Bits Bucket For March 14, 2009
Please visit the HBB Forum. Post off-topic ideas, links and Craigslist finds here.
The Housing Bubble
Examining the home price boom and its effect on owners, lenders, regulators, realtors and the economy as a whole.
About Me
Name:Ben Jones
Location:Northern Arizona, United States
To donate by mail, or to otherwise contact this blogger, please send emails to: thehousingbubble@gmail.com
PayPal is a secure online payment method which accepts ALL major credit cards.
Links
-
May 2024 M T W T F S S « Sep 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
Photo Submission: hbbphotos@gmail.com
View the HBB Photo Gallery *updated 4/13/2008
Just a day after U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner proposed increasing U.S. contributions to his former employer, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) by $100 billion, he offered another plan to increase funding for NASA space probes to search for life, and sources of bail-out cash, on other planets. …
Under the terms of the so-called Geithner Intergalactic Plan, NASA would launch dozens of unmanned space probes each month to “the four corners of the cosmos”, each one bearing a kind of universal ATM device. When a probe lands on a planet, and is discovered by its inhabitants, a pictograph etched on the casing will give instructions on how to swipe a credit card, insert local money for automatic conversion into Euros, or simply click a PayPal button.
http://www.dcexaminer.com/opinion/columns/scottott/Geithner-boosts-NASA-funds-to-probe-cosmos-for-bail-out-cash-41197697.html
Sweet!
UPDATE:Ruling On Merrill Bonus Confidentiality Due By Mar 20
NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- A New York State judge on Friday said he’ll rule by next week on whether to keep confidential details about individuals who received bonuses at Merrill Lynch & Co. on the eve of its merger with Bank of America Corp. (BAC) last year.
At a hearing Friday, New York Supreme Court Justice Bernard J. Fried in Manhattan said he’ll issue a ruling on or before March 20 on a request by the Charlotte, N.C., bank to prevent New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo from publicly releasing the names of individuals who received bonuses and how much they made.
Last month, Cuomo’s office subpoenaed Bank of America for a list of who received 2008 bonus awards at Merrill Lynch. The bank has declined to turn over the names without having a confidentiality order in place.
Evan A. Davis, a lawyer for the bank, argued Friday that the list of who received bonuses is proprietary data and releasing it would put it at a competitive disadvantage, particularly if competitors were able to learn how much its top 200 executives were paid.
———————
This is complete BS; if they got money from the taxpayers, we have the right to know how the money was spent.
“…the list of who received bonuses is proprietary data and releasing it would put it at a competitive disadvantage,…”
Lol. The jerks receiving the bonuses have already put B of A at a competitive disadvantage.
Pay for performance, lol.
As a publicly traded company, how can they hide this?
They are claiming talent and privacy rights using copyright, trade secret, and patent argument track.
This really shouldn’t be and issue b/c we should not have given them the money in the first place. Break em up. Send them to BK court.
Does your employer disclose your compensation??
Who gives a crap about what somebody made
I don’t work for a publicly traded company. The reason I had assumed compensation numbers weren’t actively available was because the shareholders saw value in them remaining private. Once it became obvious that shenanigans were taking place and the taxpayers became shareholders, I had assumed that they could demand some disclosure.
(shenanigans)
Who gives a crap about what somebody made
Well, ummm…me? If MY tax dollars were part of ‘what somebody made’, then, yeah, I most certainly give a crap.
Amen sistah.
All people in Washingnton State who work for the state have their salaries published. Which includes hundreds of thousands of people.
I’m a state employee and you could look my salary up on the internet. Kind of annoying but comes with the territory. Anybody who is kept employed using tax dollars should be treated the same.
At the local state university the folks who are highly paid but shouldn’t be are paid from two or three different account numbers. Makes it look like they are paid less when you look them up online.
yes
Well… maybe.
hmmmmmmm?
Suburbia R.I.P.
by Michael Cannell
Thursday, March 12, 2009provided byFastCompany.com
The downturn has accomplished what a generation of designers and planners could not: it has turned back the tide of suburban sprawl. In the wake of the foreclosure crisis many new subdivisions are left half built and more established suburbs face abandonment. Cul-de-sac neighborhoods once filled with the sound of backyard barbecues and playing children are falling silent. Communities like Elk Grove, Calif., and Windy Ridge, N.C., are slowly turning into ghost towns with overgrown lawns, vacant strip malls and squatters camping in empty homes.
http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/106732/Suburbia-R-I-P
Reminds me of the movie “Suburbia”. I wonder if we’ll start seeing roving packs of wild dogs too.
“When my dad gets back and see this.. he’s gonna !@#$ twinkies!”
Yeah I put that link up in Bits Bucket yesterday. James Kunstler is an extremist on that issue but I think he’s not too far off from what will happen.
Large cities have a lot of advantages.
Specialization of labor allows for a high tech society with a higher standard of living. If you doubt that, imagine living out in a remote area such as east of the California Sierra Nevada mountains when gasoline costs $10 per gallon.
Critics of those who buy and stash gold bullion keep saying “you cannot eat gold.” They suggest that it will be hard to convert gold into food. Well it is much harder out in the boondocks where there are no established gold/silver/platinum coin dealers. Large cities usually have about 5 different reputable dealers who have been in the business for decades.
Critics of city dwellers say that you can grow your own food in the country but it’s unlikely in the city. However if you have a garage, (and some storage units can also do the trick), you can store dried foods and bottled (preferably glass bottles) water.
Medical care is readily available in the cities. Anecdote: I worked as an employee of the U.S. Navy in China Lake, CA. in the 1980s to the mid 1990s. We had annual safety standowns. We were told that when the big earthquake hits Los Angeles, even if it also strikes China Lake/Ridgecrest, it would take weeks before any aid would come to people in the high desert. The reason is that LA would get the highest priority. Simple fact: The highest population densities will get the quickest relief and first aid. They pay the most taxes anyway.
have fun in your Little House on the Prairie. I’ll take Phoenix, Los Angeles, Philadelphia…
Bill in Los Angeles-
+eleventybillion
“I’ll take Phoenix, Los Angeles, Philadelphia…”
I’ll take Cleveland for one dollar, Alex.
Why overpay so much when you can get it for cheaper later?
Hey dude — any chance you could weigh in with a freshwater economics perspective on the affordable housing debate between me and IAT on yesterday’s Shakedown thread? I have run out of patience…
I must’ve missed this. Will go take a look.
Check out my Purple People / Blue People argument — I refer to it as “It takes two to get screwed.”
Somewhere in there the whole thing got boring.
A lot of people behaved, well, stupidly. A lot of lenders went around scr*wing a lot people. It’s too much work, and I try not to get sucked into these things.
Some city dwellers have in the past grown a lot of food. I have seen photos of a W. Roxbury, Massachusetts neighborhood full of triple-deckers, each back yard packed with gardens growing vegetables. These photos date from the 1930’s-1940’s. Now the backyards are full of flowers, lawn furniture & large adult toys.
The worst-off areas of the US will be those parts whose settlement was largely due to the automobile, and whose continuing habitation is only possible with cheap abundant motor vehicle fuels.
Ever seen this?
just how much food can you grow in a year on a 10th of an acre?
——————————————————————————–
How about 6,000 lbs…
HOMEGROWN REVOLUTION - Radical Change Taking Root
Since the early 80’s the Dervaes family has slowly transformed their ordinary city lot into a self sufficient urban homestead.
Just search YouTube for ‘homegrown revolution’. Quite amazing actually.
Thanks for that, Ernest. Raised beds rule!
Self-sufficiency will be making a long-overdue comeback during Great Depression II. One of the few positives, methinks.
‘One of the few positives, methinks.’
A VERY big positive, in my view.
Bill, do you have a sufficient number of firearms and a large stash of ammo for them? Or do you think the police will be able to protect you when the next urban uprisings come?
The next ones will make 1968 look like a college bonfire rally in comparison.
The next ones will make 1968 look like a college bonfire rally in comparison.
Perhaps — but if and when that happens, the suburbs will not escape unharmed, not by a long shot. The era of Splendid Isolationism is over, and many of the newly indignant live in McMansions.
That’s exactly right. 1968 is worlds away from 2009. The population was even more segregated back then and mobility (plentiful autos) was only a fraction of what it is today. Any conflagration will spread fast and it will spread far.
In 1968 poppa Daley raised the drawbridges, what the heck effect would doing that have today?
ET, I assume you meant indigent, but indignant is as good a word as any. After all, the nouveaux riches who find their ill-gotten gains were “easy come, easy go” may have a right to be indignant. Did they not vote for Mother, the flag, and the Republican party in 2000? Did they not go long on America? (Not to mention “all in”,
“balls to the wall”, and “double down”?)
ET, I assume you meant indigent, but indignant is as good a word as any.
No, I meant indignant, as in “angry, blood-thirsty, and ready to set SUVs aflame,” even though I typed “indigent” first. There’s a lot of bile building in The Great American Suburbs.
Don’t tase me bro.
“The next ones will make 1968 look like a college bonfire rally in comparison.”
Unless the masses are completely out of food and on the hunt, I suspect they will not leave their Xbox and 42″ plasma.
“Hold the Fort Bill, they’re a-coming for the radish patch !”
I would gladly live in a half finished development and fight vandals daily than to live in the socialist hell holes of inner Philadelphia or Detroit or…
Nice to know those are my only two choices.
Any place where there are still jobs will not be a Cleveland.
“The highest population densities will get the quickest relief and first aid.”
Kinda like NOLA, huh?
I’ll take my chances with my orchards, gardens, hens, range cattle and distance horses. We don’t have any “services” up here anyway, so we’re used to it. And as disaster is a way of life, we don’t succomb to panic as easily (key to surviving a crisis.) Cities are great when they function, but the stuff of nightmares when they do not.
After a disruptive quake, hospitals will be jammed, supply routes broken and jammed, water for hygiene unavailable. How long do you think you can defend your stash 24/7 against a determined gang? A couple of weeks? A month? Two?
Hah! I scoff at your gold.
ahansen,
NOLA government officials and the authorities have had notorious corruption. Many cities are better run. And post-Katrina, wouldn’t you think many municipalities have taken steps to be sure they would not repeat the NOLA mistakes?
Your last paragraph is written by you. Where are your credentials for saying this? If you are correct, why didn’t we hear your side at the safety standowns in China Lake in the 1980s/90s?
The high desert gets earthquakes too. Power poles would be toppled. Fault lines parallel old route 395. Water service would be nonexistant. And you say that LA metro would be worse off? I call BS.
You’re dismissing a real-world test in favor of 20 year-old fantasy.
I’ll take New Orleans!
Not.
Just talked to my nurse relative in North Philadelphia; if the SHTF, family will be moving to a sedate Ohio countryside; the boyz in Philly wont be seeing anything of her and probably 80 percent of the staff when they need bullet extraction services. The fallacy of getting services in the big city when society and economics collapse is held on to by the libs until the end. Check out Harare. There you’ll see just how well things hold out even under a dictator with unlimited financial power to print money and give it to his chosen people. Good thing that could never happen here.
Nice link! Thanks.
(from the article)
‘A study by the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech predicts that by 2025 there will be as many as 22 million unwanted large-lot homes in suburban areas…
Already low or middle-income families priced out of cities and better neighborhoods are moving into McMansions divided for multi-family use.’
Hey! It’s almost as if everything everyone on this blog predicted is like…like…coming true, or something…
The funny thing is that, for some reason, the local listing agents think .15 acre is a “large lot.”* Um… no. Especially not with McMansions. Of course, they’re set so closely together and set up in such a way that they’d be hard to subdivide.
Incidentally, I’m in Elk Grove. But then, so is Evil Rob’s job, so we’re not here as commuters. And we’re currently renting in an older area of town, so we’re not seeing these overly shuttered neighborhoods.
*A large lot, IMO, is quarter-acre and up. That way you actually have some yard space.
I read the dead tree version of Richard Florida’s Atlantic article earlier this morning. It was okay, but Richard Florida seems like another RE shill to me, albeit one that doesn’t ever use the word “luxury.” (Hallmark of academic respectability?)
I hear: Cul-de-sac suburbs are out of style. So are places like Des Moines. THROW THEM AWAY. Creative types flock to Boulder and Austin, besides thriving in New York. Make the downtowns of Boulder and Austin and other loci for creative clustering into Manhattan - luxury condo towers with concierge service. Yay for New Urbanism! Knock down every tree and affordable rental. Drive out the little mom and pop and weird Harry businesses with high rents and lack of maintenance. And don’t forget - make sure you knock down EVERY TREE!! (After photographing for sales brochure use.)
After those pesky trees and tenants are gone, build “mixed use walkable developments” - despite the attractive theory of density and walkability, here it is translating into overpriced cookie cutter lofts and condos sitting on top of overpriced cookie cutter retail (all sports shops, handbag shops, expensive coffee - NO hardware stores, repair shops, hole-in-the-wall clubs). Make those young creative types buy a half million dollar “urban loft” or else move back to Waco. Harness that creativity to a mortgage! (Otherwise let them rent in the $ thousands per month - what’s creativity for but commercialization anyway?) Turn every street into a tunnel, every view into a wall, stick in a little faux-funky for the tourists.
To me the article fit pretty seemlessly with the flack job about Austin downtown condos that Bub Diddley linked to yesterday. According to the Atlantic, Richard Florida is the director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto Rotman School of Management. My guess is that the Martin Prosperity Institute was endowed by (the Canadian equivalent of Billy Bub Martin), biggest belt buckle in the room.
Now that the countryside has been bulldozed and paved and tamed into suburbs, the developers want to bulldoze and pave and homogenize the neighborhoods near the luxury tower downtowns - and their shills are churning out the propaganda. F*** off, Billy Bub!!
punctuation should be:
My guess is that the Martin Prosperity Institute was endowed by (the Canadian equivalent of) Billy Bub Martin, biggest belt buckle in the room.
I thoroughly dislike Mr. Richard Florida’s writing.
E.g, for spewing superficialties.
In one recent article, he boasted about the “Mumbai - Bangalore” Corridor. That’s a distance of 650 miles, through the Western Ghats, and their villages. “Corridor” ? Certainly not same type of corridor such as DC - NYC. Mr. Florida was likely never there, and travelled it? Such is the superficialty that emanates from his, sorry to say, empty but narcissistically overblown words.
The idea of an urban environment without trees is crushingly depressing.
The horrid developments that happened during the boom under the banner of “new urbanism” have been worse to me than mccrapsions because they will blacken the name of smart growth and sensible, human-centered urban planning for a generation.
Fundamentally, urban land valuations got out of whack, “requiring” the F’d developers (and their banking partners) to build right up to the lot line (and to set rents too high), which means no trees .
In my hometown of Newton, MA, a nice old florist’s shop was torn out and replaced with a zero lot line condo monstrosity. It was actually in violation of zoning. They got a fake site plan approved and then built right up to the sidewalk, betting (correctly) that the city wouldn’t force them to tear it down once it was a fait accompli.
Somebody should have thrown some molotov cocktails (but we’re too civilized there, so instead we let this greedhead p*ss all over our town).
Another stupid fact from the same street: the owner of NEMB went ballistic when Stop&Shop wanted to move in across the street, even though they were going to fix up the street, add a traffic signal, and put in tons of parking. She was convinced that grocery shoppers would want to park in a narrow, one-way entry, broken asphalt lot on the OTHER SIDE of a busy, high speed commercial road. Riiiiighhhhhht….
Yesterday, I stumbled across this video report on the Inland Empire foreclosure crisis (even though it’s a few months old).
http://kcet.org/socal/2008/09/foreclosure-alley.html
It shows not only how worthless foreclosures in the ‘burbs really are, but also documents the extinction of the suburban lifestyle.
I always enjoyed the postings that showed what their local real estate market was doing. I remember seeing pictures of shacks in L.A. for close to a million. Here in Bakersfield, Ca. prices have fallen off a cliff. A home that would have cost 450k at the peak levels can be bought for 215k plus closing costs. It is staggering–the loss. I am waiting until my wife and I qualify for the 8k tax credit in August. I think the prices of homes will undershoot the median historical price, but at this point my family is growing and this apartment is shrinking; so the decision to buy a home becomes a quality of life issue. My best to all of you, and I hope all of you can capitalize from what is going to be a severe underpricing in U.S. homes.
“severe underpricing in U.S. homes”
You mean realistic pricing of housing.
At current prices, they still don’t cash flow.
And rents are dropping.
“… this apartment is shrinking…”
Desperate FBs make for desperate landlords. Give some thought to renting a house for now.
This RE decline is far from over; take a peek at the ARM reset charts for the next several years and ponder over it a bit. Meanwhile store up as much cash as you can.
My advice, FWIW.
RJ:
You have to think like a NewYorkah you need to go high, no six draw long dressers but 6 drawers high.
put you bed on risers and store all your seasonal stuff there. good metro shelving units to stack stuff.
get a smaller kitchen table or one that has drop leaves….even a coffee table with drawers heck they make couches with draws underneath them
condense condense…. you would be amazed what you can do with a little ingenuity and a little money
even milk crates can be stacked 6-7-8 high in the corner with stuff you rarely use.
If worse come to worse you can always rent a small storage locker…until prices get cheap enough to really afford a new home.
————————-
but at this point my family is growing and this apartment is shrinking
Fresno prices are still falling off the cliff. I keep tabs on that area since I was born there and I watch the zillow value on my parents’s house which I sold in 2000 or 2001. It’s falling at the pace of $6,000 per month. Fresno: The next Detroit.
I just stopped by in Phoenix after being in LA 3 weeks. The managment put in a nice new kitchen floor. The colors are darker than I like, but it’s new and professionally installed. I’m bad at DIY. Rent here is coming down anyway.
Pundits on the finance showes this morning on Fox still don’t get it. They still are shallow thinkers. They think the stocks bottomed. Well they forgot that Option ARM and ALT A resets arejust underway and will do as much damage to RE values as the subprimes.
Pundits on the finance showes this morning on Fox still don’t get it. Are there any finance shows on TV that “get it”? They all seem to lag many months behind events.
Fresno: The next Detroit.
Detroit is pretty unbelievable, as in “It’s hard to believe this chaos and decay is part of the United States of America.” If Fresno even devolves within a country mile of Detroit’s sad state, I pity the people stuck there.
I mentioned $1k houses in Detroit to a Texas co-worker in passing and she went all reverse carpet-bagger on me. Wondering if it made sense to buy several as “an investment”.
I know it’s really tempting to buy now. However, assuming you are not a millionaire, aren’t you scared prices might fall lower or the economy might get even worse?
Although I’m seeing homes where rent is equal to mortgage, I’m terrified b/c of the economy. Moreover, I’m thinking I might get more home for the buck in the future.
We’re waiting to buy too. (for 3 years now)
The stock market is the same level as 1996.
Auto sales are at 1982 levels.
Existing home sales are at early 1997 levels.
We have deflation, we’re going backwards.
We’re in a time machine. I think we’re in 1998 right now. You should lowball with 1998 prices.
Believe! Prices are not going up.
Astrodude, if I read this correctly you are actually thinking of purchasing. A house. In Bakersfield? In August.
Why are you even bothering to read this blog?
No, seriously?
test
You fail with flying colors.
Go slow, astronomo. You documented 50% price declines - that’s not enough. Give it a little more time- you can get that $215K house for less than $150K. A $100K loan will let you enjoy your tax benefits while paying less than rent. Seriously. You’ve waited this long - another year will make a big difference.
Does anyone wonder why the Madoff case was resolved so speedy fast, and with a Guilty verdict? Is this a cover up of people,sec, Feds, etc who would hate for their names to become public in a court case?
My guess is that he pled guilty to position himself better for requesting some form of clemancy at a later date. A long trial would keep him in the news and would harden people’s thoughts against him. By taking the short-cut of a guilty plea, his pals may hit Obama up for a commutation/pardon in a year or two. Plus he didn’t have to rat out on his pals so he has some payback coming on that front too.
I heard the pundits theorizing it was to protect his family. They claim by pleading guilty but without a plea deal he couldn’t be forced to testify against them. I’m not enough of a legal scholar to know why that would work better than simply going to trial and taking the 5th.
“I heard the pundits theorizing it was to protect his family.”
That’s my bet. At his age and considering what he has done his family is all he has left.
That old geazer, his crooked lawyer buddy and 1/2 of the known American Medical Society are going to plead age, mental and physical health issues to get him out or at least into a special prison hospital environment.
I’d like to see the FEDS bargin hard with that old bastard using an electric cattle prod and other CIA/FDA (non)approved “enhanced interrogation techniques” until he GETS the frigging Message.
“NO Payback.. and YOU’RE the Bitch of the Year in Here!”
A HOT shower = Location of 1 Billion
A warmer blanket = 2 Billion
Protection from Bubba = 3 Billion
15 minutes of fresh air = 4 billion and so on.
He DEFRAUDED a substantial chunk of the AMA, their families and their favorite charities. They aren’t going to be fighting for him.
Come on, guys. Engage your brains before you jump into the conspiracy theory.
You can’t take the 5th to protect someone else, though he could claim it was to protect him from a conspiracy charge.
He will never get clemency. The number of wealthy people and charities that have been hurt by his fraud is overwhelming. Besides, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him assasinated if he ever left prison.
The only thing that makes sense in this context (no trying to get out of any of the charges) is that if he tried to negociate, he would have to disclose the location of any hidden funds and rat on his family and a few associates.
This makes the work of the investigators harder. They are going to have to do all the leg work to follow all the wire and other transfers. They will be leaning on the “inexperienced” employees who did the fake books. They will figure out a lot, though maybe not all of it. But it is going to take time. Lots of time.
And then, just like Kenny Lay, he may expire with a ‘heart attack’ that he didn’t have problems with before. I am predicting…
I thought it was found Ken Lay had heart problems before, but they were covered up (most likely so he could pass medical jank to remain CEO?)
The fact that he pled(sp?) speaks volumes. The co-conspirators and leadership that allowed him to get away with it will never be named.
He will be back on the streets in less than 12 years a’la Boesky and Milken.
Yes. It’s a protection racket.
I got wild this morning watching CNN or Fox, one of the national news outlets. It was about 6:30, wife was still sleeping; I was afraid I’d startled her awake by letting loose with a very loud, “HAH!!” What made me blurt out this with nobody around even to hear it? Well, a woman swindled by Madoff was interviewed outside the court house and said into a microphone, in a very demanding tone, “Somebody from the government better step up and tell us what the government is going to do for all of us victims.”
I’d already had about two cups of coffee by that point and felt my blood pressure rise a couple of ticks. Isn’t there some equitable maxim to the effect, “A court will not settle disputes among thieves about their loot?”
“Does anyone wonder why the Madoff case was resolved so speedy fast,”
Mossad.
“Does anyone wonder why the Madoff case was resolved so speedy fast,”
CIA
KGB
And then, just like Kenny Lay, he may expire with a ‘heart attack’ that he didn’t have problems with before. I am predicting…
another TEST situation today, hmmmmm?
going 4 for 7 posts.
Freemasons
Nads.
Wow.
I don’t know exactly how Israeli universities, hospitals, cultural organizations, etc. are funded (how much comes from direct government support, contributions by Israelis, contributions by non-Israelis, endowments, etc.), but you better believe that the “American Friends of…[Technion, Bar Ilan University, Hadassah Hospital, etc.]” all lost some big bucks in this mess.
Not sure how that would implicate the Mossad explicitly, but I expect the Israeli government is pissed as heck at the SEC and various NY prosecutors.
I forgot to add my favorite conspiracy group The Lone Gunmen. “The truth is out there.”
If it was not for the taxes these deals are pretty good. This is a five acre property with a swimming pool and a tennis court. The neighborhood as well as the school district is also top notch. I will bet this property can be bought by an early knife catcher for about 450K or less. The taxes are the kiss of death.
http://www.cnyhomes.com/Listing/Search/info.cgi?mlnum=203904
The heating costs would also be killer.
589k in upstate ny is a deal since when?
20% down = $2800/month not including taxes, insurance and maintenance. So which job that hasn’t evaporated from Syracuse might you think will finance that behemoth?
Yeah, there are no J-O-B’s upstate to support that level of consumption.
I forgot to mention this house has been on the market for over 3 years. Initially the listing price was 800K. Even during the easy credit years the price had been dropped to 625K and this house still did not sell. The owner owes 118,195 in back taxes for the past 3 years with over a 1K every month in interest on the back taxes.
I wonder when will the county take this house and auction it off.
Let’s see. I’m a Doc in Syracuse earning $250k and doubt I’d wanna go near that.
Taxes on it???? Maybe 20+ thousand per year.
Mortgage on it, what another 3k per month or 36k per year.
Now we are at 56k per year to “own”.
Maintenance????
Is the house priced at $60 per sq ft??
Didn’t think so.
Pretty house. Pretty yard no doubt.
How many people in the Syr are able to afford that (20% down, 2.75x income), needing 120k down payment and income 200-220k per year?
I know one near new state of art home built by a Doc for nearly 600k just sold in Syr area for $350k (to another doc) after the first moved to new home.
High end is sticky. Tiny population can afford such houses and now- thanks to housing bubble that put large numbers of folks who CANNOT afford such house into such (new) houses, we now have overstock of expensive houses for the relatively few who can afford them, compared to old days when such houses were built only for those who could afford them.
Hey, if you know you can afford it, and you don’t care that it might lose $200k or more in value, and you plan to live there a long time, then have fun. But… be careful
regards
evil
Let’s see I can pay for the house cash without blinking twice but I am waiting for deals to pop up in mallards landing or spruce ridge. You are correct the inventory on high end homes is increasing and nothing much is selling. I give Syracuse market another year before it really cracks up.
Home 1.9K, 2 yrs ago, now selling for 1mill but not lower, he said, if offered bad offer will just keep for 2nd home.
No worries.
I’m all for indulging in that which one can afford. If this house hits all buttons for you, then the issue of value is secondary. Life is short. Have fun
evil
Wow! You can say that again re: taxes. $28,569 smackeroos - UNBELIEVABLE. That about seals it - properties like this are destined to anchor ghost towns. Who on earth in Manlius, NY can afford it? I’m in the outskirts of DC, full employment territory (everything is relative): there is NOTHING here to compare with that tax burden, and if there were, the diwks would avoid it like the plague. And, there is a THERE, here.
Jeez. Who the heck wants a McMansion in the middle of nowhere? Are there even fifty people around capable of forming the basis for civilized discourse? E.g., based on things other than decorating and shopping?
sorry for the rant. I’m just astonished at the waste.
It’s too quiet.
They’re up to something.
http://tinyurl.com/dc7rhu
St. Paddy’s Day parades.
They’re all drunk.
Isn’t it the 17th, or do some people just get an early start??
I like to start getting ready for the next year’s St. Patricks Day nice and early. So that’d be on March 18th, every year, on the dot, I start.
Why procrastinate? Is my view.
(hiccup)
The streets here were full with twentysomethings going to the bars and parade downtown already this morning. I’m glad they all have the employment security that’s necessary to put so much effort/time/money into a full day of binge drinking.
St. Paddy’s day has grown exponentially in significance here. So has Cinco de Mayo for that matter. Any excuse to pay too much for bad beer and engage in some public urination is a sure hit in Chicago.
Any excuse to pay too much for bad beer and engage in some public urination is a sure hit in Chicago.
Ain’t that the truth.
Silly me, I forgot about the pre-holiday holiday. I went for a walk today and ran into roving hordes of green-and-bead bedecked twentysomethings. My neighborhood is hardly a stronghold of faux Irish Pubbery, either — I shudder to think what it’s like around DePaul or Wrigley today.
I thought I heard they weren’t coloring the Chicago River this year. Is that true??
It’s the quiet b/4 the storm. We are on Ponzi-time, now. tick… tick… tick… Alad!!
Haven’t you heard?? Things aren’t as bad as we thought. Obama said so.
knifecatching is starting in Europe:
huge weekend special in my Dutch newspaper about second home buying in Europe. Spain is now the number one spot for Dutch buyers, due to 20-40% discounts (note: discount from outrageous previous asking prices, I doubt the sales prices are that much lower compared to last year judging from the examples that were provided). France is said to be the number two, thanks to discounts up to 20% in certain regions.
General trend: the Brits are selling on the Spanish Costa because their chickens (Pound exchange rate, primary residence equity etc.) have come home to roost. The Dutch are (still) buying, because of the discounts, of course! Another emerging group of buyers is from Belgium: the paper says this is because they have lost all confidence in the banks and the stockmarket last year. But I guess it has more to do with the recent verbal war in EU against tax paradises, stealth accounts and black money. Belgium is known for ‘black money’ and I guess the wealthy have decided it is time to spend their black money on something tangible before authorities start a crackdown.
According to the newspaper, most of the Brits were buying with 100% financing, while the Dutch are buying with 30% or so downpayment. But I doubt it - the article suggests that most of the Dutchies are buying with black money, because none of them wants their name mentioned in the paper. Spain is one of the few EU countries where you can safely buy a home with black money (you can do that in Netherlands and Belgium as well, but you need some high level ‘connections’, otherwise there is serious risk of trouble with the tax office).
let’s see how long it takes before the Dutchies start stelling …
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/14/technology/start-ups/14startup.html?_r=1&hp
When jobs run out, many turn to entrepreneurship.
“I keep getting stung”.
Jellyfish tanks.
This article hits the nail on the head. I run a manufacturing/ franchising company. We are seeing a surge in people looking to go into a business for themselves. Majority are middle age white males. I have also noticed a sad desperation on their faces. In one of our initial exploratory meetings one fellow started to cry as he felt inadequate because he no longer could provide for his family.
Imho people don’t realize that everybody can not and should not be in business for themselves. In this economy if some one wants to start a business they should look into a need based business. This time around lots of people will loose their shirts trying to start a business.
The sad thing is, a lot of these desperate middle-age types are going to fall for flim-flam “start your own business” schemes by the sorts of shady characters that thrive in times like these.
“start your own business 2009″ = “be a landlord/flip this house 2006″
Funny thing is some of the same people peddled both approaches, funnier still is that some of the same people also fell for both.
Jellyfish tank. Definitely a must have. (rolls eyes)
Oooooh, I love jellyfish. Not to eat, pickled jellyfish is almost the only thing in the world I won’t eat, besides Republicans and my aunt Camille’s Thanksgiving yams, but jellyfish are super neat-o! When I kayak the inlets around here sometimes big blooms of moon jellies drift by, serene and fascinating. Floomp, floomp…like that.
*makes complicated gesture indicating the majestic and lethargic pulsiness of a moon jellyfish *
Anyway.
I love eating jellyfish.
They are quite texturally interesting. Sorta like eating a softer glass but without all the blood that would follow.
I love the Sichuan preparations.
Also, the deep-fried ones.
ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
If you think this is “ewwwwwwwwwww”, you should see some of the other things I eat.
I’m a pure omnivore.
I normally take a bite out of everything I encounter, just to be true to my general theory, which is: “How will I know, unless I try it?”
I mean, at some point farrrrr in the past there was a brave soul— and I like to think that this brave soul was probably wearing a sparkly tiara and pink high-heels and had fluffy yellow hair—this brave soul said loudly to everybody else: ‘Lookit! I squeezed this here fluid out of the cow earlier and now it’s condensed and gone moldy! So I’m going to eat some, right this minute!’
And now? Well, now we all love cheese…
Oh, but my point was, Fasty, that:
1. Pickled jellyfish is horrible. Like eating, like eating…Oh, I won’t even think of it.
2. I’ve never had jellyfish Szechwan style, so I will not opine on that, and
3. ‘Deep fried’ doesn’t count. Anything deep fried tastes good. I betcha deep fried cow patties taste fine, if there’s a sauce that comes with it.
What? No, I won’t try it! You first, man!
‘Deep fried’ doesn’t count.
Sorry lady but it does too! You can’t just be making up the rules as you go along.
I ate it on New Year’s for dinner, and I had a great year after that.
Then, my friends started calling me jellyfish because I sting a lot but I’m good and provide lots of edibles. Of such imponderables is life made of.
Say what you will, but the jellyfish tank at one of the hotels I wandered during the HBB convention in Las Vegas was one of the most compelling artistic pieces I’ve ever seen.
Always been fascinated by the creatures, it was a treat to watch, up close and mesmerized, without fear of a surge resulting in all those nasty welts.
Same goes for the jellyfish exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
My favorite exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
Moon jellyfish at the Monterey Bay Aquarium is worth the travel from absolutely anywhere. Nature’s magic at it’s best, displayed in a way that will stay with you forever.
Add houses of worship to the real estate carnage.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/03/14/business/AP-REL-Banking-On-Faith.html
”The economy has dramatically changed over the last year to 18 months in a way that very few, if any, had expected,” said John Stoffel, administrative pastor at Seabreeze Church in Huntington, Calif.
Well, why the Heckfire didn’t Sweet Baby Jeebus let yer know? Huh? After all, doesn’t He watch over you all everrrryyyy single minute of everrrryyyy single day?
Many of the churches are nothing more than a social club for the sheeple.
Amen.
Oh, wait…
He does watch over you. But you have the gift of free choice to make your own decisions. And the kingdom of God is not in your/their pocketbook…
“Houses of worship”? Try shallow, consumer-driven temples filled with people who want to be told how God loves them and wants them to be happy and successful. Sacrifice, humility, moral absolutes, obedience to scriptural principles, and doing the right thing even when it costs you? That’s so passe. We just want to be BLESSED, while dropping $5 per family in the offering plate - no wonder these churches are folding left and right.
Most of the churches I see folding are the ones who went liberal, ignored the word of God and went in for every PC idea that came down the pike. I have also noticed that the attendees give little to their church (even if it embraces all the hip ideals that they want to hear) and have very small families.
The churches I see booming are the conservative ones that preach the word of God and don’t give into the looney PC ideas of today. And the attendees also tend to have large families, help each other out and gladly give at least 10% to the chrurch. They also do way more volunteer missions.
double reference to “word of God.”
Someone? Anyone?
I don’t have the energy for this today.
Nahhh….me, neither. I was gonna explore the concept of what constitutes a ‘loony PC idea’…such as….?
Wimmin gettin’ to wear shoes and even learn to read and vote whenever they want and suchlike unrighteous stuff? Homasexshuls bein’ allowed to hold hands ‘thout bein’ kilt? Black people acting like they’s almost as good as white people? I mean, what ‘looney PC ideas’ ARE these?
But then I thought, yada yada….look, I’d rather just put on a pair of my many, many, many shoes on my uppity lil’ wimmin feet and then scamper out to spend some time in downtown Olympia, while the rain drums down, drinking beer and eating tater-tots and reading the Bible, or else hanging out with friends. But they should be black homosexual friends, is going to be my rule. Alas, I don’t have one who’s a combination of those.
Hey, I know! I’ll call up a black friend and insist that they come out of the closet and stop pretending! Or else call up a gay friend and demand they become a Son of Ham and take up hewing wood and drawing water.
Oh, they probably won’t, though. Sigh…why will people never accede to my perfectly reasonable requests?
I have heard this argument several times in the past. Something along the lines of “Since I can find a church to say just about anything, then all of them are worthless.”
Or the Groucho Marx mentality of “I would not join any club (or church) that would have someone like me for a member.”
There are many good churches out there - but you do need to look for them.
I would use these three simple rules:
1. That the Word of God (what is written in the Bible) matters more than “honored” traditions. Nothing wrong with church traditions - but the Word of God must come first.
2. That what God wants matters more than official or personal approval in the church.
3. That the condition of your heart matters more than religious ritual in the chruch.
Christ did not live and die so we could have churches and traditions.
He did so for our sins and our hearts.
“Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.” Galatians 1 Verse 10
The Bible was written by plain men in plain language (on purpose). When a Church tries to twist and turn the meaning of these plain words for their own agendas, it is very easy to pick out.
If you have read the Bible, you easily know if they are teaching the Word of God or promoting their own agendas.
And I will give you an example. I once went to an Episcopalian Church for many years that eventually promoted that guns were evil and homosexual acts and diseases were good things (I kid you not - although this happened over years). No matter what you or I may think is right or wrong - none of this was based in the Bible. So I left - like millions of other Episcopalians. I knew it had nothing to do of what was in the Bible - and no twisting of words of the Bible would make it right.
And BTW - the Episcopalian is just about history. So much for the “let’s preach PC crap in a big tent to bring in the faithful.”
OLY gal, you hit it right on!
Thanks for the big grin I am sportin.
What about that religion that forces women to keep their
“quills full”, continuous pregnancies for god.
Like 18 and counting, ohmygawd.
*snort *
Oh, yeah, THAT religion. There’s more than one of those sorts. See, I’m the oldest of eight (8). My parents are devout Mormons. Multiply and replenish the earth and all that righteous stuff.
My mom’s theory has always been: ‘Just keep praying. If it’s not working, you just need to pray even harder.* She has these pretty mild blue eyes that gaze out at the world with determinedly blind faith and/or willful self-delusion. (I think it’s equal parts of both.) My dad’s theory has always been…well, actually, I don’t know. He’s a lunatic, which makes understanding his theory and life-plan difficult. Nowadays he’s a criminal, too. But he’s a Scripture-readin’ criminal, so it’s okay, right?
Anyway, I remember carefully saving up scraps from my school lunch tray to wrap up in the flimsy paper napkin and bring home later as a treat for the babies. I remember when I was 11 saving up my babysitting money so I could buy my little sister a pair of winter shoes, real shoes, so she wouldn’t have to walk the 3/4 mile to the bus-stop wearing plastic jelly sandals that a nice neighbor gave us that summer. Plastic sandals do a remarkably poor job at keeping little girl’s feet warm. Maybe she should have prayed for warmer feet, hmmm?
‘The Lord will provide’, right? Yes, well, ‘Please Lord, spare me and those I love from fundamentalist whack-jobs’, is MY favorite prayer.
*She’s still praying. Evidently not hard enough.
And I will give you an example. I once went to an Episcopalian Church for many years that eventually promoted that guns were evil and homosexual acts and diseases were good things (I kid you not - although this happened over years).
This is very close to an authoritarian type right wing church distortion.
I’d be willing to wager that what that particular pastor was teaching was that violence is in fact evil and that guns are used to commit acts of violence(among other things). Bringing harm to others is a sin. End of story.
So let me ask you 2banana….. are gays welcome in your church or are they ostracized, rejected and castigated? And how about the adulterers?? You know who I mean… Those fine, upstanding church going men and women who make excuses for their behavior during the week and meet up on Sunday to commiserate with other self-righteous hypocrites about how horrible those sinful gays are? My point? God doesn’t distinguish between these two groups of sinners… You know it. I know it.
Your 3 guidelines for a Church are dead on. I can sum them up by saying that a real church is a bible believing Christ centered church. And the bible believing part includes old testament prophet teaching and the gospels. The fear mongering authoritarian Churches will always lean heavily on the Paulian epistles and forget the social justice issues found in the rest of the Bible.
I’ve noticed with you 2banana it’s all about the men, men, men. Your bible written by men, for men and no one else. What no women? Oh yes religion and the status of women being 2nd class or no class at all.
Funny how your bible seems to exclude the 2nd half of the human race. Ironic that most of Christ followers were women, money to keep him going came from women, and it was the women who believed the had risen from the dead without doubt.
Bah, you can keep your bible and your GOD.
What brand of religion are you referring to? If God only loves conservative christens are you saying all other brands of religion are screwed. Kind of a sheeple shallow argument. Don’t ya think?
I dunno where you are 2banana but I can vouch for this… Those supposed “conservative” churches who pandered to the political ideology du’jour circa 2000-2008 are the same churches with rapidly declining attendance rosters. You can only get so much mileage out of scaring people with the terrorist hobgoblin and preaching the prosperity gospel. You may not see it unfolding yet but there as very detectable cultural shift to economic and social justice issues in the corporate church. And that major structural shift is what occurs when one choses to chase the epistles and forgots the gospel and old prophet teaching.
Would someone please explain prosperity gospell to me? You pray hard enough and really really really believe and God gives you wealth? Like God is giving you an allowance? If you get stuff for believing, how does that put a high value on faith?
Matthew 6 (New International Version)
Treasures in Heaven
19″Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
…
24″No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.
Hi polly,
In a nutshell, prosperity gospel takes kernels of truth from the Word of God (yes Allena, THE Word of God) as it pertains to wealth and money, combines it with the concept of “name it and claim it” and pushes the idea that if you do A, God will automatically do B because “He has to…He promised.”
It sort of turns God into an ATM machine where if you tithe, try to abstain from sin and have the right attitude and keep repeating certain Scripture verses, then you’ll be financially rewarded. Especially the more you give.
It is unfortunate in the sense that it pushes the idea of “wealth” as “rich” and ignores the idea of non-financial blessings, not to mention the fact that He doesn’t have to do anything He doesn’t feel like doing, no matter how much He loves you or how pious you are.
Your last sentence is a good question. We do get some “stuff” for believing, eternal life. But until that day we are to become conformed to the likeness of Christ and be the kind of person He wants us to be. He may bless us with financial riches in the meantime, He may not. It’s ok to pursue wealth, because the fact is to survive in this world and enjoy some things you need money. There’s just no guarantee you’ll be rich.
And as promoted to the unbelieving world, it’s a disaster for the church IMHO. Almost as bad as the libbrul left-wing church and it’s celebration and condoning of assorted sinful behavior.
Sigh. Just call you Ms. Polly McHell-Bound, obviously. You probably know how to read and are even wearing shoes! I bet you voted! And maybe even for a Son of Ham!
(Sons of Ham are black people. I assume you don’t know your Bible. You can research it later. )
Anyway, shoes and sassiness and voting….
*shakes head sadly at the degenerate state of the world nowadays *
However, I shall answer your questions, so that you may achieve enlightenment, and have a burning in your bosom, (and THIS time it’s not ’cause you dropped your cigar into your bra, or you ate too many spicy tacos and forgot your Prilosec.)
1. You pray hard enough and really really really believe and God gives you wealth?
Yes! What’s hard about this?! Jeebus! Pay attention, woman! And if you don’t get what you prayed for, well, then, it’s clear you just haven’t prayed hard enough. So go pray harder. Go on. And do whatever the church profit tells you to do. All of it. They only want what’s best for you.
2. Like God is giving you an allowance?
Yes. Except it’s like, spiritual. You deserve it. So it’s not all Mamon-ish sort of filthy lucre thingie. It’s like, welll…think of it as an ATM card from Jeebus. Because you’re so good.
3. If you get stuff for believing, how does that put a high value on faith?
I don’t think you’re going to have to worry about this part. (This opinion is based on a life-time of 36 years spent watching the righteous pray earnestly and persistently. But evidently not quite hard enough…)
But hey! If I’m wrong, let’s be pals!
I don’t take kindly to bullying, Blano. Nor will I let it pass un-addressed.
Common online etiquette requires us to respect each other’s off-screen identities in the interests of privacy and safety. As I do not know you, nor have we ever been introduced, I find it curious that you would feel comfortable addressing me here by my real life name.
Perhaps your intent in doing so was to intimidate me–(otherwise you would have addressed your comments to my screen persona?) If so, you did not. You did, however, demonstrate why I try not to miss a chance to question people’s surety in their willful ignorance…particularly as regards their religious beliefs.
Wow Oly you only 36 years old…..man these NYC goils are DUMB next to you.
Ahansen,
The next time an authoritarian distortionist posing as a Christian starts harping and nosing around in your business, direct his attention to 1 Corinthians 5:12 “5:12 What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? The genuine understand this point very well and will always refrain from demonizing and castigating at all times.
If I had been born Mormon in Utarr, they would have definitely HUNG me in the town square before I was 12 years old as a Public Example
Thanks, Olygal. I guess that makes it easier, but just to make my position easier for you, I am a daughter of Shem, at least traditionally. We are pretty good at the stuff in first volume, especially the first 5 books, but don’t pay much attention to the sequel except as it might inspire others to be nasty. Yes, I voted and even wore shoes when I went there, because shoes make it easier to drive and it was sort of chilly that day. Reading? Well, that goes without saying. I can even do math.
However, I resent being accused of wearing shoes right now as it is the weekend. I avoid shoes as much as possible when I’m not at work, and often slip them off at the office too. But then, no one ever deprived me of shoes when I was small, so I probably don’t appreciate them as much as you and your little sister do. We even went on special trips every August to buy new school shoes. And sneakers for gym. It was a tradition. Anyway, today I am sewing little sleeves to put on the pipecleaner arms I am going to attach to marshmallow peeps for an art project. No shoes necessary.
Despite this vast and worthy resentment, I still like you and want to continue to be friends. I am sure you would understand my peep art efforts and support them. Just like I support your great love of frogs and tiara wearing.
If I had been born Mormon in Utarr, they would have definitely HUNG me in the town square before I was 12 years old as a Public Example
Well, shoots, man! We all of us knowed this already. This is like a ‘truism’ thingie. But you don’t need to worry retroactively. I’d a rushed up and shot the rope off yer, or something. Like in a Clint Eastwood movie!
Say, have you seen ‘No Country For Old Men’?
Preach it, brotha!
Local gold dealer doubling as therapist Sometimes, he said, tears begin to well up as customers let go of some of their prized possessions… He said he’ll then draw a tissue, offer consoling words and sometimes even recommend a local pastor…“There’s people that are really, really scared,” one dealer said. “There’s certainly people that lost a lot of money in the stock market and they’re buying silver and gold coins to hedge their bet against the stock market now because they lost so much money.”
Those people, he said, are hoping the price of gold goes up even further. “Everybody’s forming an opinion and nobody knows. If I was absolutely positive gold was going to go to $1,500 an ounce, I wouldn’t sell the stuff all the time.” He warned against selling gold over the internet or at hotel gold-buying venues. He would offer about $20 a pennyweight while hotel buyers were offering $9.
LOL
Another totally shyster-ish profession. Preying on fear.
Slowly backs away from FPSS and Olygal, listens and looks up for dark clouds and heavy duty electrical activity in the sky
I had a good idea the other day.
I am going online, oops already here, and sign up to become a pastor, priest, holy person, or whatever. Could use the write off.
Any other good ideas welcomed.
Not unlike a hedge fund manager.
Preying on fear. Or perhaps working overtime to establish it.
Good indication of the end of the gold bubble is close…
Oh dear. Is this the new Aladinsane? I liked the old one better. He was more straightforward with the agenda.
Foreclosing on a plane and then flying it away.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/14/business/14repo.html?em
At least that is one repo job that is kind of exciting.
Sounds like a lot of fun.
This guy makes contact with his tame deadbeats.
Automobile recovery in the barrios and ghetto neighborhoods require speed and stealth since there is no contact made. Then you graduate to the third world stuff where deadbeats flee the country. My favorites are the big cabin cruiser and sailing vessels that are ocean capable. Lots of executive class thieves like to skip with the boat after stashing their ill-gotten money in a Cayman or Panama bank account. Nothing feels better than sailing away with all their stuff.
Foreclosing on a plane and then flying it away.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/14/business/14repo.html?em
At least that is one repo job that is kind of exciting.
Well guess this and other posts are in the internet nether world again.
TEST
How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
California budget faces new $8-billion shortfall…
Plunging revenue has already put the new budget plan out of balance, the state legislative analyst says. The news may complicate the bid to have voters OK special-election measures in May.
And here we go again.
Didn’t we visit this story just a month ago?
This is like dèjà-vu all over again!
I knew you were going to post that.
So you also had a déjà-vu?!?
Hot diggity!
Taht post as well.
I also knew that I was going to post “Taht” instead of “That”.
ROTFLMAO
How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
How much? waiting for my answer.
Twice half.
…California, Here I Come
Right back where I started from
where bowers of flowers
bloom in the spring
each morning at dawning
birdies sing at everything
a sunkissed miss said, “Don’t be late!”
that’s why I can hardly wait
open up that golden gate
California, Here I Come…
…and may that dream and sunny beat go on.
“If everybody gave, then we could save, that sunkissed California maid!”
Buy Now…surf’s up
Sung to tune of the Rock Island Line
In January, a plaintive note appeared on the page listing the home on the Elliman Web site: “Owner wants an offer at least $1,700,000 by Feb. 15.” That didn’t happen, so the price was cut again.
..If you could afford the Hamptons…then you were considered sharp about the economy…
Key | Spring 2009
A Cold Season in the Hamptons
Published: March 11, 2009
ON OSBORNE AVENUE in the village of Southampton, a cozy cedar-sided house peeks out over a modest hedgerow, a coy signifier of means in this storied summer retreat of New York’s moneyed classes. A blue real estate broker’s sign is planted at the foot of the driveway: the house is up for sale for the fourth time in eight years. Its churning transaction history tells the tale of a dizzying decade. In 2001, it sold for $460,000; two years later, it went for $850,000; and in 2006, after a substantial renovation, it turned over again, fetching $1.65 million. The current owners of the house, a young Manhattan couple, moved on to bigger things after a couple of summers, purchasing a $4 million home south of the Montauk Highway, about a mile closer to the shore. They put the house on Osborne Avenue up for sale again, asking nearly $2.2 million — almost five times the property’s market value at the beginning of the decade.
By Andrew Rice
Michal Chelbin for The New York Times
A REAL FIND Jitka and Patrick Stolmeier have had no takers for their house in a prime East Hampton location.
Michal Chelbin for The New York Times
FORECLOSED A Southampton house with a $1.5 million mortgage was taken back by the bank.
The Osborne Avenue house hit the real estate market at the end of the summer of 2007, a season that can be said, with the benefit of retrospect, to have marked the sweaty height of a speculative fever. That was the summer that the average cost of a home in the Hamptons shattered the $2 million barrier, the one when Ron Baron, a mutual-fund manager, paid a record $103 million for a 40-acre oceanfront estate. At the time, there were already alarming signs of a downturn in the national housing market, as a crisis took shape in the subprime-mortgage sector and economists predicted a coming onslaught of foreclosures. But that didn’t cause much worry in the Hamptons. The bubble might be bursting off in Sun Belt subdivisions, but not in the playground of the Wall Street elite. Prices were propelled upward by a tautological justification: if you were rich enough to buy in the Hamptons, you were, by definition, a superior judge of the market.
Then came the dreary series of events that we can summarize, as Hamptons people do, by reciting a litany of names: Bear Stearns; Fannie and Freddie; Lehman; Madoff. Since the peak, as one horrific episode after another has unfolded, the area’s real estate market has mirrored Wall Street’s plunging fortunes. Average sale prices have declined by about 10 percent, but that only hints at the seriousness of the trouble, because hardly anything is moving. According to data collected by the Suffolk Research Service, a local real estate data company, the number of sales in 2008 fell by 25 percent in East Hampton, 39 percent in Bridgehampton, 45 percent in Southampton and 47 percent in Montauk. Things really collapsed during the fall. Investment bankers lost their jobs, corporate lawyers saw their client base vaporize and hedge-fund managers went from being hailed as geniuses to being hauled in front of Congressional committees. “Until the market improves or their mental state improves, they’re not buying anything,” says Herb Phillips, a veteran real estate agent who is also chairman of the Southampton town zoning board. “It’s dead.”
Winter is always a low time in the Hamptons: the restaurants are empty, the streets are free of cars and a cold wind whips in off the Atlantic. On a chilly Saturday in December, I visited the house on Osborne Avenue, which by that time had been on the market for more than a year. An open house was scheduled for noon, but when I got there shortly before 1 p.m., I found the place locked, its windows dark. After a moment, the sellers’ broker, Maryanne Robinson of Prudential Douglas Elliman, spotted me and popped out of a car idling nearby. She opened the house’s front door, pushing aside a stack of mail that had accumulated on the entryway floor, and showed me around. The décor was nautical, with mermaid posters hanging on the walls and a chandelier of cascading seashells.
“This is sort of like a Hamptons starter home,” Robinson said — just three bedrooms with an additional guest cottage out back. She told me that the owners had reduced their price considerably, to $1.85 million, but felt no urgency. In the Hamptons, she said, “we tend to see people that don’t really need to sell.”
Nonetheless, by the next week, the price of the Osborne Avenue house would be slashed another $50,000 — dropping it close to the owners’ probable break-even point once you figure in taxes, closing costs and accrued mortgage interest. (In a one-sentence e-mail message, the Manhattan couple declined to comment and requested that they not be named in this article.) In January, a plaintive note appeared on the page listing the home on the Elliman Web site: “Owner wants an offer at least $1,700,000 by Feb. 15.” That didn’t happen, so the price was cut again.
Reducing expectations — and even contemplating losses — has become routine for sellers. At the end of last summer, Joseph Gregory, the former president of Lehman Brothers, put his Bridgehampton mansion up for sale for $32.5 million; finding no takers, he is reportedly considering renting it out. Even John Paulson, the hedge-fund manager who made billions by betting against the housing bubble, seems to have timed his Hamptons moves poorly. Last year, after buying himself a new $41.3 million estate, he put his old place in Southampton — advertised as a 6,800-square-foot “cottage” — on the market for $19.5 million. He has since cut more than $5 million from his asking price.
A little later on the same day I visited Osborne Avenue, I went to another open house in the exclusive East Hampton neighborhood of Georgica. A five-bedroom home was selling for a little over $5 million. “Two years ago it was worth 6.5,” the owner, a chatty middle-aged woman, said as she took me through rooms filled with antiques and gilt-framed oil paintings of angels and cherubs. “But two years ago I wasn’t ready to leave my husband.” In fact, the house has been in and out of the foreclosure process — no longer an unknown phenomenon in the Hamptons. The situation hasn’t become as dire for the vast majority of sellers, but brokers say they have seen a distinct rise in the number that they delicately describe as “motivated.” When the rich run into financial trouble, the vacation home is often the first thing they try to unload.
pages 2-4…
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/realestate/keymagazine/15Key-Hamptons-t.html
Ooooooh. What a LOVELY read. I think I’ll go read it again. Maybe I’ll memorize some of the bits, I enjoyed them so much.
Catherine Lignelli said the fortunes of her husband’s hedge fund would have no effect on her personal enterprise, (she built a big house to sell to some rich idjit) to which she expressed a deep commitment. “People think I married someone wealthy and, ‘Why not build a pretty house in the Hamptons?’ ” she said. “There is so much more to it than that. This is something that I’d like to do, probably forever.” Since finishing the house on Captain’s Neck Lane, she has lowered her price by $1.5 million but vowed that she wouldn’t budge from there, no matter how bad the market got. She said she simply couldn’t justify it, given the many millions she and her husband had spent to acquire the land and construct the house. “I feel hugely responsible for giving back something to the person that financed me,” she told me. “I would love to give my husband a smidge of a kiss of a profit.”
BWAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh, golly!
*wipes tears of merriment from eyes *
lovely; can’t wait for the followup next year when things get really interesting
Okay! Read the whole thing again! And laffed just as hard:
One blustery December morning, I went to the Southampton Town Hall to see what the future might hold if the doomsayers are to be believed. A home with a $1.5 million mortgage, and recently foreclosed, was going up for auction. As I waited for the proceeding to begin, I met the wife of the home’s owner, a real estate broker, who looked on sadly as a referee, Charles D’Onofrio III, read out the terms of the sale and asked, “Are there any bids?” The only other person on the steps, a representative of the bank, offered the token sum of $500.
“Sold,” the referee barked.
Later that morning, I went to see the foreclosed property. It was a classic Hamptons spec house, all shingles and bay windows, and it looked as if it had never been finished. The wind gusted through tall pines as I walked around the lot, which was littered with construction debris. The home was empty inside, except for a couple of chairs. Off the back deck, a swimming pool sat murky and neglected. Summer seemed a long way away.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH!
* gasp, gasp *
“This is sort of like a Hamptons starter home,” Robinson said — just three bedrooms with an additional guest cottage out back. She told me that the owners had reduced their price considerably, to $1.85 million, but felt no urgency. In the Hamptons, she said, “we tend to see people that don’t really need to sell.”
I’d be most curious to what your “Situation Report” says from the Hamptions superior market after the next shoe drops and the naplam smoke clears Maryanne
Catherine Lignelli looks skanky, she’s probably into S&M.
“Lignelli has a degree in fashion design. In previous jobs, she worked as a personal assistant to the jewelry designer David Yurman and the financier Steven Schonfeld, which sometimes required her to make excursions to the Hamptons, but it was only after she met her husband that she really got to know the place. ”
She worked up the corporal ladder.
I think I saw one of those once,
“She worked up the corporal ladder.”, but
I am Sure it was not a ladder.
I think I will go look again!heheha
“One blustery December morning, I went to the Southampton Town Hall to see what the future might hold if the doomsayers are to be believed. A home with a $1.5 million mortgage, and recently foreclosed, was going up for auction. As I waited for the proceeding to begin, I met the wife of the home’s owner, a real estate broker, who looked on sadly as a referee, Charles D’Onofrio III, read out the terms of the sale and asked, “Are there any bids?” The only other person on the steps, a representative of the bank, offered the token sum of $500.
“Sold,” the referee barked.
Later that morning, I went to see the foreclosed property. It was a classic Hamptons spec house, all shingles and bay windows, and it looked as if it had never been finished. The wind gusted through tall pines as I walked around the lot, which was littered with construction debris. The home was empty inside, except for a couple of chairs. Off the back deck, a swimming pool sat murky and neglected. Summer seemed a long way away”.
YEARS AWAY.
renting out a 32.5 million mansion … how many Mexicans would fit in there, and how many Mexicans work in the Hamptons?
That smoky smell you detect is the coil of the Schadenfreude meter, burning due to the overload caused by the above article.
Shoots, no kiddin’! My whole head about a’sploded, I laughed so hard.
“Herb Phillips, a real estate broker who has been around for almost 30 years, told me he’s using a simple formula to appraise the value of homes, taking their worth before the boom and figuring in a yearly rate of 7 percent appreciation. If you follow his logic, a home that sold for $450,000 in 2001 should be worth about $800,000 today — not a bad investment, unless you happened to pay $1.5 million for it in 2006. It’s quite possible, if Phillips is right, that a large percentage of the people who bought at the top of the market owe their banks more than their houses are worth. Until the market unfreezes, however, it’s impossible to really know any home’s value”.
It’s amazing the pieces of crap tiny ranches that went up to over a million. And then came gravity.
Is there any mystery as to how we got in to this mess with “captains of industry” like these?
I give up.
TEST.
icles.
You also fail with flying colors.
hehehe- funny fpss.
Posted 3 other interesting links,econ,housing, and a doozy of one about the Hamptons. All from todays NYT.
LOL
Ben generally approves all links so probably be a while if he’s out doing something.
Patience, young Jedi.
You have been rewarded for your patience experienced Jedi.
Look above you.
Low profile, stealth sneak attack …Test
Wow they all came out at once. Whew.
Nap needed now.
Alan Grayson Questions AIG Math: Let’s Change the Length of Inches So I’m Shorter! Robert Herz responds arguing they haven’t marked down enough; he adds, some big banks called him to change the rules just b/4 they fell. M2M or mark-to-ponzi. Must watch.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6baBFKZETOE
NOoooooo !! They can’t do this to me!
Screw the Recession…They had fairly good prime rib, great baked bread and the 360 view always impressed my drunk dates or made them sick
Hyatt’s Polaris restaurant to turn its last revolution in April
By Carol Deptolla of the Journal Sentinel
Posted: Mar. 9, 2009
Polaris, the revolving rooftop restaurant at the Hyatt Regency Milwaukee, will close after serving Easter brunch on April 12.
The 20th-floor restaurant will be used for private functions, said Gerald Rappaport, general manager of the downtown Hyatt. As part of a $19 million renovation project at the hotel, a new restaurant, Bistro 333, will open in May on the lobby level, in the former Pilsner Palace Restaurant.
Polaris, which opened in 1981, offers diners a 360-degree view of the city. It takes around an hour for the slowly turning restaurant to come full circle.
The Hyatt will conduct a “Remembering Polaris” contest, collecting Milwaukeeans’ stories and photos of dining in the city’s tallest restaurant. The diner with the most romantic memory will win a one-night stay in a renovated suite, along with dinner for two and tickets to a show. The deadline is April 10, and submissions can be e-mailed to george.herrera@hyatt.com or mailed to the Hyatt at 333 W. Kilbourn Ave., Milwaukee, WI 53203.
As part of the farewell, Polaris will give every diner who mentions the Remembering Polaris contest a free glass of champagne.
The restaurant will remain open daily through April 12.
http://www.jsonline.com/business/40990212.html
MIkey, I feel so bad for you…
something about the sea, or high altitudes bring out the ‘best’ in a girl.
I’m not really as bad as I sound. Some of these women are friends that love to chow down as much as I do.
You get a little tired of the German Beer Garden, Italian and Mexican food imposters in the Milwaukee area. The last place my Spanish Class ate was suppousedly Mexican.
I was about to cut loose with my Tex-Mex I learned across the border in a cantina in Ciudad Acuña but my instructer punched me…real hard
Mango is an unincorporated census-designated place in Hillsborough County, Florida, United States. The population was 8,842 at the 2000 census.
the community has a total area of 4.7 square miles (12.1 km²), of which, 4.6 square miles (11.9 km²) of it is land and 0.1 square miles (0.2 km²) of it (1.50%) is water.
8,842 people, 3,289 households, and 2,302 families residing in the community.
The median income for a household in the community was $33,989, and the median income for a family was $37,818. Males had a median income of $29,038 versus $22,947 for females. The per capita income for the community was $15,478. About 9.1% of families and 12.6% of the population were below the poverty line, including 20.1% of those under age 18 and 4.0% of those age 65 or over.
That is why it seems like Old Florida!. It hasn’t been run over yet, and the income levels are rock bottom.
We are in the anger stage of the housing bubble stages of grief now, and Jon Stewart is a very effective lightning rod for channeling well-deserved vituperation towards the deserving shills who pose as financial experts.
CNBC in the hot seat over crisis reporting
Comedian Jon Stewart levels serious criticism
By Howard Kurtz
THE WASHINGTON POST
2:00 a.m. March 14, 2009
Jim Cramer (left), host of the ‘Mad Money’ show on CNBC, talked with Jon Stewart during an appearance on Comedy Central’s ‘The Daily Show with Jon Stewart’ on Thursday. (Jason DeCrow / Associated Press) -
Jon Stewart has amassed a passionate following as a sharp-edged satirist, the man who punctures the balloons of the powerful with a caustic candor that reporters cannot muster.
As public furor over the economic meltdown rises, the Comedy Central star has turned not just his humor but his full-throated outrage against financial journalists who he says aided and abetted the likes of Bear Stearns, AIG and Citigroup – especially those who work for the nation’s top business news channel.
Stewart morphed into a populist avenging angel this week, demanding to know why CNBC and its most manic personality, Jim Cramer, failed to warn the public about the risky Wall Street conduct that triggered the financial crisis.
“It’s bigger than CNBC,” said Jeff Jarvis, who teaches journalism at the City University of New York. “As anger rolls across the land about the mess we’re in, it’s also hitting people who cover the financial world . . . CNBC is the easiest target if you’re doing comedy.”
In his much-ballyhooed “Daily Show” face-off with Cramer on Thursday, Stewart accused the network of peddling “snake oil.”
“Listen, you knew what the banks were doing,” Stewart said. “And yet were touting it for months and months – the entire network was. So now to pretend that this was some crazy, once-in-a-lifetime tsunami that no one could have seen coming was disingenuous at best and criminal at worst.”
Cramer, a former hedge-fund manager known for his bombastic style, sounded apologetic at times, saying he had made mistakes and wished he and the network had done a better job. “I had a lot of CEOs lie to me on the show. It’s very painful,” the “Mad Money” host said. Video of the interview immediately went viral and was prominently played across the Web, giving it exposure that exceeds Stewart’s television audience, which reached 2.3 million this week.
Trading places: “Serious news” vrs comedy news…
Financial Times
Wall St riveted by comedy clash
By Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson in New York
Published: March 13 2009 17:41 | Last updated: March 13 2009 17:50
A showdown between a comedian who has become one of America’s most challenging news commentators and a news commentator known for his comedic antics has shone the brightest spotlight on the media’s market coverage since the financial crisis began.
On Thursday night, two cable television celebrities squared off as Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show news parody programme on Viacom’s Comedy Central channel confronted Jim Cramer, the former hedge fund manager and star of CNBC’s Mad Money programme.
Cramer claims CEOs lied to him. Why do you think he brought them on his show? That’s what they do. They represent the Street. They protect the Street. How many Street friendly rumors have they reported over the years?
You have to be a glutton for punishment to adjust your behavior according to CNBC reporting. It helps, however, if you want to protect yourself from behavioral responses due to misinformation.
Maria Bartiromo also believes the ceos she interviews, and then regurgitates the crap back at the camera/us.
“I had a lot of CEOs lie to me on the show.”
Lol. Lying goes with title of CEO.
They don’t call them “Chief Embezzlement Officer” for nothing!
Never liked Crammer or the Cheerleaders ,but people trying to sell snake oil has been around since the dawn of man and its more importatant to teach chilren how to spot hype and spin and evil people who are out to pick your pockets or sell you something . We cannot give up freedom of speech ,but we can maybe demand more disclosures and disclaimers .Crammer had disclosures on his show that his rants were just opinion . Anybody with half a brain would of seen him for what he was ,a shill for the industry and a self-interested guy who had a show to do . The real estate industry that offered
faulty real estate advice during the boom and even aided and set up the fraudulent lenders and buyers were another group that said anything they felt like saying ,truth or not ,and the contract
disclaimer most likely absolved them of their bad faith and greed
I have always felt that when it comes to investment advice ,strict rules should apply . Should CEO’s be allowed to say that their Company is doing great and than later be absolved because they
cop a plea that nobody saw it coming ?
When do we expect somthing from the public or Big Business . We are now getting people and lenders bailed out that knowingly engaged in a real estate Ponzi scheme and lied on their loan applications ? Do the people get off scott free because they in good faith thought they were going to make money and that is worth commiting a crime for ,and after all the loan agent helped me do it defense ? If people and the industry get off the hook because it was a mania that maybe
the Big Fish set Main street up for ,than what is the point of laws and a expecting that people and industry obey the laws regardless of the circumstances . There will be a great price to pay for
us ignoring the cirme-wave and rewarding the gamblers and looters of the public funds , in my opinion . Law and order and the Constitution is at stake and obstruction of Justice will create a situation where corruption will continue . We are in fact on the verge of a public revolt because of the remedies that have been chosen to deal with the biggest crime wave in history .
The Power brokers have chosen to view this crime-ridden crash as a emergency that deserves Obstructing Justice and the rule of laws and contracts over .Like anything ,a chosen path has a price to pay .
I loved the part where Cramer said he had tried to show the “shenanigans” Then Stewart runs the clip of him telling someone how he used to game the system. Didn’t stop Cramer from the I tried defense.
I also liked that Cramer cried about how CEO’s had lied to him. Stewart repeatedly pointed out how it was the presses job to verify what CEO’s said.
Criminals all of them.
“Anybody with half a brain would of seen him for what he was ,a shill for the industry and a self-interested guy who had a show to do .”
Oh course, but we live in a society where even having half a brain is considered elitist, stuck-up, know-it-all and arrogant and having a realist view is considered “being negative.”
Ruh roh… BTW, my kids are freaked out by the number of highly competent teachers in their district (PUSD) who have been handed pink slips.
State budget springs a leak
$8 billion hole opens as revenue falls short
By James P. Sweeney
U-T SACRAMENTO BUREAU
2:00 a.m. March 14, 2009
SACRAMENTO – Just three weeks after celebrating a hard-fought compromise that many hoped would end California’s budget nightmare, state lawmakers received a fresh blast of chilling financial news yesterday.
Although the accord appeared to close a $42 billion deficit, revenue already has fallen well below projections, creating a new $8 billion budget gap, according to nonpartisan Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor.
Moreover, the state’s “structural” budget problem – an embedded gap between income and expenses – could return with eye-popping shortfalls in just a few years, Taylor projected in his latest budget review and economic forecast.
As The Great Unwind unwinds…
more to come…
Yeah, anything but stop the waste, graft and bother-in-law deals.
When I came into this World I perceived I needed
air,food,clothing ,shelter,some safety needs ,and human touch or love . Mommy and Daddy provided those things . God bless the children that don’t get the basic needs for they will have crosses to bear in life .
When I grew to adulthood ,I realized that the outside World was not like Mommy and Daddy and evil existed and there were people who wanted to pick my pocket ,rather than supply my needs with my best interest at heart . I realized that a lot of people wanted to tell me what my needs were and they were simply posing as Mommy and Daddy .
I than realized that the best judge of my needs was myself and Mommy and Daddy was not going to be able to save me anymore .I realized that I lived in a big World and my needs could be satisfied
if I kept my wits about me . I realized that some times I wanted somthing because someone else posed as Mommy and tried to tell me I needed this or that . As I grew I realized that evil people existed that did not have my interests at heart like Mommy did .
I also realized that people and groups could become powerful and take away my freedoms while they posed to be Mommy with my best interest at heart .
I learned to protect myself to the degree it was possible . I also perceived that it was not right to take another persons freedoms ,and a fair exchange with other humans would benefit both . I discovered it was a good thing for other humans to
thrive and prosper and it was possible to have common goals with
my fellow humans ,but I was always on the alert for the Mommy Posers and pocket pickers .
Big Business and a bought off Government sold the people the idea that a debt society was good and Globalism and buying crap you don’t need was good and getting rich quick was a entitlement . The Mommy Posers failed and the game crashed . Now we are on the verge of a new Mommy taking over and telling us what we need and even being so bold as to suggest that they are going to provide those needs for us ,while they loot the public and create taxpayer debt that rewards the gamblers and Market Makers or anyone that is part of the new agenda .
The Constitution set the rules of the game and laws and regulations were a natural by-product of that document to enforce the concepts of the Constitution . The Mommy Posers would tell you that the issue is the Economy ,but the issue is the Constitution that is being violated by the MOMMY Posers who would like you to believe that all is done in your best interest .Many rotten unconstitutional laws have come about because of using the justification of a Emergency
to bring about that law or policy .
We are now on the verge in History of having the MOMMY Posers
be ideally placed to take over .We are now on the verge of having the very Constitution that would prevent the looting of the public
coffers ,for the benefit of the chosen ,be ignored because the Ponzi Scheme crashed .
The Government has emergency powers to defend us against foreign invaders for instance . Does the Government have emergency powers to set up taxpayer debt for years and pick and choose who will benefit from the gone awry business scheme mania ? The trend has started and the Mommy Posers that are looting and have been looting the public coffers ,while the crimes are left unaddressed ,will say that they know what your best interests are and the public will accept it because they have a need for a Mommy and they never grew up .
Housing,
How is your wife doing?
I was gone all day so I couldn’t answer your question earlier . I have spent 45 days watching someone battle for their life ,and
I still don’t know which way it will go . I can’t tell you how much of a emotional ride it has been . In fact ,I had the fight of my life challenging the system . It’s a long story ,but I think at this juncture I could write volumes on the medical system
now . Anyway ,yesterday everything turned for the better and
I’m hoping its going to keep going that way . But its like being in a dark tunnel and not knowing what is at the end .
My thoughts and prayers for your wife Housing.
You should write that book. There would be people who would appreciate any knowledge you can give them.
Are you saying we don’t have the best government money can buy?
That’s just un-American!
Prayers and good wishes for you and yours.
Hair of the dog lending stimulus is a G-20 priority.
Wall Street Journal
* MARCH 14, 2009, 12:46 P.M. ET
G-20 Sets Increased Lending as Priority
By NATASHA BRERETON, LAURENCE NORMAN and ALEX MACDONALD
HORSHAM, England — Finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 20 leading economies on Saturday said their top priority is to restore bank lending, which will require dealing with impaired assets.
In a statement, the G20 said central banks around the world will maintain expansionary policies for as long as needed, using a full range of monetary-policy instruments, including unconventional approaches.
‘including unconventional approaches’
one has to wonder if there is anything unconventional left …
A governmental rent to own program
A world government pawn-zi scheme…
good that they found something to do for Berny while in jail
Here’s a small excerpt from a large piece on the Hamptons’ RE market in the NY Times. Must be painful for them to write as many NYT muckety mucks must have homes there.
A Cold Season in the Hamptons
Then came the dreary series of events that we can summarize, as Hamptons people do, by reciting a litany of names: Bear Stearns; Fannie and Freddie; Lehman; Madoff. Since the peak, as one horrific episode after another has unfolded, the area’s real estate market has mirrored Wall Street’s plunging fortunes. Average sale prices have declined by about 10 percent, but that only hints at the seriousness of the trouble, because hardly anything is moving. According to data collected by the Suffolk Research Service, a local real estate data company, the number of sales in 2008 fell by 25 percent in East Hampton, 39 percent in Bridgehampton, 45 percent in Southampton and 47 percent in Montauk. Things really collapsed during the fall. Investment bankers lost their jobs, corporate lawyers saw their client base vaporize and hedge-fund managers went from being hailed as geniuses to being hauled in front of Congressional committees. “Until the market improves or their mental state improves, they’re not buying anything,” says Herb Phillips, a veteran real estate agent who is also chairman of the Southampton town zoning board. “It’s dead.”
Could someone post a link to the photos from the Vegas get together for the “Very Best Blog in the World”? I’m sure it’s been posted before but I have not been able to lurk for several weeks and wouldn’t know where to begin to look in the archives.
I read that Hoz the Great is sick (get well soon), and I know Aladinsane went away to NZ or somewhere to meditate and live off the land or something–but what the heck happened to NYCity Boy? And I won’t even ask what you did with ByeFL or AnneScott (both of whom I liked), that was so many months ago–and I guess I really don’t want to know, do I?
Here is a good link I found that Hoz would approve of:
http://www.layoffdaily.com/
This blog is like a complicated soap opera. If you miss a week or two, it can get very hard to catch up!
I miss Ann’s terse rhetoric alot. I have some of her stuff saved.
Perplexed, I’m afraid we chased off ByeFla by dissing Oil City. He probably did move there, since he stopped posting on City Data shortly after he stopped posting here. I too miss Ann Scott. She was strongly opinionated, highly literate, and, as exeter states, acerbic. IMHO, I think she had the street creds to back her opinionation. And I rather enjoyed reading about her part of the world, not many posters here write about ?peninsulas in Minnesota, was it? Sounded very rural and very nice, a potential bug out spot now obscured.
I sometimes wonder how it starts on boards, where a jab is thrown and then it becomes viral. As we have all been scr*wed by the the bubble, seems like we ought to be immune from viruses.
Radar Logic data shows a 28-day average price per square foot of $193 for San Diego — back to April 2002 levels. Does anyone want to suggest how long it will take housing prices to retrace to 1999 levels?
I propose a HBB bottom calling competition! Here is my first entry, which I may refine with better methodology if I get sufficiently motivated, as I realize the approach I take is cr@p.
I just did some very crude regression analysis using the radar logic PPSF data for San Diego back to 2000. Before I get flamed by IAT and other purists, I realize what I have done is conceptually wrong from a time series standpoint. Nonetheless, I find the results compelling from the standpoint of such a good agreement between the model and the data.
What I did was to fit a linear time trend to the Radar Logic 28-day average series over the period from May 14, 2007 to the most recent data point (transaction date = January 9, 2009). Price per square foot has dropped at a nearly perfect linear rate over the period, as evidenced by the model fit statistics:
y_hat = $342.45 - $0.230755 t
t-statistics = 1002.044336 and -259.2126223
R^2 = 99.66%
Although this regression is theoretically not valid, it nonetheless almost perfectly fits the empirical regularity of an ongoing crash at a near-linear rate beginning in May 2007 and continuing to the most recent observation. My guess is that unless the government starts intervening much more than they have thus far to prop up San Diego prices, then this crash might continue at a very fast rate all the way down until a fundamental bottom is reached reflecting current very grim economic conditions in San Diego and, more generally, California, the U.S.A. and the rest of the world.
I used the results to estimate the capital loss rate on a 2000 sq ft San Diego home since May 2007:
1-day = 2000*0.230755 = $462
1-week = 2000*7*.230755 = $3,231
28-day = 2000*0.230755*28 = $12,922
1-year = 2000*0.230755*365.25 = $168,567
We can cover a month’s rent out of the opportunity cost of less than one week’s worth of home equity losses!
Suppose the market bottomed out at three times median income, which I will conservatively guess to be $65,000 per household at the recession bottom. I further assume a median income household lives in a 2000 sq ft home. The implied value at three times income would be 3*65,000 = $195,000, with an implied price per square foot of $195,000 / 2000 = $97.50.
Given a PPSF estimate on January 9, 2009 of $193 and estimated $96 down to reach a bottom, my guesstimate is that the bottom will occur 96/.23 = about 414 days after January 9, 2009, or towards the end of February 2010. Of course, given the number of prime and Alt-A jumbo ARM resets scheduled for 2010 and the prevalent use of this type of financing in San Diego, my timing might be early. There is also likely to be a leveling off of the rate of decline as a bottom is approached, though there is not much evidence of this yet. I also have not factored in the wild card of inflation, which could push up the nominal price at the bottom, though probably not the real price (in terms of hh incomes).
P.S. The Radar Logic data shows $134.24 as the PPSF on January 3, 2000, so to get back to this level at the recent rate of decline would take (193.14 - 134.24) / 0.230754727 = 255 days after January 9, 2009, which would imply a date of September 21, 2009. I don’t expect the decline to end there (at least in real price terms) as many San Diegans believed home prices were already overvalued as of 2000.
Forgot to mention: The current PPSF level is off peak by 46 percent:
(1-193.14/357.34)*100 = 45.95 pct haircut
sheesh PBear…do you have 3 in line Cray Inc, Jaguar XT5 Supercomputers with business apps in your basement ?
Mikey — I ran the regression in MS Excel, but most of my calculations are done on the search line in Google. For instance, if you copy and paste (1-193.14/357.34)*100 into the search line in Google, then hit the Google Search button, it comes right back with (1 - (193.14 / 357.34)) * 100 = 45.9506352 — pretty amazing, no? But I do have an excess capacity of computing resources at my fingertips — much more than I could hope to use efficiently given my time constraints.
So amazing it frightens me, my 10 little fingers, pencil and eraser
Yup ..that is quick and dirty PBear, now….what’s a regression ;(
j/k…I have some vague idea
“I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.”
Bertrand Russell didn’t have google and PBear ha ha ha
“what’s a regression ;(”
Suppose you have a bunch of data points that are almost all on a straight line, and you fit a line so that it goes right through the middle of them. The result is a straight-line approximation to the data points which smooths out ’statistical noise’ (i.e. the random gremlins which make San Diego price per square foot drop by a little bit more than $0.23 on some days and by a little less than $0.23 on other ones). Purists would say that fitting a straight line to time series data is a theoretical no-no, but my view is that if a regression fit is 99.7 percent accurate in fitting the data (what that R^2 number measures), why not go with it until the facts change, at which point you can change your mind.
Hey…as long as I’m not off more than +/- the 3 standard deviations, I my line IS plumb:)
Seriously Pbear…you math skills and logic is impressive.
My kid is the Engineer Math whiz. One of our retired Deans is still ROTFLAO because he was Honors and we have the same name
My made in China crystal ball tells me the bottom will not be in price per sq feet but a range of $65 to $85 depending on the school district as well as the color of your skin.
I threw darts at a calendar and recalling what the desert econ was like during the entire 90s,
the dart said, Feb 2010- 2017. down and flat.
but I sure liked PB’s algorithm’s and mega math ju ju.
Interesting factoid: A linear rate of downtrend translates into an accelerating percentage rate of decline, as the numerator stays the same over a shrinking denominator. Just for grins, I calculated the annualized rate of decline using my fitted regression model (which almost perfectly matches the data, except it smooths out the statistical noise). What I get is a steady increase from an initial rate of decline at 22 percent as of the start of the period (May 14, 2007) to a recent rate of 36 percent annualized decline (January 9, 2009). The recent figure seems closely in line with reported rates of YOY decline in CA home prices.
I also note that the overall decline in PPSF (on the 28-day series) has thus far been
(1-193.14/357.34
Hasn’t this thing bottomed like a hundred times already?
After witnessing all the carnage this bubble has brought, I don’t think I will ever buy a house again. It is too terrifying. I’ll probably need intense coercive therapy. In fact, if the banking situation is not resolved by the end of May, I may pull an Alad and head down under.
On the off chance I end up remarrying someday and she owns a house already, fine. Otherwise, I don’t much care if I ever buy again. I’ve had that “it’s part of the American Dream” thing squeezed out of me once and for all. I’d rather be more mobile and less tied down.
My good Bear, you’re doing all this on a Saturday, when it’s probably sunny and warm where you are (unlike here). Can’t you find something better to do??
Me, I just took a nap. Much more productive.
Just a quick socio-economic justice question.
What is the difference between Bernie Madoff and Barack Obama?
Bernie runs a Ponzie scheme, where he takes investors money, recycles it to other investors who get payments, while new investors are left with only empty bank accounts and debt. Compare, please, to Barack in a stimulus scheme, where he takes taxpayers money, recycles it to billionaire voters who donated to him, while the American middle class and poor are left with empty bank accounts and being debt slaves to Chinese communists?
I think the answer probably is, that Bernie tricked mostly unsuspecting rich white folks, and Barack tricked mostly everyone else.
Q. So who deserves what punishment?
You may say I’m a dreamer,
But I’m not the only one.
I hope some day you join us,
And the world can live as one.
I can think of at least two very important differences:
1) Bernie is headed to jail, Barack lives in the White House.
2) Barack ran a successful campaign for president, Bernie ran an unsuccessful Ponzi scheme (at least after the water receded from the beach to reveal him among the naked swimmers).
“…while the American middle class and poor are left with empty bank accounts and being debt slaves to Chinese communists…”
Clearly BO inherited this situation from his immediate predecessor and hence you blame him unfairly.
And in case you did not notice, HP’s effort to delay the recession announcement and collapse of Wall Street until W was out of office was also a failure. This will go down in history as a big strike against W’s term in office, as historians naturally tend to stick the blame for recessions on the incumbent CIC, whether or not the practice has any basis in fairness.
“HP’s effort to delay the recession announcement and collapse of Wall Street until W was out of office was also a failure.”
Everyone coherent person on this blog was well aware of the phoney bubble type borrow and spend economy long before Stuttering Hank Paulson began ringing the fire alarm. Why the wheels didn’t fall of the delusional rollercoaster ride sooner is a mystery to me.
That’s easy. THE WAR ON TARRA!! BOOGA BOOGA BOOGA!
I vote for Bush and the Gang
I voted for O.
Even though I’m not Christian, I think that wars are bad, and if they can be avoided, should.
I specially do not like ThermoNuclear War, those are specially nasty.
Therefore I voted against Sarah Palin.
That Obama won was no surprise, that 10s of millions of Americans voted for Sarah is sad.
Muir,
I was voting for Bush and the gang to be charged with cobalt imaginary crimes
I love Barack Obama.
Me, too. Hey, I can’t recall if I told you my dream I had, this is before he won, after one of the debates with him’n Grumpy McSame, anyway, I watched the debate, then I watched Ultimate Fighter, then I fell asleep on the couch–I was all exhausted-like from the enthusiastic whooping– and I dreamed that Barak Obama moved in next door and mowed his lawn while wearing red and white boxer shorts. And he had no shirt on!
Best. Dream. Ever.
*laughs loudly *
Seriously, though, I wish I could have that dream again. Also I had a super dream a few weeks ago, I dreamed I was a giant dragon and I burned up Lacey. Lacey’s a craptasm sort of town to the west of Olympia, where sprawl reigns supreme and development pimps sit on the city council….anyway, totally deserving of a visit from a giant dragon. Just the whole da*mn chancred blot, all up in pretty crackling fire and smoke. I was roaring and shooting fire from my dragon face and little developers were running and squealing in fear, like in the more poorly budgeted B-Movies on the SciFi channel… Man, It was a GREAT dream!
One other dream I really enjoy is when I dream I’m eating at a Chinese buffet. I just eat and eat and eat, for like hours, a huge, HUGE amount of food, while short Asian waiters in pristine white clothes bring me more food and plates and gaze in respect. Now, the good thing about that, is that that can and does also happen in reality, when I’m awake.
I like Barack,
But I want gridlock!
So, you don’t like Chinese buffets, or giant grumpy dragons?
Jerk!
(Now, I’m teasing.
)
Jezz, I’m must be paying for bad Karma, I never have a dream like that.
Which one, the Chinese buffet? Or the one where I burn down the town so satisfyingly, or…the other one…?
I have dream-envy now.
Muir, maybe you should learn to lucid dream. Then you can choose your dreams.
Let me know how that turns out for you.
Should I reread Carlos Castaneda?
Couldn’t hurt. Maybe I should reread him too.
Haven’t read Carlos in years.
‘Should I reread Carlos Castaneda?’
What?
No.
‘Couldn’t hurt. Maybe I should reread him too.’
NO. I already done tolt yer!
Jezz, I’m must be paying for bad Karma,
What’s “Jezz?”
“I love Barack Obama”
I love freedom.
Me too. But freedom without opportunity is just another way of saying I’ve got nothing to lose.
John Williams of shadowstats dot com is interviewed during the second hour broadcast this week on financialsense dot com. The interview starts about 40 minutes into the second hour. Some highlights:
- Current job losses are running around 900K per month
- The unemployment rate is around 19 percent (versus 34 percent non-farm during the peak of the 1930’s GD)
He defines a depression as a peak to trough decline in economic activity of 10 percent, with a great depression at 25 percent. By that definition, every decline prior to the current decline since WW II has been a recession, the 1930’s decline was a great depression, and the current decline will be classified as a depression this year. He believes we’re headed into a hyperinflationary great depression with hyperinflation pushing us from a depression into a great depression. Read the Hyperinflation Special Report on the ShadowStats site if you want to have trouble sleeping at night. It’s numbing.
Does not seem like a depression at Phoenix Skyharbor or Las Vegas airport - at least Friday thru Sunday.
It’s a race to the bottom
From Forbes
Switzerland’s latest move to weaken the Swiss franc marks the first time in the current financial crisis that a G10 nation has intervened in forex markets to support a flagging economy. It is probably only a matter of time before others–notably Japan–follow suit.
From FT.com
The Swiss National Bank sparked talk of a global currency war on Thursday as it surprised investors by intervening to bring down the Swiss franc.
From FT.com
Many observers believe the Riksbank, Sweden’s central bank, has been complicit in the krona’s fall.
Dan Katzive at Credit Suisse says the current crisis is perfectly designed to derail the Swedish currency. “Perhaps most damaging to the krona, the central bank has not objected to its weakness and, indeed, has appeared to encourage it at times,” he says.
Robert Stenram, a former senior Swedish banker, says Sweden is carrying out a competitive devaluation, something that is not appreciated in the outside world. “Sweden is experiencing a currency crisis, with the Riksbank the only global central bank talking down its own currency,” he says.
Reuters
The global “devaluation contest” creates problems and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) remains the main tool to guarantee forex stability, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said on Saturday. Skip related content
Russia devalued its rouble currency by one quarter in response to capital flight and falling prices for oil, its main export commodity.
“I would call it a devaluation contest… Devaluation in one country leads to inevitable devaluations in other countries and creates problems,” Kudrin told reporters after the meeting of G20 finance ministers south of London.
FT.com
The head of Lithuania’s central bank yesterday stepped in to steady the Baltic country’s economic nerves following a mini-run on its currency over the weekend amid rumours of an imminent devaluation.
Then we had China warning the US not to devalue.
several countries in Eastern Europe / Baltic states area must be very happy with what the Swiss banksters are doing. They were being choked to death by all the mortgages in Swiss francs (and a few other currencies), they are getting unexpected assistance with their problem …
I agree that there is a huge chance this will spin out of control.
The Swiss Franc - used to be “as good as gold” and the currency that people would flock to in troubled times…
Big Sis is deeper in than I thought. After learning hubby persuaded her to see some dude offering to fix everything for 5K, mom and I were compelled to intervene.
It’s not going very well, however. It’s been rather explosive. There has been a lot of shouting, a lot of anger, and an overwhelming amount of DENIAL.
In short, Big Sis and hubby gambled their home — in fact, more than their home — and lost. Over the last 3 years, they sank over 600K into RE specuvestments without much thought. They don’t think they are responsible, however. If you have the money to pay, can you walk away?
I think the banks will come after them for every penny.
The story is not that surprising though.
She has constructed two realities in her head to cope with the situation. In one reality, the RE business is failing. In the other reality, her personal income and lifestyle are untouchable and she is succeeding.
What’s more, most of this, she argues, was hubby’s idea. Yet, she is still very passionate about RE and wants to start her own RE business soon. WTF?!
Over and above that, she argues, NO ONE saw this coming and were it not for the recession, things would be different. I’m like, RE caused the recession. It was a BUBBLE!!!
Aren’t certain States non-recourse?
Fl falls in the middle, it’s a recourse State in name only.
You’ll never convince her mektMaven
It’s recourse. However, from inter-tube sources, lenders can agree to non-recourse terms. I told her to consultant an attorney to determine her situation and options.
Instead, after draining the equity line on her primary, she is attempting to refinance a third time to keep the delusion going. It’s a complete mess.
Your sister is pretty much scr*wed.
I’d start drawing my “non-negotiable lines-in-the-sand” now. Oh, and when you don’t bail her out, she will blame you.
But never ever throw even a penny of good money after bad. Even if that means bankruptcy or worse for your sister. Bad decisions should have consequences.
Good points all. To add: To the extent that families are “in it together” it does not help the familial unit to, as you put it, “throw good money after bad.”
I add that because sometimes we need as much ammo as possible to explain to another party WHY we are unwilling to toss a few grand into the fire.
Yeah, good ammo. I hadn’t thought of that but that’s a good one.
I’m trying to get her to determine if bankruptcy is an option. She doesn’t want to file BK and I don’t think she qualifies. Her family income is currently 3-4 times median.
I suspect her hubby is under the delusion they can simply walk away. So, I’m trying to correct that interpretation of the circumstances. She has a lot of bad options. My goal is to help her determine the least costly bad option.
“they sank over 600K into RE specuvestments”
Were they playing with their money or the banks?
It seems from the facts stated that they were playing with their own money.
What is wrong with people? The moment they see some large numbers they feel this incredible urge to p*ss it all away.
Oh man. All I can say, even though you love your sis and want to help, BE CAREFUL.
Be VERY careful.
Please.
You must really care for you sister. I wouldln’t help my brothers cross the street. I haven’t spoken to either of them since my father’s death 5 1/2 years ago.
add me to that list also. My father died in June of last year and the pure greed I saw made me sick! I will never talk to them again. You really don’t know who people are until money gets involved, then you wish you hadent seen it.
Let’s short currencies - what is the best way? Is there an ETF?
The pound, the euro and ruble are doomed.
New Zealand and Norway look like safe places. Now find me an ETF that has all that!
er, you know New Zealand is sitting on a big property bubble too?
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity” Yeats.
er, you know New Zealand is sitting on a big property bubble too?
True - but they actually have a sane government.
Prime Minister John Key’s Platform:
Cutting Taxes
Embracing Free Trade
Reducing Regulation
Understanding there is a limit to what government can do
Compare/contrast to nearly every other government (including America). I am guessing New Zealand’s currency does OK.
I’ve posted this before but I’ll post it again.
NZ is having exactly the same problems we are with bad RE and bad banks/brokers/funds and ponzi schemes.
NZ is having exactly the same problems we are with bad RE and bad banks/brokers/funds and ponzi schemes.
Well, I guess that leaves Norway. I have not figured a way to purely invest in Norway though…(except a few stocks)…
I guess Norway is an oil play; risky IMHO, especially when the wheels come of in Europe. Until last year they were famous because of some investment funds (like Skagen) that had provided more than 20% return yoy over the last 10-15 years, investing in some Scandinavian oil/shipping/fishing stocks. Don’t know the current situation, but I guess they are down hugely from last year.
As for NZ: I’m convinced they will do OK in the long run. They are a ’soft commodity’ country that is relatively close to Asia. And their central bank has a relavitely good policy. But for the next years I’m not so sure; have been looking at shifting some of my euros to NZ$, but until recently the Kiwi $ kept falling against the falling euro (from 0.62 to 0.40 $/euro). Remember that NZ went nearly bankrupt one generation ago, it’s a tiny country …
NZ has a huge housing bubble, similar to the average EU country. But at least they are used to high mortgage rates (around 10%) and their inflation and wage growth is a bit higher than in US/Europe. In Europe we have mortgage rates of 2.5% now, that can easily triple or worse in a few years.
And my impression is that the housing speculation in NZ is far more concentrated with the rich (who often own multiple investment homes) including rich foreigners. A large part of the population is not playing along, big difference with Europe and the US.
Here we go…….
Biden sees signs economic confidence returning, says people starting to believe Obama has plan
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/090314/biden.html?.v=3
This year will be one for the memmory books. Seattle Real Estate will get destroyed. it will get cut by 20%. It is frightening what is coming. Be Prepared and underleveraged.
Lady in Chco evicted by INSTANT MORTGAGE LENDING.
These people are FRAUD. Lady form Chico is not alone thay have done this to so many people. They are predators that look for high value home with no loan or small loans against it. Then they tell lies to the home owner in order to get then sign and they dont care if they cant afford the loan and payments all they really after is the equity of the house. THEY DONT CARE - They are ruthless and have one goal only - THE HOUSE and Its Equity.
They charge illigal fees, broker fee, lebnders fee, originaiton fee, commission and appraisals and other fees they dont do but they just charge and add numbers wehre they want. Ultimately you get nothing at the end of the loan.
In the payment history, they do the same thing again, many bogus charges and fees that never happened -
These people should be punished. THey have cheated these people not to mention short of rubbing them. They are what is wrong with this economy, lend to people who cant afford and then take theri home.
It is about time. I am glad the lady from Chico is getting help from the various attorneys.
Instant Mortgage Lending has made alot of money at peoples expense and they have the money to pay for it.
Owners name is Israel Hechter and he is the one in charge. He also does business under Note Tracker Corp.
This company has other law suit in San Diego for fradud. They should be shut down.
Davin
Lady in Chco being evicted by INSTANT MORTGAGE LENDING.
These people are FRAUD. Lady form Chico is not alone thay have done this to so many people. They are predators that look for high value home with no loan or small loans against it. Then they tell lies to the home owner in order to get then sign and they dont care if they cant afford the loan and payments all they really after is the equity of the house. THEY DONT CARE - They are ruthless and have one goal only - THE HOUSE and Its Equity.
They charge illigal fees, broker fee, lebnders fee, originaiton fee, commission and appraisals and other fees they dont do but they just charge and add numbers wehre they want. Ultimately you get nothing at the end of the loan.
In the payment history, they do the same thing again, many bogus charges and fees that never happened -
These people should be punished. THey have cheated these people not to mention short of rubbing them. They are what is wrong with this economy, lend to people who cant afford and then take theri home.
It is about time. I am glad the lady from Chico is getting help from the various attorneys.
Instant Mortgage Lending has made alot of money at peoples expense and they have the money to pay for it.
Owners name is Israel Hechter and he is the one in charge. He also does business under Note Tracker Corp.
This company has other law suit in San Diego for fradud. They should be shut down.
Davin