The Housing Bubble

Here in NJ, I have NOT seen condo sales tank yet. What was $114,000 in 1998, went to $275,000 in 2005, still is asking for $235,000 now. Okay it is Somerset County [almost Princeton we say] but still not panic I thought I might see. Just one random observation, although much talk among neighbors of how things are rock bottom. Me ? Still apartment living.

Mortgage defaults among Florida’s high-value loans highest in U.S.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/realestate/mortgage-defaults-among-floridas-high-value-loans-highest-in-us/1116533

Palmetto, are you really going to move to Asheville?

That’s sooooooo 2006.

Nearly 50% leave mortgage aid program. Gee, no one could have seen THAT coming.

http://www.aolnews.com/money/article/nearly-50-percent-leave-obama-mortgage-aid-program/19602772

The stimulus was a huge bomb. Money for nothing, now a huge debt in its wake. Boo-yah!

Guess I won`t apply then.

‘Bottom feeders’ need not apply: Luxe cribs go on the block in splashy auction on Hutchinson Island

By Daphne Duret Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Posted: 6:23 p.m. Friday, Aug. 20, 2010

HUTCHINSON ISLAND — If home auctions were mustard, this would be Grey Poupon.

Forget gutted shacks sold for pennies on the courthouse steps. Think waterfront mansions with luxurious pools, spiral marble staircases as far as the eye can see and entire rooms dedicated to things like steam.

In fact, for the right price at the Luxury, Waterfront and Historical Home Mega Auction this month, you can even buy your own peninsula.

Of course, that’s as long as you can bear to put up with what comes with it: Maybe, for example, a five-bedroom shanty boasting cypress-beamed ceilings, coquina stone-faced fireplaces, and an elevator of Willy Wonka stupendousness providing access to a guest house bigger than some single-family homes.

“Let’s just call it what it is here. These houses are hot,” said Derrick Christenson of Christenson Pittman Auctions.

Hot, he says? In a housing market as cool as old money?

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/bottom-feeders-need-not-apply-luxe-cribs-go-870466.html -

How Pimco Is Holding American Homeowners Hostage
August 19, 2010 2:27 PM ET
By David Stockman

Some raids on the US Treasury by America’s crony capitalists are so egregious as to provoke a rant — even if you aren’t Rick Santelli. One such rant-worthy provocation is Pimco latest scheme to loot Uncle Sam’s depleted exchequer.

According to Bill Gross, who heads what appears to be the firm’s squad of public policy front runners, the American economy can be saved only through “full nationalization” of the mortgage finance system and a massive “jubilee” of debt forgiveness for millions of underwater homeowners. If nothing else, these blatantly self-serving recommendations demonstrate that Matt Taibbi was slightly off the mark in his famed Rolling Stone diatribe. It turns out that the real vampire squid wrapped around the face of the American taxpayer isn’t Goldman Sachs (GS) after all. Instead, it’s surely the Pacific Investment Management Co.

As overlord of the fixed-income finance market, the latter generates billions annually in effort-free profits from its trove of essentially riskless US Treasury securities and federally guaranteed housing paper. Now Pimco wants to swell Uncle Sam’s supply of this no-brainer paper even further — adding upward of $2 trillion per year of what would be “government-issue” mortgages on top of the existing $1.5 trillion in general fund deficits.

This final transformation of American taxpayers into indentured servants of HIDC (the Housing Investment & Debt Complex) has been underway for a long time, and is now unstoppable because all principled political opposition to Pimco-style crony capitalism has been extinguished. Indeed, the magnitude of the burden already created is staggering. Before Richard Nixon initiated the era of Republican “me-too” Big Government in the early 1970s — including his massive expansion of subsidized housing programs — there was about $475 billion of real estate mortgage debt outstanding, representing a little more than 47% of GDP.
…

There was a big auction online last night of houses in the Treasure Valley - Boise, Nampa Caldwell area.

One house had 15 rooms (the announcer kept saying 15 bedrooms, but the local talking heads can’t read anything correctly) the house either had sold or was listed at $360,000 and the starting price was $25,000. There were a LOT of under $20,000 houses and more coming on the market every day. The auction was cash only because the banks holding the paper didnt’ want to refinance, they just wanted rid of the places.

Prices had pretty much imploded here and no one can get financing anyway so it doesn’t matter how cheap it is. Taxes are being forced down and the counties are yowling about lost revenue - and even more lost revenue from the people who plain old aren’t paying the taxes because they can’t.

There was just another auction of land from an irrigation district where owners hadn’t paid the taxes on the land, the irrigation ditrict had slapped a lien on it and then had to auction off the land. They said it was rare to have any land come up for taxes from the irrigation district but it is happening more and more frequently. You have to understand, this is land worth $20 to $30,000 for the acreage, and taxes are around $2,000 - the people still didn’t pay and let the land go to auction.

Friday, Aug. 20, 2010
Consequences of U.S. debt
By MARIO MARGIOCCO

MILAN — Italians and other Europeans have serious problems addressing their own national debts, public and private, so it may seem immodest for a European to discuss America’s growing and grave debt problem.

But the fiscal realities on both sides of the Atlantic nowadays are very similar, and only lingering trust in the promise of America keeps alive the expectation among some Europeans that some grand American maneuver will resolve the country’s dire debt situation.

Of course, many Americans recognize the scale of the country’s debt burden. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and thus America’s highest-ranking military officer, recently said, “The greatest danger to American security comes from the national debt.”

Four Americans out of 10 agree with him, whereas less than three in 10 deem terrorism or Iran more dangerous.

America’s Great Power status has always been tied to its level of debt. Indeed, it was the absence of debt that marked the United States’ emergence as a world power between 1914 and 1917. The U.S. went from owing $3 billion (mostly to Great Britain) to being a net creditor for about the same amount, thanks to $6 billion in war credits given to the Western Allies. A further $3 billion in credits for European postwar reconstruction cemented America’s status as the world’s premier creditor nation, with its surplus equal to roughly 8 percent of GDP at the time.

This shift meant that the U.S. had essentially replaced Britain as the heart of the world’s financial and monetary system. Previously, thanks to the gold standard and Britain’s political stability, the City of London had been the world’s key source of capital and financial guarantees for more than a century.

The new era began suddenly in January 1915, when, after a few months of deep uncertainty, gold started to be shipped to New York in increasing quantities. A few months earlier, the veteran Boston financier Henry Lee Higginson had sketched in a letter to President Woodrow Wilson what America’s new strategy should be. “This is our chance to take first place,” he wrote. America’s financial house had to be put in order, all debts repaid and, as London had done for a long time, confidence had to be maintained, which meant guaranteeing the dollar’s convertibility into gold.
…

I get a kick out of this sort of MSM article, which gives the impression that the bad economic situation arose just yesterday like a lightning bolt out of a clear blue sky. Guess what? We’ve been in an unresolved state of financial panic since early 2007, when subprime collapsed. Bailouts, ZIRP and Fed balance sheet expansion may have served to hide it at times, but did not fix anything.

Get used to it already!

Outside the Box

Aug. 21, 2010, 12:01 a.m. EDT
It’s doom and gloom all over again
Commentary: Survey sees fear trumping greed in the market

By Howard Gold

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Investors are scared–really, really scared.

That’s what our latest MoneyShow.com Investors’ Sentiment indicator tells us, in big, bold, red letters:

HELP!

Our most recent survey of the active, mainly self-directed investors who use MoneyShow.com showed the highest bearish ratings we’ve ever seen–far greater than back in February 2009, just before the market bottomed. Read MoneyShow’s “Investors Aren’t Believers.”

And now, with stocks still 64% off their lows, our usually composed and confident audience, who have kept their eyes on the long-term prize through the worst the markets threw at them, appears finally to have succumbed — or is it capitulated? — to the baser instincts of the reptilian brain.

I would call it “fight or flight,” but after a scary European debt crisis, the flash crash, and a steady drip, drip, drip of dreary economic news, there’s not much fight left in them.
…

Mortgage Summit: No New Ideas
Written by Bob Adelmann
Thursday, 19 August 2010 09:50

When Kevin Hall, writing for McClatchy Newspapers, said “the Obama administration got what it was looking for at its summit on the future of housing finance,” he was very close to the truth: No matter who spoke at the summit or what “new” ideas might be proposed, nothing would change — the government would remain fully in charge of mortgage financing for the country.

Hall said the summit (officially called, the Conference on the Future of Housing Finance) designed to develop a proposal for Congress by January, “was a starting point for [the] debate, [which will] carry consequences for all Americans,” even including taxpayers who don’t have mortgages.

How this debate is decided could affect everything from the supply of affordable rental housing to tax deductions for mortgage interest to whether Americans pay significantly more to be homeowners.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner made it clear from the start that the private market would have no influence on the conversation: “We will not support returning Fannie and Freddie to the role they played before conservatorship [in September 2008] where they fought to take market share from private competitors while enjoying the privilege of government support. We will not support a return to the system where private gains are subsidized by taxpayer losses.”

Naturally, the people involved in the summit have been enjoying the fruits of government intervention in the housing market for years, as confirmed by Jim McLeod, the president of Coastal States Bank, a community lender in Beaufort County, South Carolina: “I’m impressed with the fact that they’re asking the right people.” One of those heavily involved in profiting from such intervention was Bill Gross, the managing director of PIMCO, the world’s largest bond fund, who opened the summit by proposing still more government intervention to protect lenders from their errors during the housing bubble. His first proposal was “that the Obama administration order Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to refinance all outstanding mortgages that they back … into today’s historically low interest rates.”

Speaking as one who would profit from such a move, and also as a Keynesian, Gross said that such an order “would free up a significant amount of income for millions of Americans,” who would then go out and spend the money they were previously paying for housing, which would then “boost the economy.” The fact that previous such efforts to stimulate the economy have failed miserably was missing from his comments. In addition, however, Gross said that the new lower-interest mortgages created should continue to be guaranteed by the taxpayer. In short, Gross was proposing that the taxpayer “eat” the difference between the old, toxic, high-rate mortgages that banks are continuing to hold on their books and the newly-created low-interest rate mortgages, which would continue to enjoy government backing just in case they go bad as well. Either way, Gross and PIMCO would continue successfully to game the system.
…

“Savvy investor” = deadbeat scam artist…

Foreclosures boom among nation’s most creditworthy
Updated 7/29/2010 8:44 AM

75% of the largest metro areas posted an increase in foreclosure activity in the first half of 2010.

By Stephanie Armour, USA TODAY

A record number of borrowers once judged the most creditworthy are heading into foreclosure as the job market leaves more homeowners unable to keep up with mortgage payments.

Foreclosures among borrowers with prime conforming loans have shot up 425% since January 2008, according to Lender Processing Services, which compiles mortgage data. Conforming loans are those eligible for purchase by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the federal agencies that buy mortgages from lenders.

Jumbo prime loans not eligible for purchase by Fannie or Freddie have done even worse — foreclosures on those have increased nearly 600%.

Jumbo loans are typically mortgages worth more than $729,750.

“Jobs is a major impact. It’s a huge factor,” says Ken Shuman, a spokesman with Trulia.com, a real estate search engine. “A lot of homeowners on the higher end are also savvy investors. They’re seeing their home has lost 30% of their value, we’re seeing a lot of strategic defaults.”

A strategic default occurs when a borrower stops paying a mortgage they can afford to pay, often because the house’s value has fallen below the loan balance.
…

Real estate economist gives forecast
By Jennifer Davies, UNION-TRIBUNE
Friday, August 20, 2010 at 4:06 p.m.

Do you find yourself constantly whining: “Enough already. When is the economy and housing market going to turn around?”

Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, gave his take on that very question at a summit held by the San Diego Association of Realtors on Friday.

“The worst appears to be over,” he said.

Yun, who has been criticized for his overly rosy forecasts in the past, made sure to down play his prognosticating skills, telling the crowd: “I will be wrong.”
…

California jobless rate unchanged at 12.3%
San Diego’s unemployment grows, but mostly due to seasonal factors

By Dean Calbreath, UNION-TRIBUNE

Friday, August 20, 2010 at 2:51 p.m.

California’s unemployment rate remained unchanged at 12.3 percent in July, although the private sector hiring could not keep pace with the census-related layoffs of government workers, according to data released today by the California Employment Development Department.

The state’s jobless rate was the third highest in the nation, after Nevada, 14.3 percent, and Michigan, 13.1 percent. The national average remained unchanged last month at 9.5 percent.

“There’s very little change from last time around,” said Michael Stead, director of capital markets for Bank of the West. “A few jobs were added on the private side, but not nearly enough to make a dent in the jobless rate.”

At the same time, unemployment in San Diego County rose from 10.5 percent in June to 10.8 percent in July, but most of that was related to the onset of summer vacation season, leading to temporary job cuts at schools.

If the local numbers, like the state’s, were adjusted for seasonal hiring fluctuations, they would show joblessness moving from 10.2 percent in June to 10.5 percent in July, said Lynn Reaser, economist with Point Loma Nazarene University.

“So far this year, the county has gained 10,000 jobs, which is really a stark contrast to the severe recessionary winds blowing in 2009, when the state lost 57,000 jobs during the first seven months of the year,” Reaser said.

But she added that she’s troubled by the large number of jobless workers who appear to be waiting for the economy to approve before seeking jobs.

“There are fewer people coming into the workforce than we’d normally expect during the summer,” she said. “It seems that some have given up the search, deciding that this not the time to be looking for work.”
…

Double dip recession cities…get out now…hurry

http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/110374/22-cities-in-danger-of-a-double-dip-recession

Squatters At Best

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/dannywestneat/2012683391_danny21.html

Got to love these gutsy guys.

By this chapter of this curious tale, Mark von der Burg surely is wondering: Why me? What did I do to deserve this?

He’s the Eastside real-estate agent who, two months ago while prepping for an open house to sell a $3.3 million mansion in Kirkland, was stunned to find that complete strangers had moved in and were staking a tortured legal claim to the foreclosed property.

The squatters story went national. It was an apt symbol of the housing meltdown. At the time, I wrote that “mansion squatting” might be the “most naked expression yet of what the crash was all about — the lure of something for nothing.”

Now, I swear I didn’t mean the word “naked” literally. But I’ll get to that twist in a minute.

Radical Britain

http://www.economist.com/node/16791650?story_id=16791650&CFID=137570966&CFTOKEN=85949754

Britain is being brave and smart enough to confront the debt problem now, rather than later. Greece and Spain are going the same way. Europe is moving out of the welfare mode and will recover faster than the U.S. Uness the U.S. Becomes more radical in spending cuts than Britain. Actually it is not a matter of “if” the U.S. Radically shrinks the federal spending. It is “when.” I prepared for downsizing government spending andbwill welcome it.

There is no bond bubble; just a bloodbath in the making.

I can’t wait to mock the fools who are currently going long into Treasurys!

Government bonds
A bull market in pessimism
A lot has to go wrong to justify today’s rock-bottom bond yields

Aug 19th 2010 | Washington, dc
…
Low bond yields should comfort central banks: they are the main channel by which they hope to stimulate demand. They are also a boon to governments with yawning fiscal deficits. Whether investors should be similarly comforted is more questionable. Today’s yields offer precious little cushion should inflation turn out higher, growth stronger or central banks less accommodating than current predictions. Some go so far as to call the market a bond bubble. John Richards of Royal Bank of Scotland says current yields imply that the Fed funds rate will rise at a snail’s pace and level out at 3%, a scenario compatible only with a double-dip recession and Japanese-style malaise. “You’d have to argue that either US inflation or potential growth are permanently lower,” he says.

Mr Richards recalls another occasion when investors in Japanese bonds were caught out. In 2003 ten-year government-bond yields shot from 0.5% to 1.5% in just three months, sparked by nothing more than fading fears of deflation and casual remarks by the Bank of Japan. Monetary policy did not change. Banks were all positioned the same way, he says. Once the selling began, it became “indiscriminate…it was a bloodbath.” If the Fed raises rates to 4% by late 2013, as the consensus expects, bonds will sell off violently.
…

This housing glut is easily remedied. Simply ask Helicoper Ben, Turbo-tax Tim, and the GSE bosses to stop propping up housing prices on a temporarily high plateau, and soon the inventory glut will be absorbed as the invisible hand of the unfettered free market finds a new equilibrium price.

The recovery in home sales and construction would be nothing short of an economic miracle.

18 August 2010 Last updated at 14:52 ET

Obama says housing glut hindering economic recovery

President Obama: “Slowly, but surely, we are moving in the right direction”

President Barack Obama has said an over-supply of homes is hindering the US economic recovery.

Mr Obama also said the US had to find a way to curb its budget deficit without further slowing economic growth.

“People, consumers, are not going to start spending until they feel a little more confident that the economy’s getting stronger,” he said in Ohio.

Mr Obama is touting Democratic policies on a campaign-style swing through important electoral states.

“The housing market is still a big drag on the economy as a whole,” he said.

“It is going to take some time for us to absorb this inventory, that was really too high… We were building 2 million homes a year when only 1.4 were being absorbed.”
…
The president told a group of about 30 voters at a private home in the city Columbus that a glut in the housing market was partly responsible for the slow economic recovery.

Related stories

* US sees 131,000 jobs lost in July
* Q&A: US mid-term elections 2010

Nice editorial, but I don’t take the impression that the Geithner summit got very far past Bill Gross’s attempt to bolster Pimco’s bottom line.

Financing the dream

By the Editorial Board | Posted: Friday, August 20, 2010 9:00 pm
…
America has a fundamental decision to make. Has it invested too much in the dream of home-ownership? Despite the fact that more than one in seven American homeowners is delinquent on his mortgage or is in foreclosure, two out of every three American families live in their own homes.

The country has made that possible with mortgage guarantees. It has made home-mortgage interest tax deductible, even though that’s unfair to renters.

Before the housing bubble burst, nearly everyone — Republicans and Democrats alike — was in favor of broadly extending homeownership. In 2002, President George W. Bush said, as only he could, “Owning something is freedom, as far as I’m concerned. It’s part of a free society…. It’s a part of — it’s of being a — it’s a part of — an important part of America.”

Right on, dumbsh!t.

There’s no question that somewhere between subprime liar loans and the Henry F. Potter-no-loans-to-lazy-rabble standard is a sound mortgage finance system — one without profiteering, rip-offs and bailouts. Whether Congress can be persuaded to find it is the question.

Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!
Lifestyles of the Rich and Despicable
August 21, 2010

Carl reads three stories about the odd hobbies of CEOs…”high” profits, a furniture fetish, and AIG MIA.

Talked with a gal today at the Fedex Store.

She bought a house last year, claimed the $8000 credit. Evidently the IRS challenged/disallowed the credit, gave them the directions on how to appeal.

So they appealed, and supplied all the docs the IRS requested…….and now the IRS is doing a full-blown audit on their 2009 return.

Beware Feds bearing gifts.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,712511,00.html

America, meet your future. After decades of misrule by corrupt political parties and their allies in the anarcho-communist labor unions, Greece is going to hell in a handbasket.

That’s 118 banks in what — 31 weeks? Projecting out to 52 weeks, we are on track for (52/31)*118 = 198 by year end.

I’m curious about the “$450 million hole” mentioned here; is there some kind of budget constraint that limits the amount of federal deposit insurance claims of which I am not aware?

Aug. 21, 2010, 3:07 p.m. EDT
Eight bank failures bring U.S. total to 118 for the year
By John Letzing and Kristen Gerencher, MarketWatch

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Eight banks were closed by U.S. regulators Friday, bringing the total number of failures for the year to 118 and punching a more than $450 million hole in the federal deposit-insurance fund, as the effects of the credit crisis continue to ripple through the financial system.
…

Buy now, and compete with “desperate capital.”

Are these the sort of folks the government is trying to encourage to buy homes, with its myriad housing price stabilization programs?

Professional investors move into flipping foreclosed homes

Squeezing out amateurs, private equity funds and wealthy individuals are buying distressed properties at public auctions, refurbishing them and selling them for quick profits.

Auction ritual

Bruce Norris, left, of Norris Group, a real estate investment firm in Riverside, and other potential bidders in lawn chairs watch an auction of properties on the steps of the Riverside Historic Courthouse. (Irfan Khan, Los Angeles Times / August 3, 2010)

By Walter Hamilton and Alejandro Lazo Los Angeles Times

August 20, 2010

Hoping there are big profits to be made in the aftermath of California’s housing collapse, professional investors are flocking to the business of buying foreclosed homes at distressed prices.

The investors, primarily private equity funds and groups of wealthy individuals, purchase the homes at public auctions, which are held daily on the steps of local courthouses. They refurbish the properties and try to sell them for quick profits.

Not long ago, the typical home flipper was an amateur tapping a home equity line or savings for an investment property. But professionals have rushed in, partly because of sparse investment opportunities elsewhere.

“In crisis there’s opportunity,” said Rick Hudson, president of investment firm Prosperity Group Real Estate in Irvine. “Right now there’s huge opportunity with flipping houses.”

Closely watched gauges of professional buying have surged over the last two years.

The number of homes sold at foreclosure auctions statewide increased to 4,336 in April, from 884 in January 2009, according to research firm ForeclosureRadar. It eased back to 3,483 in July as banks offered fewer properties for sale. The auctions are dominated by professional investors who shop with cash (although not usually with actual greenbacks, for practical reasons).

Another measure, the percentage of all homes sold to absentee buyers, paints a similar picture. In the hard-hit Inland Empire, for instance, 30% of all homes sold in April went to absentee buyers — up from 19% at the end of 2008 and the highest level in at least seven years, according to San Diego research firm MDA DataQuick. It was at 28.2% in July.

The binge of professional buying has helped spark a nascent housing recovery in Southern California because investors have cut significantly into the glut of foreclosed properties after the subprime mortgage meltdown.

Home sales in the six-county region rose 7.2% in June from May and 2.6% from a year earlier, according to MDA DataQuick. In July, overall sales tumbled primarily because of the expiration of federal tax credits, falling 20.6% from the month before in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego and Ventura counties. But the region’s median home price of $295,000 was off only 1.7% from June.

The fragile rebound in the broader market contrasts with the behind-the-scenes scramble at foreclosure auctions.

“There’s a tremendous amount of capital that is desperate to just buy anything right now,” said Gil Priel, principal of a real estate investment firm in Woodland Hills.
…

Latinos Own Almost Half Of Foreclosures In California, Says Report
August 20th 2010

A ‘first of its kind’ report was recently released by the Center for Responsible Lending, a non-profit research and public policy group. The report, entitled “Dreams Deferred: Impact and Characteristics of the California Foreclosure Crisis”, looked into the racial makeup of California home foreclosures.

Analyzing more than half a million foreclosures, the report revealed that Latinos experience higher foreclosure rates vis-à-vis non-Hispanic home owners. Of the statewide foreclosures, 48% were owned by Latinos. Other figures in the report are: Whites 35%, African Americans 8% and Asians 6%.

The Center for Responsible Lending also looked at the types of homes that were foreclosed. Contrary to popular belief, the homes that went on the market were not the “McMansions” type built in lavish subdivisions. In fact, 75% of those foreclosed properties can be described as ‘modest’.

Why were more Latino homes closed then? The report also delved into this.

Higher cost sub-prime mortgages were most likely to be granted to Latinos and African-Americans. Both also enjoy loan terms that increase risk of default. White borrowers, on the other hand, only safer loans are granted them.

A Wall Street Journal in-depth report in 2009 looked at Latino home ownership and revealed another reason as to why they have the highest cases of foreclosures. According to numbers from US Census Bureau, Hispanic home ownership grew to 47% in the years 2000 to 2007 even though national numbers were only up by 8% in the same period. In 2005 alone, says the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, mortgages given to Hispanics increased by 29% and the expensive non-prime mortgages soared at 169%.

Low-income housing groups and Hispanic lawmakers all pushed for higher home-ownership among Latinos. And this may well be the reason behind the booming mortgages granted the Hispanics. Recent events show that this enthusiasm over the American dream seems to be failing.
…

A new find on zillow.com in my Ahwatukee neighborhood: a house for sale since two days ago at $175,000 next to one for sale the last 36 months for $375,000. Zillow value of each is similar, about $200,000. The new listing changed hands several times. A couple of sales in 2003 over $300,000. Zillowed at $158,000 in 2001. It attracts me for NOT having a pool. House is over 1600 sq ft. Very close to my house budget (cash purchase). Pictures on zillow look likevthe house is well kept.

Yet at the same time I am liking my apartment more and more. IMO, I am renting the best unit in the complex. Got a cool remote control to open the gate while driving in from the main road and I feel very secluded, as I want to be. So I am very patient. I will wait for houses on the other side of the park to tank. Probably 2012.

Needless to say, prices still falling. The Ahwatukee Foothills News just printed an article Friday boasting AF spared some pain of deepening foreclosure crisis.

The NY Times has a story on a mega mansion in Georgia that has languished on the market now for SEVENTEEN YEARS. That’s got to be some kind of record.

It has languished there for the last 17 years. One potential buyer, Mr. Dean said, was Michael Jackson, who wanted the place in 1994 as a surprise for his fiancée, Lisa Marie Presley. But when the media reported Mr. Jackson’s plan and ruined the surprise, he did not sign the contract. Mr. Dean would not say how much Mr. Jackson was going to pay, but the home was on the market for $40 million.

Now, at last, the estate has sold — for $7.6 million. The buyer, the entertainment mogul Tyler Perry, has said he plans to demolish it and build his own home, one that is environmentally friendly and made of concrete.

Why buy a $7 million “tear down”? Nothing in this story makes any sense.

18