid classified advertising. I want to see the media take a real shellacking for all the lying and spin they’ve indulged in over the last ten years especially.
When they lay off the likes of Bellowing Brian Williams, Matt Lauer, etc., I’ll be cheering. I want to see those jerks out on the streets begging for pennies.
Most of the “media” taking a shellacking right now are the reporters, editors, photographers, ect…making $30,000 a year a papers you’ve never heard of getting shown the door by the thousands. The big guys or “media elite” don’t feel a thing.
And WORSE Palmy…they they are put on Daily hire freelance with no bennies….I know…and the quality of Live TV goes downhill fast.
You really have no skin in the game if all you get is a few days/weeks of work here and there.
The only thing that matters is: if they call you at 10pm can you be at work at 7am, say no ,once too often and you go to the bottom of the list.
My brother works for a small-town paper and he thinks that the “government” should step in and tax the wazoo out of Craigslist, with the presumption that some of the funds could support “struggling papers”. He wasn’t pleased when I replied that the maybe car companies should support buggy-whip manufacturers too.
I thought Brian William’s Hurricane Katrina coverage was excellent. I don’t fault most beat-level journalists for the sins of their editorial boards. That said, I share your sense of satisfaction to be seeing these Establishment propaganda mouthpieces going down to tubes.
How come no one ever criticizes Rupert Murdoch in these rants?
The bottomfisherman is interested at $1800/house. How can I get those deals???
Two words:
Campaign Contribution
You don’t need to know or pay off anybody to get this kind of deal. Remember, we’re talking Detroit.
http://www.realtor.com/search/searchresults.aspx?fhcnt=20&loc=detroit%2c+mi&usrloc=detroit%2c+mi&ml=8&mxp=1000&typ=3F
Same thing happened when Resolution Trust Corporation sold off their inventory back in the 80s. Those with the political connections got the best deals.
So let’s let government have even MORE control of the economy. Oops, already happening.
Schweet Scwaby Schweebus!
I’m not totally familiar with Detroit but those houses are basically going for the ongoing rent (= annual property tax) and there are no buyers.
No buyers because you have to be a fairly gutsy dude to buy houses in those areas and rent to the typical local dweller in those parts. 1K and no buyers pretty much speaks for itself.
1K and no buyers pretty much speaks for itself
“‘We are in trouble,’ Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, who pays the state’s bills, said earlier this month. ‘We’re writing checks like crazy and the money isn’t coming in.’”
She just figured this out! Oh, my.
We have become a nation of housewives (gender neutral) that still have a bunch of checks, how can we be overdrawn?
She goes on: “‘We can’t rely any more on attracting fixed-income retirees from up north and selling them cheap land,’ Sink said. ‘Those days are over.’”
No, they’re not, lady. Not necessarily. Just cut the cost of the land and houses to what they were in, say, 1995 and you’ll see some folks start to move in. All that’s true in her statement is that the huge numbers of retirees forecast to move here ain’t gonna happen.
As others have said, the very last thing these government wonks consider is serious, to-the-bone cuts of the nature you or I would have to make if our income shrank. Like, selling off some those fancy buildings they put up when taxes were rolling in like a tsunami, to cut operating costs. Cut all school administrative staff in half. Cancel all new school construction contracts and stick to pre-fab instead. When I went to school, all the way through college, we had ZERO air-conditioning. Perhaps they could consider that novel idea.
Another simple approach is to dredge up a copy of every local budget from the year 1998 or 2000. Adjust the numbers upward (or downward) by the exact percentage of population change. Then hand it to each department head and tell them, “Get to this level or get out.” The only exception I’d make is for water & sewer, because overbuilt capacity is so difficult to reduce or idle effectively.
Then cut the heck out of property taxes.
And remember, never, ever re-elect anyone. Better to throw out the one in 20 who might be doing a decent job, in order to get rid of the 19 who aren’t.
Sorry this turned into such a rant.
No, they’re not, lady. Not necessarily. Just cut the cost of the land and houses to what they were in, say, 1995 and you’ll see some folks start to move in. All that’s true in her statement is that the huge numbers of retirees forecast to move here ain’t gonna happen.
I’m not so sure. I have a piece of land in FL, picked up cheap at pre-bubble prices, on which I had planned to build a retirement home. I wanted to have a spot outside of any HOA, with no CC&Rs, etc.
I wouldn’t even think of starting this project now, even though it’s cheaper than ever to build. (We didn’t plan on financing this project, so that’s not an issue.)
Why? Because I worry about the stability of Florida in general. Tax revenues are way down, crime is way up, and there are dozens of homes that have been empty for a year or more within 1/2 mile of my location! This could become a slum worse than any of those boarded-up towns in the northeast.
I don’t think retirees will move to Florida and spend their hard-earned money. There’s too much infrastructure risk here. And anyone who does a minimal amount of research will avoid HOA communities–which were mandated by law in most Florida counties. If your neighbors aren’t paying their dues, you’re on the hook for more.
“We can’t be broke!! We still have checks!!”
‘If I had a lot of money right now, I’d buy. I really would,’ Bublitz said.”
I’d buy, too. I’m just not buying a house.
That line jumped out at me, too.
Well, duh, yeah, if I had a million bucks, I might be buying. That’s the whole point: the entire country is broke and facing a margin call. Very few people beyond this blog have a pot to pee in, especially the crucial first-time buyer segment. Now, finally, people are starting to save money again, but for the past 10 years or so, few people have been saving and they’ve been living beyond their means. It takes a while to save up a 10 or 20 percent downpayment.
True. I enjoy following prices drops for all the new Vegas and Miami condo projects. In this arena, lenders have already started requiring 40% or more down. At first the foreign investors came in to purchase the foreclosure “bargains.” Now with the global recession in full swing, the foreclosures just sit there with 10% drops or more per month. A sign of things to come for the broader markets? If you spend perform your homework and act quickly you can get 60% of peak prices paid. I’m not recommending jumping in yet, I just find it fascinating to watch.
Anyone else follow the whole gangbanger AK-47 shootout incident in Plant City this past week? A real hoedown hootenanny, that. Guy got cornered by the po-lice and gets out of his vehicle and starts peppering the area with gunfire. Nice little historical downtown area.
Exactly! And in Central Florida last week, there was a shootout inside a crowded Metro West Wal*Mart. That’s one of the *NICER* areas in the Orlando metro area.
Probably 1/3 of Florida is addicted to drugs. When they run out of money to pay for them, street crime and burglaries will skyrocket. Expect every neighborhood to have houses with Burglar Bars on every window….
I was not far from the Metrowest shooting when it happened. I asked last week who y’all do it, I’m still wondering how anyone lives in Orlando.
Of course, the press will single out the AK-47 as the prime villain, ignoring, as always, the fact that vermin need to be dealt with accordingly.
Too true, Sammy.
Didn’t hear about that one, Palmy. I do recall when I lived in plant city a decade ago it was more of an, er, law and order place. For instance: guy done burglarizing a home, exiting a window. It’s kinda dark, police show. Shots fired. Burglar dies. The line about burglar reaching for something “suspicious” at his waistband is used. Sometimes elsewhere, perhaps line is used to cloud suspicious police actions. So there is an inquiry, and the policeman is exonerated. Lesson learned: you didn’t steal stuff in plant city, where a lot of people carry their own pieces, without punishment.
Used to ride my bike through that historical area.
Crime is the number one reason i wouldn’t wanna move back to the Sunshine State.
Keep your head down.
The reality hasn’t yet set in for 80% of the public (or state officials) - there IS NO return to “normal.” We will be in a Japan like recession for five to ten years, and will just slowly recover. Flippers who still think they can buy, fix-up, and sell for a profit will be in for a big suprise (if they aren’t already). State officials who are still writing checks will be out of money soon. The “Great Recession” as some are calling it, will be long and hard.
BTW - Japan’s “recovery” looks like it lasted all of two years.
While in Tokyo in Spring 2006 I remember hearing that property prices had just managed to stage their first modest increase since the bust. Now they’ve already declared a recession - again.
I agree, we’ve seen our hyperinflation ( homes, cars, education, equities and commodities) and it’s in the rearview mirror ( 1998-2008).
Japanes are savers and Japan as a country has current account surplus.
Americans are in debt and America has huge current account defecit.
Having that said how US recession compares with Japan’s? It does not look good.
We are going to have depression 2nd to the great one.
The thing about the USA is it’s a huge country (physically and economically) with lots of untapped potential.. not a tiny island who’s resources have been thoroughly exploited.
The USA is so blessed with natural wealth that it allows us (if you live here) to be lazy. We’ve been lazy… a little too lazy.. and are now suffering for it. But thanks to the USA’s vast unused potential we can recover if we simply have the will to recover. The Japanese are not afforded the luxury.
the Nikkei 225 in 1989 was at 40,000
last time I checked, oh, last week or thereabout it was at ~8000
good luck everyone
Cinch
RE: The “investment in rennovations” from the Florida Today summary. You gotta love the way the MSM reporters invariably fail to press all the poor victim FBs for details on the “rennovations” and “medical expenses” to which they all point as the causes of their woes. Does payment for a breast enhancement or a hair transplant qualify as a “medical expense”?
“Almost one in 10 S.C. homeowners was behind on mortgage payments or in foreclosure at the end of September. And the state’s high unemployment rate indicates more people will have trouble making payments next year.”
Thanks for the S.C. link Ben, The condo builders here in Columbia are building full speed ahead and we have 100’s of unsellable units just sitting.
One complex down by the Universities football stadium, in an industrial area that you don’t want to visit after dark. Is trying to sell 800sq.ft. boxes starting @ $325,000.00. Keeping in mind that the median family income here is $38,000.00.
These brain dead RE clowns keep saying what a great deal they are for college students.
S.C. now has 8.0% unemployment, 4th worst in the nation (behind CA, RI, MI).
It’s kind of fun at this point not to owe a single soul not a thin dime. Thanks to Ben and all you posters.
“James Odell Barnes, an investor in South Carolina, says he and a group of investor partners recently paid about $1.2 million for a bulk purchase of about 800 homes from Fannie Mae. That works out to about $1,500 apiece on average. A large share of the homes were in Detroit and other depressed Michigan cities; others were in cities including Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Memphis, Tenn., and Toledo, Ohio. Barnes says he quickly resold for about $50,000 one of the Detroit homes purchased from Fannie for $1,800.”
==============================
To put things into perspective…
We sold our ruthlessly un-updated 1966 tract home in el lay 3 years ago, for more than was paid for 800 homes recently.
Heck my 1,000 square foot stucco box in San Jose went for “400 homes” worth.
I’ll bet there may be some decent places in the Memphis tranche. Memphis IIUC isn’t a bad place and could be a semi-ruralized retirement place - much nicer than FL IMHO.
Dennis,
Amazing isn’t it?
We could have been slumlords extraordinaire~
What do you mean “could have been”? Looks like there’s still time.
“…he and a group of investor partners recently paid about $1.2 million for a bulk purchase of about 800 homes…”
I’m going to share something from the front lines of the housing bubble with you folks. I was hired by a lender to find a house they had taken back at auction in April, but couldn’t locate. Yesterday, with the help of an enterprising broker who has knowledge of the area, and a database of tax parcel numbers by satilite photos, I found it. After driving off road for an hour, there it stood in one of the most remote places I’ve ever been.
This is in one of the ‘off-grid’ parts of the state. Off-grid may conjure up images of wind generators and solar panels, but it was more like old buses with tarps strung up around them. But these guys had built this thing out of plywood. And although I don’t know who the lender is or what type of loan it had on it, I’m guessing it was a refi due to the age of the house.
Now, I believe these old boys are really into three things based on what I saw. Motocross, cheap whiskey and guns. And judging for the piles of spent casings on the front and back porch, they like to shoot from their chairs. We aren’t talking 22’s either; these guys like large caliber.
So, tomorrow I am going to give this lender the bad news; not only that they aren’t going to get a dime of that money back, but that I wouldn’t go back to that house if they were going to give it to me!
Geeze louise…
I really feel I could have gotten a loan from somebody on my childhood fort-circa 1972, if only we had not taken it apart to built bicycle ramps (plywood) in emulating our hero, Evel Knievel.
Every once in a while you see this sort of set-up in the movies, some desert scene with a shack or old mobile home. Like in Terminator 2. I always thought it was some sort of exaggeration mocked up just for the movies.
‘…some desert scene with a shack or old mobile home. Like in Terminator 2. I always thought it was some sort of exaggeration mocked up just for the movies.’
Nope. Go drive around remote rural Utarr and you will see this sort of thing aplenty. Sun-faded curtains flapping forlornly in the shabby window, gnarled old poplars with leaves fluttering in the hot breeze, a skinny dog tied up in the hard-pack yard…
Also the crazed robot from the future lurching around, laws yes, purt’ near everyone’s got one of those, although them’s losing popularity lately.
That was a pretty entertaining description, Ben! Sort of “Deliverance West.”
“What you doin’ round heah, boy?” “You know how to dance, boy?” “Hey, Jethro, come ‘n watch this!” c-l-i-c-k.
Chip,
It was really something. Early on, I noticed I had left my lights on, and that made me think that if I couldn’t get the truck started, I may not be able to walk out before it got cold. After the first few minutes of walking around, I realized I was sweating, and it wasn’t warm. I was so glad when I got home.
“After the first few minutes of walking around, I realized I was sweating, and it wasn’t warm.”
I’m just glad you got the heck outta there unharmed. I think I started sweating just reading your description of the place. But then, I’m kinda a ninny.
You haven’t lived until you’ve had a gun held to your forehead.
I don’t recommend it, BTW.
In my case, it was actually a misunderstanding, and the guy even apologized and laughed about it but for a moment there, hoo boy …
As someone who had that happen twice as a kid, I don’t agree–I was living very well, thank you, before the gun incidents.
IAT
It was hyperbole not meant to be literal.
I think it’s tough to thread the neeble between gun at the forehead and understood-to-be hyperbole.
IAT
needle!
‘I think it’s tough to thread the needle between gun at the forehead and understood-to-be hyperbole.’
It’s true. One is a whole lot colder. I never had one right ON my forehead, not the round part. So, you got my sincere sympathies, itsabouttime. And now, let’s move on to the cookies and Cheezwhiz part of the evening! No more guns for US! We escaped! Here we are! Hooray!
‘After the first few minutes of walking around, I realized I was sweating, and it wasn’t warm. I was so glad when I got home.’
Me too! We can’t spare you, nohow, Ben.
Now see, aren’t you glad I prayed for you? Although my prayers was of so good quality that you would have been able to dodge any flying bullets anyway.
Pray tell, Olympiagal, who or what exactly do you pray to these days?
‘Pray tell, Olympiagal, who or what exactly do you pray to these days?’
Well, I ain’t a gointer tell you, Sammy, because you seem to be grumpy today.
But whomsoever I pray to, and I do pray, They bend close and heedest me, of this I am sure. For verily, dost not scripture tell us;
“Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.”
(1Jn. 4:7)
I wonder how in the heck they ever got a mortgage on that plywood shack. Did an appraiser ever even make a visit? It’s not like an appraiser could just consider “comps” on a place like that. It would appear that the local DA would have an easy fraud case against the appraiser-of-record.
‘Did an appraiser ever even make a visit? It’s not like an appraiser could just consider “comps” on a place like that.’
They probly kilt and ate the appraiser when he/she showed up. Then they used the captive(s) they got chained up in the cellar to forge the pertinent documents and then just mailed them in theirselves.
It’s comments like this that make you soooo lovable. Thank you. And I mean that from the bottom of my heart.
Oh, you are very welcome, Ken.
Although this gives me concern about your activities. Tell me, are you wearing a gun-belt right now? What’d you have for Sunday dinner? Were there carrots as a side-dish?
Hahahahaha!
Now, I’m just kidding, you know, Ken. I know you wouldn’t eat an appraiser. They wiggle too much, for instance, plus they taste like…like lies.
I was hired by a lender to find a house they had taken back at auction in April, but couldn’t locate. Looks like the Loan Arranger took advantage of his faithful companion Tonto, the fool.
Some places, you just don’t want to locate.
LOL. True.
Ben,
Here’s how the lender should proceed. They should file for a guv’mint grant to conduct an anthropological study of this off-grid ecosystem of chair-sitting rodent shooters, who should be cherished and protected as a unique cultural endangered species. Claim there’s an Indian burial ground anywhere in the vicinity, and that those plywood shanties represent art in the Watts Towers sense. Trust me, they’ll get more than enough funding to cover their lending losses many times over.
LOL!
————
Sorry you had to deal with that, Ben. You didn’t mention…was anybody home?
Ben, them good ol’ boys probably run a survivalist blog.
Them and the cockroaches will probably ride out the Apocolypse better than the rest of us. Go figure.
I can see how a bank would hire somebody to try to try to figure out what’s bundled up inside a mortgage-backed security, but it’s surprising they’d have to hire somebody just to find the house!
Sounds like a pretty nerve-wracking event. They might like cheap whiskey, but large caliber ammunition is expensive these days. Whatever money they got from the bank was “consumed”. You’re right: there’s nothing left for the bank. From your story, I’m surprised there weren’t a bunch of dogs around. Maybe the people have already flown the coup?
That was my question…was the place abandoned or did you (Ben) just happen to show up while they were gone?
And I’m not sure why, but Ben’s story made me think of the scene from Sideways where Paul Giamatti goes to that house to get his buddy’s wallet back. Just an uneasy feeling all around.
“Gaviria said that figure is grossly inflated, but said she knew nothing about the change on her mortgage application until this year when she fell behind on her payments and the bank called her. She said the bank representative demanded, ‘What’s the problem? You make $17,000 a month.”’
Yeah, I’d like to hear more banks say this to their customers with inflated incomes on their mortgage documents. The buyers are just as culpable as the banks. I’m sure there are a very few transaction where the papers were doctored without knowledge of the buyer. But for the most part, buyers just went along with whatever.
Prices could only rise further so everyone just went along with whatever. Everyone involved had to just go along with whatever.. or the chain would break.. the pyramid would crumble.. the illusion would disappear.
There’s probably about 3 people on earth that make 17,000 dollars a month that can’t document their income (and don’t do something illegal). Come ON!
17,000 dollars a month is ~200K a year. And you can’t document? WTF do you do? And, if it’s illegal, does ANY bank ANYWHERE really want to lend you a million dollars?
Stated income loans should account for about .001% of all the outstanding MTG loans out there, and only for very strange circumstances (proprietary information would be revealed by explaining and documenting your income source).
Other then that? W2/1099 income; if it’s not on there, it DOES NOT EXIST in the eyes of the lender.
Conversely, if you stated the income on a mortgage application where the mortgage is government-backed (or is soon to be), then you should pay income taxes on that stated income, or go to jail.
Agreed.
For what it is worth home Prices according to Zillow are going up in 90274 in last 9 months. 90274 is between long beach and redondo beach south of LAX and scenically along Pacific Coast of California.
I’ve been tracking our former residence (Ventura County)on Zillow, and they show it going up too. I don’t believe it. $20K in less than 30 days. BS.
Here is an eye opener in Long Beach , CA
1000 E. Ocean Blvd. #714
List price 09/19/06 $989,000
closed price 12/01/06 $1,325,000, 100% finance.
REO Bank owned price $719,999
Some bank took at least a $600,000 hit
I pity the buyer who believed their realtor and based their purchase on the 12/01/06 sale.
I have no faith in the comps on Ocean Blvd in long Beach. they are mostly based on fraud.
Here is a eye opener in long Beach.CA
I noticed that too on a former residence. I think that the rising values are due to the fact that sales of non-ditressed homes have fallen off the table. Those that do sell are the fully remodeled , cream of the crop, desireable variety that serve to raise the level of the comps zwillow uses.
That’s my 2¢.
As many of you predicted that luxury mall to be built in Sarasota Fl is now on hold
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20081207/ARTICLE/812070358/2055/NEWS?Title=Upscale_mall_will_be_late
Don’t know enough to have a useful opinion about it, but I’ve read in the past year or two that the economic crash we are in might cause a fundamental re-think about the usefulness of megamalls (as opposed to strip centers) as a business plan. The thinking was that we are likely to see a return to more neighborhood-oriented shopping areas. To keep it in perspective, I think that the reasoning assumed continued high gas prices.
IMO, all you’d need to do to get rid of malls altogether is to make guys do all the shopping.
There are still a lot of people kicking the tires,’ Bublitz said. ‘I don’t understand why people who want to move up aren’t buying. Now’s the time.’”
First of all, Bublitz, on general principle I wouldn’t buy from a flipper such as yourself. As to why people aren’t buying, let me enlighten you: those of us who are actually creditworthy and solvent know that time is on our side, and the deals are only getting better. And your canal house will be a better buy at the foreclosure sale.
“Michele Greenwood has lost two homes in Naples. She might lose another. All of the homes carried mortgages from Countrywide Financial Corp. She describes the mortgages as ‘weird,’ ‘funky’ and ‘pitiful.’
No, Michele, it’s you that’s weird, funky, and pitiful. And anyone who lent money to the likes of you, so you could indulge in greed-driven speculation, deserves to go under. I’ll be so happy when the last of the Michele Greenwoods and their enablers have been flushed out, and sanity is restored.
“She really didn’t understand what she was getting into when she signed off on the loans, she said. ‘You just give them what they ask you for and if they say you’re approved you don’t ask questions,’ she said. ‘That’s the way I looked at it.’”
“‘Right now all I can do is pay what I can pay and hope I don’t get a foreclosure notice. What else can I do? I can’t borrow any more money. I just have to gamble and hope we’re able to catch up before they foreclose on me,’ she said.”
Quick — hurry — give this poor woman a bailout at once, before the foreclosure woof huffs and puffs and blows all her underwater houses down!
first of all, how the hell can someone have two or three homes? If i get this right she had 3 at once. wtf do they mean by “home”? I thought home was where you slept and shaved and shat and went after work and left in the morning..
In what universe can someone be in 3 places at once? Is someone selling quantum string time reversing quark powered triplex transporters on E-bay?
LOS ANGELES – A program to exchange guns for gifts brought in a record number of weapons this year as residents hit hard by the economy look under the bed and in closets to find items to trade for groceries.
The annual Gifts for Guns program ended Sunday in Compton, a working class city south of Los Angeles that has long struggled with gun and gang violence. In a program similar to ones in New York and San Francisco, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department allows residents to anonymously relinquish firearms in return for $100 gift cards for Ralphs supermarkets, Target department stores or Best Buy electronics stores.
Turning in assault rifles yields double that amount.
In years past, Target and Best Buy were the cards of choice, with residents wanting presents for the holidays.
This year, most asked for the supermarket cards, said sheriff’s Sgt. Byron Woods.
“People just don’t have the money to buy the food these days,” he said.
I like Key West..had a ball up & down the Keys several years ago.
Dove many wrecks and lots of coral sites. Found no gold Alad.
(had to buy all I have -more asap)
Out of curiosi9ty had a squiz at Key West $$prices. Where do they
think buyers for the (currently) listed multi million shacks are?
Your certainly not a bartend or waiter/ess that will be buying these.
There is money there for sure, but how many have been HELOC’d to the hilt during the run up?
If they get to .5M I might consider a lowball all cash offer. You FL guys..were is this market going. Any ideas.
There are some million dollar + houses selling here and there
most people who own places like that don’t actually make their money in the keys
you can see some of the places that are selling here
keywestmls.com/sold.php
There are tons of places listed for less the .5m, 2-3 bedroom places with canals in the lower keys
‘I don’t care what you paid for it. It doesn’t matter,’ said Kelley, an agent in Cocoa Beach and Merritt Island and president of the Space Coast Association of Realtors. ‘It’s a hard pill for many sellers to swallow.’”
We are still in the denial phase as many sellers just do not realize that there property values have dropped and are not willing to believe it.
It is unfortunate that so many home buyers fell for the sales pitches of the realtors and the hype that “property values will always keep going up” that was often mentioned by the NAR and their membership, the realtors. What the buyers forgot was that the realtors are paid a commision and it was in their best interest to close the deal even when it was not in the best interest of the buyer.