The Housing Bubble

NO dude, you are not a loser. things could be worse. you could be in iraq or afghanistan toiling for the NWO.

aNYCdj:
Something that may be of interest to you;
For three consecutive summer intervals, I served as a chaperon for my daughter’s participation in a one week trip sponsored by World Strides. The 30 to 35 member group was composed of teens from her school plus the adult chaperons. Two of those trips had NYC visit segments. While we were here, a city tour guide assisted us with getting the group through our itinerary around the city. I gather these individuals were licensed by the city in some way and they were very good.
Our group was one of many from World Strides that visit your city every year. There are many other similar school based sponsor groups.
In any case, I thought this tour guide gig may be something you would be interested in if you are not already aware of them. I know the chaperons tipped the guides well as we were thankful for the excellent help. The guides told me they were regularly employed performing these duties.
I can tell you that guiding these groups is physically exhausting but a real pleasure (at least for the chaperons). I called the trips summer boot camps for me, i.e. up at 5AM, lights out midnight. I am a fairly big guy and on each trip I lost 12-14 lbs over the five days each time and accumulated foot blisters.

While the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain, the rain in Laos falls mainly in the house. Or so I’m told….

Sounds you are promoting tourism? What else is there in Vientiane?

Alas, I’m sitting at work today by Metro Airport.

Is that address on a dirt road?? 49.9K sounds like something you might find in a trailer park but I don’t see one at that location. Haven’t been out that way in a while.

Silverback, Just cleaning birdcage, doing other chores ‘fore I checked in. Latest news from Atlantic City, the World’s Playground? Nothing good. Casino revenues down 25% over March ‘08; 3100 layoffs at casinos over the past twelve months; and the city’s minor league baseball team just packed it in on the eve of the season.

Latest bonehead move to revive AC’s fortunes? Well, maybe ten years ago, sports betting was banned under federal law that gave states a window of opportunity to legalize it. Former Knicks star Bill Bradley was US Senator from NJ at the time, and he and the NBA strongly opposed sports betting, so NJ let the window of opportunity close without legalizing it. What to do now? Why, file a lawsuit to force open the window again, of course! Yeah, that’ll work.

My computer is slower these days since I now have anti-virus going full time. Would have posted earlier!

Belleville is nice, one of my employees lives in 48111. $50K sounds about right for a nice house with some land. There are houses for sale in my neighborhood(west Dearborn) for $40-60K that sold for $150-225 just a few years ago.

Try a “Placed Rated” book, or something similar. They have stats for over 400 metropolitan areas in the US, like climate, taxes, transport, culture… Check the reference section of any Borders.

I’ve always been partial to medium-sized college towns (50000-75000 people). They have culture and transport, medical centers, tend to be a little more liberal — if that’s what you’re looking for — and generally are small enough that you can live out in the country. There are towns like that all over the US, so you can pick your climate.

I’d try some “lovely trips” to the places you want to consider. Go for about two weeks, do a short term rental rather than stay in a hotel so you have to shop for at least food and get a feel for the people who live there, and DON’T go during the area’s turist season. Buy a local paper and try living there as a normal person.

My advice, and what I have done personally, is take several 2 - 3 week vacations to various areas you are interested in. I narrowed my search to a particular region of one state. Even though I was already familiar with many parts of the region, I drove thousands of miles looking at properties. I purchased property in an area I had never been in before. As far as what time to view a property my logic tells me to see it in it’s worst state and make my decision accordingly. If it’s snow country I want to see it when the snow is deepest. If it’s a tourist area I’d like to see peak season. I would be pissed at myself if I purchased a property thinking it’s private only to find out it’s crawling with tourist’s during peak season. Good luck in your search.

Mike

“Anyway, I’d like to ask a question / propose a topic…

What criteria should one use to choose an area to relocate long term”

Good topic. I have the same problem. I would suggest Madison, WI or a distant Milwaukee suburb except we have a Snow Tax and property taxes are on the rise although housing prices aren’t as insane as the coasts. Chicago is close enough for a big city cultural weekend and great food and they have a big time bust international airport.

I love the State but I am tired of SNOW…Aurrrgh!! 5-6 inches tonight ! San Antonio or Austin is looking good right now. I used to love Cali but that was long ago before they ruined it.

Good luck and when you find Paradise, post it for me

Tangent to your question as to where to live is the question of what will you do?

Jobs offer and forces upon workers purpose, structure and community. IMHO much consideration should be given to how these three things will be replaced once they are let go of.

A couple of years ago I went to NYC to visit my grandpa. He turned 100 that year. Been in the same 2nd floor apartment in Washington Heights for something like 60 years. He beat me up the stairs.

HIs secrets to longevity:
Takes a nap everyday in the afternoon.
Fasts on Mondays.
Don’t eat sweets.

Said when he gets to feeling down, he goes down to (I’m probably gonna get the streets wrong here…) something like 50th street and buys a shirt. Then he would walk to 80-something street and ride the subway the rest of the way home.

I suspect surrounding yourself with things you love is the main thing. Could be people or culture or whatever. I don’t see why you can’t retire in the big apple.

whyoung,

good questions. I think you should start with CNNMoney’s “best places to retire” - just google it. It will give you ideas.

I lived in various parts of the U.S. and I narrowed my preferences to anywhere within a mile of the California coastline from San Diego to Humboldt Bay, or on one of the Hawaiian islands. I don’t care about state taxes. I care about climate. And when I’m older I would probably be biased toward living in the San Diego, Los Angeles, or San Francisco metro area since medical care is what I would be concerned about.

Those who think about living in rural areas ought to picture themselves at age 70. Do you have a better chance of surviving an illness or emergency in the rural area or in the city?

RE: Any ideas on specific locations

After a recent visit to California I’m convinced the Northeast from Jersey north to the Canadian border is future dead meat.

The road and bridge infrastructure has been deferred forever and is now beat to shit; winter road-way treatments will rot your car’s braking system out in 2 years-never mind the safety hazard of rotten bridge reinforcing steel falling on to your windshield while tooling along at 70mph; traffic travels on roads laid out 300 years ago-it’ll gridlock in 5 years; tolls are blowing thru the roof to address massive DOT deficits.

The population is old and ossifying-all the smart young are long gone; real estate still costs a fortune; region completely dependant on foreign oil; state government’s are all running massive public employee pension ponzi schemes ala Mazzland which is paying it’s DOT people with borrowed bond money. Someone is going to be left being the bagholder.

Congress people have traded military bases for expanded welfare services. Entire economic bases have been rendered obsolete creating cities completely dependant on drugs and the dole.

Fastest growing population segment are unskilled 3rd world immigrants-including VT!

I’d head to San Diego. Damn cleanest city I’ve ever visited.

Friendly people, beautiful women, laid back surf crowd, scores of restaurants and bars, paint jobs intact on cars, falling real estate prices, different forms of outdoor recreation everywhere…just my 2 cents.

It’s hard to give advice to someone else. You may have family considerations or other issues which we can’t understand.

My family had lived in northern California since the 1860’s, but when an opportunity for early retirement offered itself (i.e. the insane housing bubble), I knew I had to leave the state. From my point of view there were no longer any “family” issues since all my relatives had either died or moved away. I had a clean slate from which to choose.

Try starting with a map of the 50 states. I did. I had traveled in 43 of the states over my lifetime so I had some point of reference in making a selection. I crossed off states with which I had “issues”, and looked at those states that remained. For me it was the PNW and VA/NC.

AARP website …….seriously!

Lots of lists and info at the link, Whyyoung.

The 2.5 ratio is just a quick and dirty version of 28%, isn’t it?

She thinks interest rates have an impact on monthly payment? Try HOA FEES. That ratio ought to be 1.75 or less.

September 2005

Maryann Haggerty: “Why don’t I start off with a few numbers? As the regulars here know, I have no clue whether there’s a housing bubble out there.”

“How come people with much lower incomes then us are living in $800,000 to $900,000 homes? Isn’t real estate out of whack if the person living in the home couldn’t afford to buy it? The average household income for Fairfax County is $80,000 and our income is much higher.

Maryann Haggerty: People are living in those houses for one of three reasons:
– They have lived there a long time
– They bought the house with equity they built up in another house they lived in for a long time
–They came into a lot of cash otherwise”

From the link:

When banks do resell foreclosed property, sometimes with deep discounts from the original loan, it hurts local government and surrounding property.

Foreclosed properties — which rose to more than 11,000 in Volusia and Flagler counties last year — usually sit empty for months while banks try to sell them, and their conditions can deteriorate, causing neighborhood blight, which in turn further lowers the resale value.
————————–

Funny, nobody in the REIC was complaining about comps being set by fraudulent transactions on the way up; but for some reason, they don’t like comps being set by the removal of these fraudulent transactions on the way down.

Additionally, while I agree that banks sitting on foreclosed homes causes blight, keeping FBs in “their homes” is not the answer because they will never be able to maintain the homes without the phantom equity that backs their debts. The answer is to force banks to push this inventory onto the market and sell it within 90 days of of the NOT.

There, problem solved.

wow

The comments are even more enlightening.

copy address in your browser and paste on your post
I’d like to see it.

Link should look like this:

<a href=”http://foo.bar.com/someotherstuff”>Clicky Text Here</a>

If you want to be outraged, check out the article on MSN this am about Obama side stepping the compensation laws. Hes going to set up middlemen to hand out the money. AND, hes going to bypass government ownership of these failing companies by doing this!
OUTRAGE!

NEW YORK (AP) — American taxpayers and stock owners have taken it on the chin in this financial crisis. The same can’t be said of bondholders who lent money to the most troubled banks.

The Obama administration is now ordering General Motors Corp.’s creditors to make sacrifices to save the ailing automaker. Yet bondholders of financial companies such as Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. so far have been mostly left off the hook, even though the government has given the banks billions of dollars in bailout money.

Many those bondholders, in fact, are still profiting from their investments so long as they haven’t had to sell, while the rest of us deal with vanishing wealth.

“The sum total of the policy responses to this crisis has been to defend the bondholders of distressed financial institutions at the public expense,” said John Hussman, who runs an investment firm in Ellicott City, Md.

Somehow this article seems to fit right in here…

Wall Street Journal
* BUSINESS
* APRIL 4, 2009, 9:01 A.M. ET

Hedge Fund Paid Summers $5.2 Million in Past Year
By JOHN D. MCKINNON and T.W. FARNAM

WASHINGTON — Top White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers received about $5.2 million over the past year in compensation from hedge fund D.E. Shaw, and also received hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees from major financial institutions.

A financial disclosure form released by the White House Friday afternoon shows that Mr. Summers made frequent appearances before Wall Street firms including J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers. He also received significant income from Harvard University and from investments, the form shows.

In total, Mr. Summers made a total of about 40 speaking appearances to financial sector firms and other places, with fees totaling about $2.77 million. Fees ranged from $10,000 for a Yale University speech to $135,000 for an appearance paid for by Goldman Sachs & Co.

Asked to comment, White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said that, “from the first days of the administration, we have bolstered accountability over banks” and made other rules changes so that “the influence of lobbyists is curbed, executive compensation is reined in, and firms are required to show how they will preserve or expand lending using government funds.” He added: “Dr. Summers has been at the forefront of this administration’s work to shore up our nation’s financial system and to put in place a regulatory framework that will strengthen the financial system and its oversight — all in an effort to help the families across America who have paid a very steep price for risky decisions made by Wall Street executives.”

Blanco
I read that staging article shaking my head. Are buyers that emotional and stupid? If a house has something in it that I like, I ask where they got it, or make a mental note. I don’t buy the house. Oy Vey.

‘Simmer some apple cider. Play smooth jazz. Turn on every lamp and use bright 100-watt lightbulbs. Light some candles.’

Ooooh! Oooooh! Personally, I know I am always quite happy to overpay by at LEAST 70K for a house whenever I smell apple cider and hear jazz at the same time!

Smooth jazz? The stager thinks prospective buyers like to be assaulted with Kenny G?

There are “Accredited Staging Professionals” (ASP) - how about that. They talk in a way where every fourth word is “I” - is this part of the accreditation. They learn to use glue, and maybe sniff it too: “94.6 percent of ASP-staged homes sell on average in 35 days or less as opposed to 175 days for an unstaged dwelling.”

The first house visit I went to, I remember getting very excited when showed what would be my bedroom because the bed was full of stuffed Smurfs. But I was 3.5 at the time.

That was an excellent interview.

RE: Moyer’s interview-a blurb from the letters section…

“Let’s attempt to have justice served…lets call for charges and arrest of those who praticed fraud as if it were OK…The last line on all applications is a certification that all that was completed above is “true and correct” to the best of the signors ability…Lets apply that same principle to the “loan officer. who signed the appliaction as well…how I cringe when I use that term today…it used to mean something…

Lets hold the sponsering mortgage broker to the same standard that all applications were signed by their people who were responsible for the content…

Let the people who made many millions from this game be charged with fraud…misreprentation and be held responsible…lets publicize who they were…

If I am paying for this show I want to be entertained…”

So get on with it, Mr. O’Bama. Round the bastards up.

You’ll need the diversion when the dead cat bounces ends in May.

Then the mob will be coming after you with their pitchforks.

Yeah but they didn’t have computers in ‘96, did they. Huh? HUH?

This post was supposed to reply to Terry’s comment about the administration bypassing of bailout rules.

It’s always instructive, I think, to follow the money. Remember that the Federal Reserve, a private international banking cartel, makes money charging interest. That is their business. So why should we ever be surprised that Turbo Tax Tim is right in the middle of gigantic bailouts? The Fed makes the current and future taxpayers responsible for trillions in losses they helped create, then charges us interest on the money we have to “borrow” to erase the losses.
Remember that it is precisely in the interest of the Fed for the USA to have the biggest deficits, the most expensive programs, and the most expansive government possible.
They make more money that way.
Remember that the Fed - World Bank - International Monetary Fund (IMF) cartel operates under slightly different names around the world, but it is always one big international banking cartel behind all the central banks.

Remember that the only thing the G20 members actually DID at their summit was to agree to “donate” 1 TRILLION dollars to the IMF. Pretty much the same as when our Treasury Secretary and Congress get together.

Ever been to a food pantry? Beans and Rice and corn syruped spaghetti sauce…sugared cereal, and sweetened orange juice…yup he is right.

———————————
we have food on the table and are fat and content. I pretty much believe this is true.

If you study both the French and Russian Revolutions, you’d see that they were both preceeded by around 10 years of famine. Hunger is a great motivator when it comes to taking up arms against a government.

They knew that in the Great Depression - soup kitchens.

friend of mine said he thought there could be no real change as long as we have food on the table and are fat and content. I pretty much believe this is true.

And thus my repeated statement that wellfare and foodstamps aren’t for the poor. They are for the elites. They keep the poor and formerly middle class from rioting while they rob the remaining few with money.

Thanks for pointing that out.

My condolences voz. We’ll miss him too.

vozworth
My condolences upon hearing of the passing of your father. I know the pain you are feeling. My father died of a horrible form of Parkinson’s in Jan 08. My heart and thoughts are with you.

I saw your post last night too Voz. Keep the great memories close to your heart and hang tough. It’s rough and there is no easy way through these times. I do hope that your friends support help a little.

My dad was my best friend.
I considered Hoz my bestest friend on the HBB, and no Hozzie baby is not my dad.

thank you all for the kind words. I’m trying desperately to get back to the normalcy of the routine, but the garden, the fruit trees, painting the house, getting the pool ready for summer, looking forward to getting my downstairs bathroom remodeled, getting the last of three chidrens to college, putting in a solid 50 hours in at the shop (yeah, I turn the wrenches for the guys turning wrenches), and mrs voz keeps getting the tiny santa hat out

I think a lot of folks forget that I bought a house over 2 years ago after reading the blog for about 6 months….

Voz, ditto here. Hoz was a good soul, and it came through in his writings, the wry affection in which he held you. He will be remembered. I will think of him fondly while canoeing the Boundary Waters this summer. Sorry I never had the chance to meet him and shake his hand. Your note last night was searing.

Welcome to America

I work with several engineers who have “very hard time speaking Engrish.” I am sorry if I’m making fun of them, but most of them are arrogant.

Olympiagal
You’re such a joy. When I am feeling *magenta, you lift me up. Thanks.

*(not quite blue, but more melancholy)

Sometimes a girl just being herself in grubby old jeans and a t-shirt looks a helleva lot a prettier than some high-end drug store dolly faking it hard in the pearls, fancy lowcut, and heels

As the article points out you must be able to identify quality goods - price and brand are not necessarily a reliable indicator…

I used to work for an apparel manufacture that made multiple brands aimed at different markets… mark ups on some items sold at the higher end was tremendous while the quality was only a little better than the lower end brand…

Convenient access to transportation and electricity.

Handy orange safety fence to keep you from falling into the back yard.

It also has a REAL staircase made of fine Corinthian lumber.

Plus a detached casita shed.

And an ORANGE wall to die for!

Not to mention 50 years old - I hear investors everywhere are just SNAPPING UP these classic vintage properties.

Nice pic of the A/C unit. And the shed. And what’s up with the backyard?? Is that a sinkhole??

Wow, wickedheart. That’s one stunning piece of architecture!

Did it have the “unpermitted, incomplete” add-on when you guys lived there? What’s up with that backyard, anyway? Is it as dangerous in real life as it looks in the pics?

As for the midwestern funeral lunch salad, some would say that no salad can claim to be midwestern unless it includes jello and / or marshmallows.

Hip,

My grandmother and mom has made that salad also. So good on a hot summer day.

I highly recommend copious amounts of Canabis Sativa.

every garden should have it.

the owner is clearly a macho man from taco land,
Put myself in that place now? I lived not far from there 19 years ago.

whose holding the bad paper? If I open my mouth, I tend to put my foot there.

more price downside…as rates rise.

‘roasted’ hotdogs…….

Comments FPSS?

Zwieglers white hots from Rochester. Just blackened over the fire.

Winter is over.

P.S. I did find that house Silverback, in case you were still interested in it.

Ballparks. Blackened on the grill. See my post above for why you don’t want that house, Blano. The address goes down onto Savage Rd. and sort of peters out north of New Boston.

depressing.

Too late for a post, but a good argument can now be made against deflation.
These people will do what’s needed to avoid that.

We were sold out, this is Bush2 on steroids. (what a waste)

Does Dennis Washington have a niece with a baby that has an unemployed high school dropout daddy that needs a job?