Bits Bucket For December 10, 2010
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.
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Name:Ben Jones
Location:Northern Arizona, United States
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Mortgage Rates, at Six-Month High, Threaten Refis and Fed ~WSJ
Rising government borrowing costs have driven mortgage rates to their highest level in six months, challenging the still-shaky housing market and the Federal Reserve’s efforts to boost the U.S. economy.
The rate for a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage averaged 4.61% this week, according to the weekly survey from government-backed mortgage firm Freddie Mac, up from 4.46% a week ago and the highest level since June 24.
The higher rates have likely snuffed out a refinancing boomlet that began earlier this year and put billions of dollars into homeowners’ pockets.
“The rate increase has been so sudden and so sharp that it’s almost too late for many borrowers to refinance,” said Kevin Cavin, mortgage strategist at Sterne Agee in Chicago.
Good thing everybody already refi-ed and nobody was too underwater to make it happen. That was close!
I skipped refinancing hoping for another .125% off and missed ‘the bottom’. Oh well. I’m sure Bernanke will try and shove rates even lower sooner or later.
Just wait until the employment situation turns out ‘worse than expected’ at some point over the next five years. Lower rates will happen w/o any intervention from the Fed necessary.
That won’t happen. Minuscule job gains will be touted as significant and sure signs of job recovery.
~Funny how it becomes urgent to solve problems, when banks earning may be hurt.
Bank complaints rise as customer ire grows about overdraft fees, foreclosure practices
NEW YORK (AP) — Complaints against banks are soaring, suggesting that new laws and regulations put in place since the financial crisis two years ago aren’t dampening Americans’ anger over overdraft fees and foreclosure practices they view as unfair.
If the trend continues, experts say, it will set banks on a collision course with their customers and lead to tougher rules that will hurt their earnings.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency estimates that complaints from customers of the 1,500 banks it regulates will hit 80,000 this year. That would be the highest level in the 15 years it has recorded them and more than double the 2008 total. The Better Business Bureau and state attorneys general also report big increases.
“If the trend continues, experts say, it will set banks on a collision course with their customers …”
This is what I don’t get: Why don’t the customers simply walk away from the bank that screws them and take their business elsewhere. Or better yet, cut back in their need for dealing with banks in the first place.
If, say a restaurant, set themselves on a collision course with their customers the restaurant would soon end up out of business. What is it with banks that makes them so different?
“This is what I don’t get: Why don’t the customers simply walk away from the bank that screws them and take their business elsewhere. Or better yet, cut back in their need for dealing with banks in the first place”.
I agree I have long kept my dealings with banks to a minimum, but apparently that’s not the populations general mind set.
Whatever happened to the “move your money” campaign?
It ran out of money?
People overdraw their checking accounts either a) because they’re so stupid they can’t keep track of the balance, or b) they know they’re short the funds but desperately need to keep the wolf from the door a couple more days.
I wonder if any study has ever been done to determine the ratio. Would be nice if the reporter person would ask, “Did you know that your account was short when you wrote the check(s)?” But that won’t happen; stupidity doesn’t draw the same sympathy as victimhood.
“People overdraw their checking accounts either a) because they’re so stupid they can’t keep track of the balance, or b) they know they’re short the funds but desperately need to keep the wolf from the door a couple more days.”
OR
C) Perhaps some people are still thinking that you can “play the float”.
Used to be you could post-date a check and it wouldn’t be paid by the bank until the date on the check, now it’s more or less instantly debited.
D) Debit card misuse. (a variation on A)
I never use a debit card, if you can’t be trusted with enough pocket money for minor purchases you shouldn’t be allowed out of the house.
You forgot e)
The bank mysteriously charges overdraft fees even though there is plenty of money in the account. People who don’t watch their accounts like a hawk become a profit center.
My husband is a physician and his patients sometimes pay their $15 or $20 copays with a check. When one of those checks has no funds, the bank charges his account a “return item fee” of $12. So, the medical office ends up screwed both by the patient and by the bank, not counting the expense of trying to obtain a payment from the patient. So, accepting a payment by check can be a money losing proposition for someone who is providing a service. It is isn’t always just a matter of overdraft, the banksters are playing nasty games with ALL their clients.
Am I the only one who writes the total in the check ledger when debiting, at the point of sale? It seems to confuse the hell out of people, but how else do they keep track? Wait until they get home?
I would forget for sure.
I use online bill pay mostly. I had a “pending” deposit that showed as available balance. I set up a payment, accidently for that day, intending to have the payment made the next day when the pending deposit became a real deposit. Sure enough the bill pay amount overdrafted my checking account by a thousand bucks or so. The bank honored the payment, but charged me a $30 overdraft fee. I argued with them that I had well over $50,000 in other accounts with the bank and a pending deposit that covered the payment, but the bank wouldn’t budge on the fee.
I, of course, threatened to take my business elsewhere. But, when I thought about what a pain in the butt it would be to switch from a bank that I had used for 30 years, I decided to just chalk it up to experience. I am very careful now about the dates I assign to online bill pay transaction.
I mostly use cash. When I purchase gas or use the self checkout line at Costco, I have to use a debit or credit card or Costco gas card. In that case, I use my debit card and I write it down when I get home. I keep my checkbook at home. My volume and the amounts are low enough that forgetting is not an issue.
My debit card account - one in which I keep a small balance - is at Chase. I will use it for online purchases at Christmas, in addition to the Costco purchases. Chase has some nice features for their accounts. I get alerts that email me when my balance has dropped below an amount I choose or when a large transaction (again defined by me) is made. And I have set it up so that debit transactions will be refused if they will cause a negative balance. I can change any of these options at any time. If I travel, I can remove the overdraft restriction and reinstate it when I return. I haven’t done that yet.
My main account is at another bank.
My bank doesn’t penalize me for over drawing on my checking account, they just treat the overage like a credit card balance, and start charging me 21% on the balance due. I’ve never used it, and you can see that it’s a clever way to suck people into paying a pretty high interst rate with no grace period, but it does beat having a check bounce, or being charged a penalty. They make their money without pissing off a customer.
Because in places like NYC the bank is right off the subway easy to stop in before or after work…..
Most people do not have cars here….
———
Why don’t the customers simply walk away from the bank that screws them and take their business elsewhere
“What is it with banks that makes them so different?”
Monopoly power.
control of government and the media
Which is but one facet of monopoly power…
“Why don’t the customers simply walk away from the bank that screws them and take their business elsewhere.”
Ever heard of the 7 Deadly Sins? Pride and sloth are 2 of them.
Bullshit. The Republicans will only want to deregulate banks.
Deregulation I can live with.
It’s the deregulation+subsidies+bailouts I have problems with.
Deregulation is a big part of what got us all in the current mess.
Nah. Actually it’s the regulation created to benefit certain chosen ones got us in the mess. Then there was always the subsidies and bailouts. If I knew I would be bailed out, I would be as careless as the banksters were.
Actually it’s the regulation created to benefit certain chosen ones got us in the mess. Then there was always the subsidies and bailouts. If I knew I would be bailed out, I would be as careless as the banksters were.
Erk. That old tripe. The period of heaviest regulation of the financial system, 1940 to 1980, was the period with the least corruption and bubbles in history. Can you name a period of very little financial regulation that had less corruption and bubbles- at any time or place in world history?
Funny that, didn’t Nixon take the country off the gold standard right at the end of that period (1978). Maybe FIAT money has more to do with the Banksters fraud than anything else? Isn’t the biggest regulation of all that which stated that all gold and silver certificates were no longer backed by gold or silver?
Then why were there so many bubbles back when we were on the gold standard, prior to 1940?
Government, Fannie Mae Considering Help for Housing Investors
Diana Olick
Last week I interviewed an investor who buys foreclosed properties and rents them out long-term for solid returns. He claims that’s the only way to right the housing market — get long-term investors to eat up the excess inventory. The biggest roadblock, however, is credit. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac both limit the number of investor mortgages.
Multiple sources now tell me that the Administration, specifically over at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, is considering ways to get more investors into the housing market, possibly with the help of Fannie and Freddie. HUD would not confirm that, but Fannie Mae’s chief economist Doug Duncan said it is definitely on the table both at HUD and at Fannie.
Would federal monies (aka your tax dollars) be funneled into real estate investing schemes? And would this be a Constitutionally-sanctioned use of the federal tax system (not to suggest that really matters or anything)?
“Constitutionally-sanctioned”
I know you love the rhetorical question, Bear. But you ask this one so often. Do you really have any idea how flexible Constitutional jurisprudence is on the use of money for a variety of purposes? Administrative law (which is what we are talking about when you talk about the quasi-private entities that Congress has given the right to put public money at risk) is full of Constitutional interpretation and it is all pretty wide open. The Supremes have rarely told Congress that they can’t give away their power to someone else if they feel like it.
Of course, they can also pass a law to take away that power, but they don’t. Really they don’t. Because if they do, then they will be held responsible for the decisions that turn out to be unpopular instead of being able to rant prettily about them to their constituents but claim not to be able to do anything about it.
“Do you really have any idea how flexible Constitutional jurisprudence is on the use of money for a variety of purposes?”
That one was not rhetorical, as I admittedly had no idea about the answer. But the validity of using American tax dollars to subsidize private real estate investments does seem highly questionable as a federal government purpose.
But I was hoping I might get you to weigh in. Thank you for doing so.
yeah the average person would probably be surprised about a lot of things that go on routinely. But calling it unconstitutional (as some do, not you necessarily PB) has not gotten us anywhere. Got to admit my eyes glaze over when my political acquaintances start rattling on about this or that not being in the letter of the founding document…but every so often a claim does make it up to the SC and wins. It’s just hard to plan for those events.
“the validity of using American tax dollars to subsidize private real estate investments does seem highly questionable as a federal government purpose.”
Mortgage interest deduction has cleared the way for gov subsidies of home ownership. Why not just get it over with and have the government buy everyone’s mortgage like it’s a student loan. The whole thing is ridiculous.
Free market on the upswing and government bailouts on the way down with subsidies for those that overpaid and drove the market crazy high.
Who cares! The ‘Obamacare’ and illegal alien fiascos are not a constitutionally approved use of taxpayor funds. Come on lawsuits by the states. And fast tract it to a 5/4 decision by the Supremes against ‘Obamacare’ and in favor of Arizona.
4/4 tie will still give the win to AZ, Kagen will
recluse herself.
This has turned into classic democracy, two wolves and a sheep considering what to have for dinner.
I suggest mutton. Not sure it would agree with a bear’s digestion, though.
One positive though, is that once people hear about these “Loot the public treasury to enrich the financial sector” schemes, they tend to take a pretty dim view of such shenanigans.
They do? Couldn’t prove it to me. Repubs have been constantly reelected over the last 30 years despite being the perpetrators and instigators of the schemes for doing so.
Dear Dinana,
Did the “investor” you interviewed make any mention of the importance of AFFORDABLE PRICES being any kind of factor? You see, the numbers have to work for an investor to be interested. The rent must cover principal, insurance, and property tax as well as any association fees and additional expenses for a property to be considered as a viable investment. As things sit the prices on most property are still about fifty percent TOO HIGH for an investor to make any money. Merely providing access to cheap government cheese will not change any part of the formula.
And if these investors are renting out substantial numbers of residential single family houses how will that impact the communities?
One of the first signs of my old neighborhood going down hill was a switch from owner occupation to rentals and eventually a lot of section 8.
I’m sure the HOA’s would love that.
“solid returns”
Something tells me that if that were true…there would be plenty of “investors” to sop up the excess and thus no need for government “help”.
Americans in Poll Want Deficit Cut With Entitlements Secured
(Bloomberg)
Americans want Congress to bring down a federal budget deficit that many believe is “dangerously out of control,” only under two conditions: minimize the pain and make the rich pay.
And a pony. A candy crapping pony.
Pony? I want a candy crapping Unicorn and a pot of gold at the other end of the rainbow and I want my neighbor to pay for it! Just raise his taxes or get the FED to print more money or both.
I think the closest you’re gonna get is Kopi Luwak, the civet poo coffee…
huh?
Geez Mike you really have modest wishes.
What I want is for the Fed to print boatloads of money AND for there to be no inflation.
More like an ice cream pooping giant talking taco.
A candy pooping pony only requires a pony, a bag of candy, and a plunger.
Eeeeewwwwwwww!!!!!
Yes, I LOL on the bus for that one…
Giant talking taco? The Bernank?
Southpark?
Probably my favorite one shot character of theirs.
It sounds to me like Obama wants to cut dangerously out of control spending by cutting taxes for the wealthy and giving indefinite handouts to the lazy and poor. The man is a living oxymoron.
You don’t think the actions of the congress and senate have anything to do with it?
I suspect any president would be making different decisions if they didn’t have that pesky separation of powers thing get in their way.
So just give everyone what they want everytime if it involves spending? Hell, its not YOUR money.
“So just give everyone what they want everytime if it involves spending? Hell, its not YOUR money.”
No was not advocating a dictatorship, just an (apparently failed humorous) attempt at pointing out that one person does not control the situation.
Our problems are GROUP problems. Blaming one individual and not acknowledging the actions/inaction of the rest of the group means you’re not paying attention.
“Blaming one individual and not acknowledging the actions/inaction of the rest of the group means you’re not paying attention.”
+1
Inflation is the answer. A few years of 20% inflation will take care of us all.
Not blaming one person. Geez, where would you even start? Just saying he sucks too.
“Inflation is the answer. A few years of 20% inflation will take care of us all.”
I lived through that in Mexico City in the late 70’s and early 80’s. It’s a barrel of fun.
We may be a bit late now for inflation. I reckon 20% default rates remain in the bag.
Besides inflation cannot be sustained without wage inflation and where in the world is wage inflation coming from when the going rate for a days labor is a bowl of rice?
Not blaming one person. Geez, where would you even start? Just saying he sucks too. Well elected officials were elected, so the blame is pretty broadly spread IMHO.
The middle class is beset by the delusion that they may someday become very rich, and the more understandable fear that they may become terribly poor. Thus, this sounds like sensible policy to them.
“The middle class is beset by the delusion that they may someday become very rich”
I have a name for this. I call it: “I know a guy syndrome”, as in:
I know a guy who started a BS biz and makes a killing. I can do that too.
I don’t know, I have always been one of the rule in hell types than serve in heaven. Problem is I have mostly ended up serving in hell. I guess they have too many chiefs down there too.
Krauthammer says very well what I was trying to say yesterday. Obama pulled off a “swindle” and the Democrats are too dumb to see it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/09/AR2010120904472.html
The last graf of this column’s a lot of fun:
The six German saboteurs referred to in my last column were not shot. They were electrocuted.
If only they could replace “German” with “Congressional”…
Obama pulled off a “swindle” and the Democrats are too dumb to see it.
Obama got offered a great deal by the Repubs, because the Repubs didn’t want to be forced to openly oppose middle class tax cuts if they didn’t include the wealthy. The House Dems think that if Obama had played his cards better, the Repubs would have been forced to reveal their hypocrisy about tax cutting- only being for it if it helps the wealthy, even going so far as to oppose tax cuts *for the middle class* if the rich didn’t get them too.
Perhaps it would have been a ‘teachable moment’ for some of the Republican’s less affluent supporters, the House Dems seem to think. Obama just saw all that potential stimulus for the economy- and his reelection.
Obama doesn’t want to renew tax cuts for the wealthy. Are you even watching the news?
The public wants Congress to keep its hands off entitlements such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, a Bloomberg National Poll shows. They oppose cuts in most other major domestic programs and defense. They want to maintain subsidies for farmers and tax breaks like the mortgage-interest deduction. And they’re against an increase in the gasoline tax.
measton, see above re: candy crapping unicorn.
“U.S. senator favors permanent Afghan bases”
The economic Jenny Craig plan is okay for the middle-class, but the empire games will continue.
I bet they just want to get in on all that “dancing boy” fun!
And they want to reduce the deficit without raising middle class taxes.
Sheesh. It just proves that half the people are below the median intelligence level.
Americans want Congress to bring down a federal budget deficit that many believe is “dangerously out of control,” only under two conditions: minimize the pain and make the rich pay.
I want the people who made billions on the government-insured housing mortgage ponzi scheme to pay it back with interest to help balance the budget.
I think that is their ideal, but they might be satisfied with shared sacrifice. What most (who are mostly middle and lower income) vehemently oppose is that the rich be able to avoid the pain. And I think that there are many who think the rich have been able to, especially the banking elite. They’re getting bonuses that would pay off the mortgage of J6P, while J6P is getting stuck with the bailout bill.
The tragedy is that our fearless leaders are increasing the deficit and undermining SS with their latest plan. If they are going to drop the SS rate to 4.2%, they could eliminate the cap. Everyone making less than about 150K would get a decrease. Those making more would pick up the slack. And it would prepare the way for a permanent elimination of the cap. That and phasing out SS at higher income levels would probably fix SS until after the baby boomers are gone.
Of they do.
If it’s good for the goose (the rich who just got bailed out) it’s good for the gander. (the poor who’s jobs continue to go offshore)
Borrowers wait for lower rates — and lose
30-year benchmark rises to 4.61 percent; 4th consecutive weekly increase
NEW YORK — Homeowners who delayed locking in super-low mortgage rates — think close to 4 percent for a 30-year fixed — may have waited too long.
Rates are creeping back up, in part because of the tax-cut deal in Washington. Now those in the market to buy or refinance have to decide whether to take what’s available or risk making the same mistake twice.
My Realtor called me to encourage me to buy a property two weeks ago. She told me rates are not going to get any lower, and are expected to rise quickly. I responded, well it sounds like you encouraging me to wait until next year or later to buy. She paused for a minute are so, and said no I’m saying you need to take advantage of the rates now. I said, but I’m an all cash buyer. She paused for another moment or so, and said I wouldn’t recommend that, instead you should use the lower interest rates to leverage into a much more expensive house. I told her I intend to retire at 55 and focus on my art and travel, and that doesnt fit into my goals. She had no response. Time for a new Realtor.
Realtors are Liars.
“She paused for another moment or so, and said I wouldn’t recommend that, instead you should use the lower interest rates to leverage into a much more expensive house.”
How do you distinguish the lying Realtors™ from those who merely appear to be lying because they are dumb as a board?
Ooop C. Bear, Thank you for pointing out that error. Allow me to rephrase more accurately.
———->Realtors are incompetent liars.<————
My apologies to the realtor community.
I would estimate that the majority actually believe it, especially the younger ones. Whenever I question the market, they usually supply me some newsletter one of their organizations prepared. I used to complain and ask that if they are going to supply me data, it has to be more unbiased. Lately I have become numb, and just quietly toss it in the trash.
“I would estimate that the majority actually believe it, especially the younger ones.”
Stupid people often go about parroting what they heard others in their circle say, regardless of whether they understand the statement they are making or whether they have a clue whether or not it is a lie.
Stupid people often go about parroting what they heard others in their circle say, regardless of whether they understand the statement they are making or whether they have a clue whether or not it is a lie.
And this sentence sums up why I enjoy the HBB so much. We have a built-in stupidity filter here.
Yay, HBB!
How do you distinguish the lying Realtors™ from those who merely appear to be lying because they are dumb as a board?
You ask them if the Tea Party candidate’s policies will help the middle-class.
lmao.
True confessions, friends. Yesterday I mailed my application to take the broker’s exam to the California Dept. Real Estate. I took five online courses over the past three months.
I also completed my radiation yesterday and will be back to work after the holidays. My plan is to work for 1-2 more years and then retire.
Glad to hear you are done with radiation treatments, REH. Of course you spent your time away from work in productive pursuits. How many physician/RE brokers can there be in the world? If I ever decide to buy yet another house
I will certainly get in touch with you first.
Ah, retirement! I used to think I’d be retired by the age I currently enjoy. Now it’s a distant thought. Good for you for having a plan and a goal. Going through cancer will re-focus one’s priorities in a big way.
Thank you Elanor, for your kind thoughts. It’s amazing what you can do while lying in bed sick nowadays.
Don’t you dare buy another house - you have plenty now! Sounds like you’ll have one to sell someday when your parents are gone.
Ironically, I was planning to retire in 2011, but will delay it by a year. The cancer had nothing to do with it - I just want to put away another year’s worth of cash, in case the recession double dips and my various family members need it.
Happy that you are almost done with the treatments REhobbyist…
“We have a built-in stupidity filter here.”
I prefer to refer to it as an effective ‘crap detector.’
“I also completed my radiation yesterday”
Very glad to hear it, REhobbyist; here’s to feeling better and being able to put that behind you—and to complete remission, of course.
Wow, soon we’ll be able to say that we know an honest broker!
Yay, REHobbyist! May nothing but great health be ahead of you.
Yay, REHobbyist! May nothing but great health be ahead of you.
I second that!
Yay, REHobbyist! May nothing but great health be ahead of you.
Hear, hear! Best wishes for a long and healthy life.
REHobbyist
Here’s to a cancer free life ahead of you. Stay healthy and treasure what’s important in life… chocolate.
(Dr. Susan Love MD calls it the “C Vitamin”) . LOL
Thanks, guys.
Glad to hear your good news, REhobbyist.
RE Hobbyist …I really admire how you keep learning and expanding your knowledge .Your also a very sweet person thinking about working longer for the family .Good health to you.
Most people simply don’t understand how interest rates and home prices move in opposite directions, similar to bond prices. If you are an all cash buyer, or at least have a sizeable downpayment of 50+%, it is to your advantage to buy when interest rates are high ‘cos you have fewer competing buyers which translates in lower prices. At 30 years fixed and $1000 monthly payment you can get:
1. $209K at 4%
2. $136K at 8%
All else being equal, I’d rather owe $136k versus $209K. The average populous never seems to get a grasp on this rather simple relation between prices and interest rates. It’s expensive to be mathmatically challenged.
True. I was watching some show on HGTV, Property Virgins I believe, and the Realtor told the potential buyer, first time home buyers get too fixated on the what appears to be a shockingly high mortgage amount when instead they should simply focus on the monthly payment. I found it rather disturbing. I guess that might be true if you never move, but she was saying this to 20 somethings as if potential future purchasers down the road in higher interest rate environments would not also be focusing on the monthly payment and thus need a principal reduction in order to buy the home. Always have an exit strategy. You never know what life will bring.
Property virgins can be like watching a fatal car accident over and over in slow motion.
Sometimes I like it; it’s fun to see other people go through the turmoil of buying a house (and have it not be me!). Other times I feel awful for the people; they are obviously being taken for a ride, and are going to be foreclosure “victims” in the next 2-3 years.
I also find it useful to get the newest RE “tactics”. You’ll usually hear them throw out their objection breaking mechanisms a few times each show; the more you hear it, the less it will effect you when you actually have it used ON you.
I love how they use the price of other *listings* in the area as comps. Like the wishing prices are an indication of the true value of the properties.
Last month my Realtor told me that, based on the current listings and everything we looked at that day in the same neighborhood, the price on a house I liked was a bargain. I told her I didn’t care about listing price and then informed her what the average psf was during the last 12 months, which was much lower than the asking prices. She came back with the standard Realtor response “…. but those were distressed properties. These are not.” It is just a matter of time. Also, when discussing what would be a reasonable offer, she showed me data on the average difference between asking and sold price. I looked at her data and had to inform her that she was using the last MLS number that was entered and that they change after each price reduction, and that I cannot rely on her data unless she goes back to when the house was first listed. She seemed very upset I didn’t fall for any games.
Oh MAN! Why are you even using that Realtor? You should be going through the listing Realtors letting them double dip to get them to fight the sellers to accept your lowball. You OBVIOUSLY don’t need somebody holding your hand through all of this.
So what is a “distressed property”?
but those were distressed properties. These are not.” So make with the distressed properties already.
I looked at her data and had to inform her that she was using the last MLS number that was entered and that they change after each price reduction, and that I cannot rely on her data unless she goes back to when the house was first listed. She seemed very upset I didn’t fall for any games.
Typical Realtor games…..
Next time they try to pull a fast one just laugh and say “Hey, you can’t BS me, I’m a lawyer and I work for bankers.”
That should shut her up good.
“All else being equal, I’d rather owe $136k versus $209K.”
You clearly are not a Realtor™ then.
War is Peace
Freedom is slavery
Ignorance is strength
Debt is Wealth
Just to be clear, Debt is Slavery.
You may return to sarcasm now.
Debt is Slavery ??
Not always…
All things being equal, or even not equal, I would rather owe zero regardless of the interest rates.
I would rather owe zero regardless of the interest rates ??
I understand…Piece of mind and all that…That does not change the fact that properly applied leverage can generate very large rates of return…Its all about balance IMO…
Yes, but if you add just $200 to each payment in the first case it will still take almost as long to pay off the home. In the second case it will pretty much half the time to payoff the home, and you may also have an opportunity to refinance at a lower rate later, where you cannot refinance at a lower principal.
The basic idea stems from the idea everything is how much a month rather than how much total.
I had this argument with several friends and extended family members. I still remember the shocked look on my wife’s cousin’s face when he mentioned how low rates had gotten while we were looking and how happy we must be about that when I said I wished the rates were at 12%.
“Most people simply don’t understand how interest rates and home prices move in opposite directions, similar to bond prices.”
The average consumer only understands “How much a month.”
Actually, it may be that what you need is an OLD realtor, one who remembers the high interest early 80s, and doesn’t think of the RE bubble as “normal.”
I have in fact had better experiences with older Realtors as you suggest. I go through a Realtor about once every 2 or three months. It is always a bit of a guilt trip for me. I am addicted to open houses, and do want to own a home (and have always owned a home between 1990 and 2005) but only if I get a good deal. Although I’m considered by some to be a gambler on here, outside HBB my friends think I’m too conservative, and am probably in top 1% on any scale one could come up with - I live on 25% of my income, investing the remainder, and only buy with cash, including big ticket items such as cars and houses, although I realize I am luckier than most in being able to do so. While at open houses, the Realtors are aggressive in asking to show me houses although I tell them upfront I am not sure about the market and will only buy if I get a great deal. It usually goes fine for about a month or so and then they get really aggressive about wanting me to buy even though I haven’t found what I believe is a great deal, at which point the relationship starts going sour. I do not actively seek them out, and tell them I am not sure its the right time, but they call me asking to show me houses anyways. I wonder if others want to own but are still to nervous in not finding good deals, and have similar guilt trips. It has been an educational experience, not for learning more about real estate, but as far as getting to understand what Realtors are actually saying to ppl and what tactics they use to try to close a deal. I do have about two Realtors I really trust, but feel so guilty about not being sure I want to buy, I don’t want to waste their time.
Correction - I did put just 10% down on my first two houses, but at the time it was actually so much cheaper than rent that I viewed it as lowering my monthly housing expense rather than making a purchase. After ‘98 I only purchased with cash because I started getting nervous as it started to no longer appear owning was cheaper than renting, and thus, I began to view home ownership as merely a luxury item. I had to sell my home and relocate in 2005 and at such time the divergence was so out of whack that I became too nervous to buy, and have rented ever since.
“I go through a Realtor about once every 2 or three months. It is always a bit of a guilt trip for me.”
Do you sign a contract every three months which says ’til death or home purchase do us part’? If not, get over the guilt trip and enjoy yourself. They certainly can use the company these days, so you are actually doing them a favor.
“I go through a Realtor about once every 2 or three months.”
We’re on our second agent in about three years. She shows up on time and unlocks a door or two for me every two or three months. That also allows me to go to as many open houses as I like, and putting her name on the sign-in sheet means I don’t get solicited by other agents. So far she hasn’t asked me to sign any buyers agreement with her. She has figured out that we know what is a deal and what is not, we know down to the penny how much we’re willing to pay, and putting pressure on us would only get her replaced.
That is smart. You are probably like me and search the MLS every day on your own. Thus, their only role really is to unlock the door. I guess there are some that go out of their way to keep on top of market and let you know which properties have situations in which the seller may accept a low ball offer, but for the most part, I find I have to do my own research and train the Realtors on real estate matters rather than vice versa.
Thus, their only role really is to unlock the door.
Which baffles me. I mean, come on. If this is the only value that they offer, why haven’t they gone the way of travel agents? Or elevator operators?
The buyers’ agency agreement generally isn’t presented to the buyer until they’re sitting down to sign the offer.
RE around here they try to get you to sign one as soon as possible, which essentially says for X amount of time you will not use any other agents. I refuse, and tell them if you bring me the deal you get it, if you do not, you do not.
Of course these days it is buyers, not listings that are the rare commodity, so you can pretty much set conditions.
The buyers’ agency agreement generally isn’t presented to the buyer until they’re sitting down to sign the offer ??
Natalie; RE around here they try to get you to sign one as soon as possible, which essentially says for X amount of time you will not use any other agents.
Sorry Natalie…Your not as savvy a real estate guru as you think you are…What REhobbyist is describing is a “Agency” agreement winch explains to the buyer the different kinds of agencies than can exist it the Agent/buyer/seller relationship…It has nothing to do with a Buyers/Agent exclusive contract for the purpose of locating and selling you a house…
Also, I find your enjoyment of using a new agent every 3 months kind of “sick”…Anyone one who “enjoys” using someone’s time for free with no intention of ever compensating them has a integrity problem…I am sure you don’t tip the servers either….
You hostility is bizarre and unwarranted. It appears clear to me that Kim was referring to an exclusivity contract which generated the posts, and yes, an agreement to serve as your exclusive buyer’s agent (or non-exclusive agent for that matter) would be deemed a buyer’s agency contract. I could post dozens of links but it takes forever to post and you are just as capable as doing a google search as I am. Also you substituted the word “enjoy” for “guilty” and omitted the fact I only do so upon full disclosure, and at their request, not mine. If you have an issue with me (whether it be that I am Jewish, that I am tied to the financial industry, that I voice my opinions sometimes if I disagree with a poster, that I ask people to consider the human condition before they pass judgement, or whatever it may be) please address the issue clearly and directly rather than acting childishly.
SCDAVE what was that post really about? It was bizarre, and misplaced at every level. Nothing said had enough basis in reality to even begin a debate and was clearly just an attack out of nowhere.
It appears clear to me that Kim was referring to an exclusivity contract ??
But you did not respond to Kim…You responded to REhobbyist;
Comment by REhobbyist
2010-12-10 08:47:14
The buyers’ agency agreement generally isn’t presented to the buyer until they’re sitting down to sign the offer.
Comment by Natalie
2010-12-10 09:06:30
RE around here they try to get you to sign one as soon as possible, which essentially says for X amount of time you will not use any other agents.
These are two different documents as I explained…
I go through a Realtor about once every 2 or three months ??
I do have about two Realtors I really trust, but feel so guilty about not being sure I want to buy, I don’t want to waste their time ??
So you “feel guilty” and you don’t want to waste the time of the Realtors you “trust” but you think nothing about wasting the time of the other Realtors every two or three months..Their time and knowledge is all they have to sell…
You hostility is bizarre ??
Well, I did not think I was being hostile, but I did call you on the lack of understanding that you had on the Agency document REhobbyist was describing and what I perceive to be unethical approach to dealing with the agents time…Thats all…Nothing more nor less…
Wow. Who pooped in your coffee, Dave? Realtors ask for this treatment. I think it is grand that she goes through them like clock work, as they should be.
What actual VALUE do they bring to the table?
They almost always don’t have a clue what the zoning/allowed uses/setbacks/height/building/landscaping/parking requirements are when you ask them. “Residential” and “commercial” are NOT zoning districts unless you live in a town of less than 10K. There are usually 7+ residential zones alone in a given city and they vary ENORMOUSLY. Then special use permits and PUD’s always add a wrinkle, too. My favorite is when I find a “duplex” or “MIL” unit listed and when I call to inquire if it is a valid legal use or ask if it is legal non-conforming- I get a blank stare. Even better is when they lie and I call City Hall and find out otherwise. It gives me pleasure to let them know, because from then on they have specific knowledge of
the legal status, and can no longer misrepresent a listing. Or so the story goes.
I am flabbergasted by the complete lack of knowledge they bring to the table. I have caught quite a few in lies and I love to watch them squirm (or play dumb) when I call them on it.
Here’s another one: A question that was just posed by an agent on LinkedIn:
Does anyone think the real estate market will be better in 2011 than 2010?
To the LinkedIn crowd’s credit, there wasn’t a lot of REIC cheerleading among the answers. And my standard answer (shown below) wasn’t flamed off the face of the earth. Which means that reality is overtaking wishful real estate thinking.
My standard answer to questions like this one:
When prices and rents get back into line with historic metrics*, the real estate market will be just fine.
*Historically, in any given market, the median house price has been three times the local median income.
For residential rental properties, the purchase price has been 100 to 120 times the monthly rent that the market will bear.
Realtors ask for this treatment ??
Kind of a broad stroke don’t you think….
I am flabbergasted by the complete lack of knowledge they bring to the table ??
I would not disagree in the least…Its due to the “ease of entry” into the business IMO…Just don’t use incompetent ones…A quick short interview with one should flush out their experience & competency…
We all rail on the real estate industry and rightfully so for reasons to numerous to mention…But,if we choose to purposely use their time with no intent to actually use them in a future transaction and then laugh about it, in a way, doesn’t that make us just as unethical as they are ??
Who was laughing? I was discussing the dilemma of wanting to purchase, but being too scared to pull the trigger, and feeling guility about using people’s time, albeit under full disclosure.
and feeling guility about using people’s time ??
Why aren’t you using the Realtors that you trust ??
I realize there is only about a 25% chance of me actually buying anything, and do not want to monoplize their time. That is the bind I am in. I want to look, and may buy, but at the same time probably will not buy. I have been “looking” for years. What do you feel is appropriate for ppl that have been looking for years and probably will not buy, but are seriously considering it anyway? I really do not know the etiquette, and was not intending to use “guilt” in a sarcastic matter. I really do feel guilty making someone show me houses on their weekends if there is only a 25% chance of me buying. I tell them this upfront. Usually after a couple of months I feel so bad monopolizing their time, or they do not want to waste any more time, that the relationship dissolves. As I move from Realtor to Realtor some are not bad, but some are terrible. I admit, I am extremely picky and low ball, and I question everything I’m told. I realize I am not the dream client.
I tell them this upfront ??
Thats cool then..As long as you are honest with them…I tell brokers all the time that I am a buyer “but” the deal better make me smile or don’t even waste your time bringing it to me…
You were unfair to Natalie, dave (though I love you.) I mistakenly thought she was referring to the agency agreement - I don’t know anybody who tries to get clients to sign exclusive buyer agreements out here in California, but New York is probably different. I bet the agents are more obnoxious there too (think Barbara Corcoran.) Natalie is being up front with them about her requirements, and drops them when they try to push her into something she doesn’t want to do. I don’t blame her.
Dave,
I call them like I see ‘em. Broad stroke or not- the majority ask for it, at least the ones I’ve encountered.
If you want politically correct watered down descriptions then this blog will dissapoint. This place has provided me a real education: no stings pushed, pulled or attached, & that’s why I read here…
I guess what I’m saying is I don’t feel bad for looking even though I’m not going to buy right now. I always call the agent listed to view and don’t’ rely on one realtor. Should I feel sorry for window shopping? If I run accross a great deal I’ll move- but there are no deals in good locations. I watch the market closely.
I am sorry for being so crass with you, however.
ROFL. I can almost see the wheels spinning in her head as you went through that talk track with her. She probably has a script that she follows, down to the letter, to deal with almost every objection you raised. MTG rates are always a favorite talk track with Realtors; apparently they are NEVER “heading down”, they are always “about to rise, you have to buy NOW”.
However, you may want to consider holding some of that cash. Buying for all cash might be a good move for you (it certainly is for some people), but.. If you believe in inflation story (I do), then having a loan is going to work out deeply in your favor.
With the MID, you’re borrowing money today for 30 years at ~3% per year. If you think inflation is going to average below 3%, then it’s a bad deal. If you think it’s going higher than 3%, take the loan and invest the rest of cash in short term instruments until the rates rise to the level you’d like.
I think it’s entirely possible that you’ll be able to lock money at 5-6% for 15-20 year terms in a few years (think munis; for example). If you’ve borrowed at an effective 3%, and are making 5% on your bonds, that’s a GREAT situation.
“If you believe in inflation story (I do), then having a loan is going to work out deeply in your favor. ”
Not necessarily. Only IF your income keeps up with inflation. It is a mistake to assume that just because consumer prices rise that your income will also rise. Especially with high unemployment you’re not in a good bargaining position.
Actually what matters here is RENTS, not incomes. After all if you have to spend 20% more of your income on rent you might have done better if you’d bought even if your income never went up. Of course in bubbly areas where the supply of housing skyrocketed, rents are more likely to go down than up. It may take awhile but the invisible hand pays attention to supply and demand.
My 89 year old mother complains that you used to ALWAYS get around 5% on a vanilla savings account and more on CD’s. Once she got a 1 year CD at 15%.
If you believe in inflation and remember the 70’s and 80’s, locking in @ 5-6% for 15-20 years may not be that sweet a deal.
I’d rather be the only person running around with 6 figures of cash in my pocket when 17% mortgage interest rates and ultra-tight underwriting standards push prices way down.
It’s taken about 25 to 30 years for mortgage rates to fall from 17% to 4%. I don’t think we’re going to see 17% mortgage rates in the next 5 to 10 years.
On the other hand, in 2001 I recall saying to one of my colleagues, “6% for a 15 year mortgage? It’s not going to get any better than that…”
“Buying for all cash might be a good move for you (it certainly is for some people), but.. If you believe in inflation story (I do), then having a loan is going to work out deeply in your favor.”
I agree there will be inflation, although I am not sure about wage inflation. One of the reasons I want to pay in cash is to diversify. In the price range I am looking at, it would still leave me with 60% of my net worth in investments outside of real estate. Currently, I have 70% of my net worth in the stock market, and 30% in cash equivalents (CDs and money markets). Although I think the stock market may go higher from here, as it rises I get more and more nervous, and do not want all my eggs in one basket. Also, it would fit in well with my 10 year retirement goal. No matter what happens, I would have a home paid off.
If you have a location that you want to stay for retirement a paid off house is a very worthy goal.
But take property taxes, health care access and other quality of life into account.
whyoung,
Do you seriously think that a person who claims to be able to buy a house for cash and only spend 40% of her net worth in her mid 40’s needs to be warned about locating near decent medical care or that owning involves property taxes?
“mid 40’s needs to be warned about locating near decent medical care ”
On HGTV’s House Hunters medical care is never mentioned by people relocating to remote foreign countries.
Yes. A fun place to retire does not necessarily equal a practical place to retire.
Our 2011 Kaiser premium jumped 12%. Individual coverage is ridiculously expensive and for less services. (age of youger spouse and area dictates premium) Who can afford this, while incomes are deflating? It’s time to become an illegal.
Our 2011 Kaiser premium jumped 12%. Individual coverage is ridiculously expensive and for less services.
One of my closest friends just dropped her individual health insurance. Reason: She couldn’t afford it any longer.
There yah go! No medical insurance means no care for you anyway! Might as well live wherever you like!
“I agree there will be inflation, although I am not sure about wage inflation.”
I completely agree given the level of globalism today.
“No matter what happens, I would have a home paid off.”
Exactly, one’s primary residence should be fully owned. RE leverage and speculation is for investment purposes.
No, Overtaxed, I think Natalie is right to pay cash. I don’t think that interest rates will go up for awhile, so she has time to finance the house later. Of course, she’s not going to buy until prices go down some more in New York.
I’ve told one buyer couple to wait until after the holidays, when more bank-owned houses should be released. They aren’t pushing to buy at all, so I think they get it.
I have another couple who I’ve been showing rental houses to for the past year. Over the Thanksgiving weekend we looked at an overpriced house that is just what they want. Several other houses in the area that they liked went pending during November- a shock to me because I thought things would slow down more than they did in the fall. Our new strategy is to wait until a few days before Christmas to make a lowball offer. I don’t know if it will work, but my buyers are now determined to get a good deal, even if it takes another year.
REhobbyist, a question: I’m here in AZ, and I occasionally get curious about properties for sale here. Okay if I ask you about ‘em?
I think Natalie is right to pay cash.
Me too. Paying for cash is cool. It’s even cooler in Brazil where a lot of people really do pay with CASH, like a bunch of paper currency in a paper bag that has a bakery name on it or some in each shoe and in a money belt and some in your underwear and sox and the rest in your old, beat-up backpack and some even in your pockets because it’s a lot of money sometimes.
And owning outright is fun because you don’t even think about the first of the month or writing a check stuff. And you don’t really care much if your “value” goes down because you’re getting “free” rent every month and the months really go by fast now so you get a lot of free stuff fast.
Slim, I would be of no help to you. I’m pretty encyclopedic about my own town, but know nothing about Arizona. And the MLS is very tightly controlled. My membership only lets me look at local real estate. I don’t even have access to San Francisco listing details. Oh well.
Are you thinking of leaving the Slim Ranch?
Are you thinking of leaving the Slim Ranch?
Not at all!
Because if I moved to some boring other neighborhood, what would I entertain everyone with? Stories about birds and flowers?
I was more interested in finding things out like how much my neighbor-to-the-east was asking for his dumpy rental property with two rundown houses on it. Sign had a phone number, but it had a message saying that you’d consent to a return call from an agent. I didn’t want to reveal (to that agent) that I was the nosy neighbor to the west.
Speaking of this dumpy rental property, it was on the market for two months. Sign’s been down for almost a month, and no, the place didn’t change hands.
Natalie, I don’t know the requirements to become a realtor in New York, but in California you could have your license in 3 months: 3 online courses with open-book exams 18 days apart followed by the state exam; total cost $500 (I did it for $300 in 2007 but prices/state fees have risen since then.) In California you sign on with a broker for free.
You could save yourselves thousands in commissions by acting as your own agent.
Or you could proceed sans agent and use the listing agent as your selling agent, negotiating a lower price.
I thought about it many times, and it probably would be a better solution, as I like to do all my own research and really do just need someone to let me in, and that is familar with what forms need to filled out. I should check the requirements. I think you also get some credit for being an attorney, but am not sure of the exact rules. I didn’t know you had any health issues, and wish you the best. I would certainly use you as a Realtor as you know as much if not more than even the best I have used and could probably add value, but given my current state of uncertainty, I would advise against having me as a client. Best of luck.
In California an attorney can take the exam without having to take any courses. And the exam is ridiculously easy. You should do it, get your own lockbox key, let yourself in, write as many offers as you want, and keep part of the commission. That would be fun.
Wow is that Realtor stupid.
The only thing you can be sure that your realtor knows, is that your buying houses and going into debt, helps the realtor get paid.
That’s it. The realtor is a salesperson whose purpose is to move merchandise - houses and loans. He/She is not a social worker, and couldn’t give a rat’s patootie about your overall situation.
People need to understand that sales people are not social workers. Even though they might try to make you think so.
“Borrowers wait for lower rates — and lose”
Psst… actually, borrowers are waiting for lower prices - and that game ain’t over by a longshot.
Something Republicans and Democrats Agree On: Their Hatred of the Fed. ~The Atlantic
These days, it’s pretty hard for Republicans and Democrats to agree on pretty much anything. But a new poll from Bloomberg shows that they see eye-to-eye on one issue: their hatred of the Federal Reserve. While broad public discontent with the Fed isn’t shocking news, the aggressive action Americans believe should be taken according to the poll shows they want big changes.
Americans across the political spectrum say the Fed shouldn’t retain its current structure of independence. Asked if the central bank should be more accountable to Congress, left independent or abolished entirely, 39 percent said it should be held more accountable and 16 percent that it should be abolished. Only 37 percent favor the status quo.
In other words, a majority of Americans want changes. This goes beyond mere discontent. And this isn’t really a political issue. According to the poll, 19% of independents, 16% of Republicans, 12% of Democrats, and 21% of Tea Partiers want the central bank abolished. That last statistic isn’t terribly surprising, since one of the Tea Party’s favorite politicians, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) is arguably the chief Fed opponent in Washington.
They hate ‘em but they want them to fund all of the stupid programs they can’t pay for. Paris Hilton hates her rich daddy.
Most lefties are pretty smart, and so are most righties/libertarians. Both sides propose systems that can function pretty well. But the large mass of people are low-information voters who tend to flatter themselves as principled independents. They can be relied on to support the most craven and corrupted ‘centrist’ republican and democrats, who invariably vote the corporate and Wall Street line.
For the last few decades we have gotten the worst of both worlds, and the independents are the reason why.
Xenos, lefties do not have a corner on intelligence. I have no data on this (and neither do you), but I would guess that independents are more informed. You are making the assumption that independents are kneejerk corporatists. In other words, Republicans. It takes less thought to be a kneejerk R or D than to actually consider an issue thoughtfully.
You are making the assumption that independents are kneejerk corporatists. In other words, Republicans.
Yours Truly has been an Independent since 1992. And I’m by no means a corporatist.
Extra! Extra! Read All About It! Tea Partiers Played For Fools Yet Again (hold on- is that news?)
New GOP lawmakers stock staffs with lobbyists
Washington Post
During his campaign to represent Wisconsin in the U.S. Senate, GOP nominee Ron Johnson accused Democratic incumbent Russell Feingold (D) of being “on the side of special interests and lobbyists.”
But after defeating Feingold, Johnson himself has turned to K Street for help - hiring homeland security lobbyist Donald H. Kent Jr. as his chief of staff.
Johnson is not alone: Many incoming GOP lawmakers have hired registered lobbyists as senior aides. Several of the candidates won with strong support from the anti-establishment tea party movement.
These cases illustrate the endurance of Washington’s traditional power structure, even in the wake of an election dominated by insurgent rhetoric. In addition to hiring lobbyists, many newly elected House Republicans have begun holding big-dollar fundraisers in Washington to pay off debts and begin preparing for 2012.
In addition to Johnson, Sen.-elect Mike Lee (Utah) has announced that energy lobbyist Spencer Stokes will be his chief of staff. Tea party favorite Rand Paul (Ky.) has hired anti-union lobbyist Douglas Stafford as his top senatorial aide.
In the House, Rep.-elect Charlie Bass (N.H.) has named food industry lobbyist John W. Billings as his chief of staff. Billings was a senior aide to Bass during an earlier stint on Capitol Hill.
Rep.-elect Chip Cravaack (Minn.) has hired former U.S. senator and former lobbyist Rod Grams as his interim chief of staff, though aides have said the posting is probably not permanent. Grams’s lobbying clients from 2002 to 2006 included 3M, Norfolk Southern and the Financial Services Roundtable, records show.
Other incoming GOP lawmakers who have recruited staff from K Street include Robert Dold (Ill.), Steve Pearce (N.M.) and Jeff Denham (Calif.). John Goodwin of the National Rifle Association, one of Washington’s most powerful lobbying groups, has signed on as chief of staff for Rep.-elect Raul Labrador (Idaho).
Meet the new boss(es)
Same as the old boss.
I thought maybe the Tea Partiers would at least initially be anti-business-as-usual in Washington, but it looks like they’re lining up at the trough, just like the rest.
I guess when the Koch brothers are your sponsors, you can’t be too anti-establishment.
When people have their backs to the wall, raise their taxes?
Even President Obama sees the folly of raising citizens’ taxes in a frail economy, but in South Carolina Sen. Hugh Leatherman (D) is floating the tax increase balloon. Leatherman Sounds the Tax Hike Trumpet.
A S.C. blogger writes:
“South Carolina isn’t facing real budget cuts … it is facing a ‘reduction in excess.’ Remember, the state’s current budget is its largest ever – part of a sustained government growth trend that has seen the state’s bureaucracy expand not only during the post 9/11 downturn but also during the prolonged recession.
“Also, it’s worth noting that government in the Palmetto state has always been disproportionately large. In 2005, a study found that more than 40 percent of the state’s gross domestic product was government spending … the tenth-highest figure in America.”
South Carolina legislators have great faith in their ability to “care for the good people of the Palmetto State,” but face the constant dilemma of finding money in one set of pockets to transfer to the pockets of a growing army of dependents. In public education, for instance, less than half the money appropriated for schools makes it into the classroom! There’s something seriously wrong with this picture.
The manufacturing jobs have left the state and are not coming back.
Yeah Free Trade!
Unless they can throw enough free money and tax breaks at Boeing, etc. to get them to move to South Carolina.
A house for $200? Foreclosure confusion leads to rock bottom auction prices
By Kimberly Miller Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Posted: 5:54 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 9, 2010
Scores of Palm Beach County homes were sold to investors at foreclosure auction this month for as low as $200 following the collapse of the David J. Stern law firm and ensuing confusion as thousands of its cases are reassigned.
It’s yet another muddle for the already overwhelmed foreclosure courts to sort out as former Stern cases went to auction with no bank representation, bids or proper public notice.
The result on Wednesday was 56 percent of winning offers were from investors or individual buyers who in some cases spent no more than a month’s mortgage payment to get homes that sold for upward of $240,000 during the real estate boom.
During a typical foreclosure auction, investors or individual buyers purchase between 3 percent and 13 percent of the homes, with the majority bought back by the banks.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/money/real-estate/a-house-for-200-foreclosure-confusion-leads-to-1110164.html -
But it is nowhere near certain the rock bottom prices will stick. Some of the sales were done without the required public advertisement. The Palm Beach County Clerk of Court will not issue a certificate of sale without proof that the auction was advertised once a week for two consecutive weeks before the sale.
Still, it takes a judge’s order to vacate or verify a questionable sale.
“All these sales that have taken place will have to go back into the system,” said real estate investor Don Cameron, who realized there was a problem last week after purchasing three properties at auction only to find out they were not properly advertised. “It’s going to be a complete bottleneck again.”
Quite a few houses will not be worth $200 before long. In an area with no jobs, for instance, a crappy condo with a $600/mo association fee, big property tax bill, and insurance to pay simply could not be given away.
It’s not as though nobody could have seen this coming!
Tax Appeals Swamp U.S. Cities, Towns as Property Prices Plunge
By Jeff Green and Tim Jones - Dec 8, 2010 7:34 AM PT
A fiscal flood that threatens to swamp local government budgets across the U.S. overflows from file cabinets in the office of Patty Halm, chair of the Michigan Tax Tribunal.
The backlog of cases from taxpayers seeking to lower property-tax bills of more than $100,000 shot up to 14,236 this year from an annual average of about 6,000 during the past decade. The backlog of smaller claims was at 28,558 at the end of September, eight times higher than a decade ago, according to records at the tribunal, a Lansing-based administrative court.
From Los Angeles to Atlantic City, the New Jersey gambling resort whose credit rating Moody’s Investors Service cut by three levels last month, property owners are demanding lower taxes after real-estate values plunged. The disputes over billions in dollars come as municipalities are already slashing services such as police and fire protection and may depress revenue further as communities try to recover from the longest recession since the 1930s. In Michigan, Governor-elect Rick Snyder has warned that hundreds of towns face financial crises.
“We’re just getting swamped,” said Halm, 54, who was appointed in 2003. “We’re constantly buying new file cabinets to hold all the cases. We even have six surplus file cabinets in the courtroom.”
…
Whoa! Sounds like it’s getting more heated in the cesspool. The dems peed their pants when Wilson said, “you lie” this person sez f the president. He or she must be a racist.
> The frustration with President Barack Obama over his tax cut compromise was palpable and even profane at Thursday’s House Democratic Caucus meeting.
One unidentified lawmaker went so far as to mutter “f— the president” while Rep. Shelley Berkley was defending the package the president negotiated with Republicans. Berkley confirmed the incident, although she declined to name the specific lawmaker.
“It wasn’t loud,” the Nevada Democrat said. “It was just expressing frustration from a very frustrated Member.”
Rep. Jerrold Nadler (N.Y.) was also overheard saying that “we can’t trust him” not to cave to Republicans and extend the tax cuts again in two years, according to a Democratic source.
The anger aimed at the bill was widespread. As Democrats moved to block the bill from coming up on the floor, chants of “Just say no!” could be heard by reporters outside the room.
~ Clipped from biggovernment.com
Where’s Rahm Emanuel to call the liberals “fornicating special”?
One unidentified lawmaker went so far as to mutter “f— the president” while Rep. Shelley Berkley was defending the package the president negotiated with Republicans. Berkley confirmed the incident, although she declined to name the specific lawmaker.
Oh, my goodness. Next thing you know, we’ll have the solons attacking each other.
No, wait. That already happened. (Reference: The Sumner caning on the Senate floor during the mid-1800s.)
How does Dem anger over tax cuts for the wealthy translate into Ethanol subsidies, the latest little addition?
We haven’t heard much lately from the serial bottom caller brigade on whether U.S. housing has bottomed out. It seems like it was just a few months back that they were coming out of the woodwork, assuring all that a bottom was in place, it’s safe to buy now, etc. Have they collectively changed their tunes? Are they now too embarrassed about how spectacularly wrong they were (yet again) to even show their faces in public or their writings in the press? Are they too depressed to address the obvious ramifications of higher-than-expected unemployment, ten-million or so U.S. homes in shadow inventory, ongoing U.S. housing price declines and rising mortgage interest rates ?
Enquiring minds want to know.
Does anyone have a video of cramer constantly calling the bottom n housing?
I have one playing constantly in my head that I just can’t seem to get rid of.
You can be mutual in washington but can washington be mutual
“Mancession” Threatens American Dream
It’s a question that riles soldiers on the front lines of the gender wars: Has the economic recession hit men disproportionately to women?
University of Michigan economist Mark Perry says yes, and coined the term, “mancession” as the economic plunge gained momentum. He says that while the recession is a “downturn” for women, it is a “catastrophe” for men.
Some statistics bear that out. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, when the labor market deteriorated in 2009, men felt the brunt of it. Some 3.1 million jobs held by men were lost last year compared to only 1.6 million jobs for women.
Simply put, manufacturing, smokestack, and manual labor jobs are still largely the domain of males, while the “softer” service sector jobs — like those in education, health or retail — are more populated by females.
Actually, as a bachelor in these times, I find……
Oh, nevermind.
Median male wages have been falling since 1973. That’s 40 years. It ain’t cyclical.
Ha, …well, it took ol’ Hwy 20 years to over-come that blaring reality. (deep sigh… ;-/)
There are insane amounts of discrimination in the job market and the academic world.
Age. Sex. Race. It’s all there.
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the Bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The Bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge - even to ourselves - that we’ve been so credulous.”
-Carl Sagan
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been Cheney-Shrubed long enough, certain “TrueBeliever’s™” tend to reject any evidence of the Cheney-Shrub Shadow Legacy Effect. They’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The Cheney-Shrub Shadow Legacy Effect has captured some of them. It is simply too painful to acknowledge - even to themselves - that they’ve been so credulous.”
Keep ‘em comin’ wmbz, …keep ‘em comin’!
2 of the 7 Deadly sins are sloth and pride.
Say it once, say it loud,
I’m a sloth, and I’m proud!
Oh, jingle bells, jingle bells, Jingle all the way…
Wife bit off husband’s tongue, then sang Christmas carols after he called 911, police say
Orlando Sentinel
Posted: 8:36 a.m. Friday, Dec. 10, 2010
A man inside a condo complex tries to cry out to a 911 dispatcher for help but he’s unable to force the words out of his mouth because his wife mutilated his tongue.
Investigators believe 57-year-old Karen Lueders bit off her husband’s tongue.
In the chilling 911 call, 79-year-old Willard Lueders calls for help, but is unable to describe what happened.
Investigators believe as Lueders waited for help, his wife sung Christmas carols, spoke and yelled incoherently.
Police say when they arrived, the were greeted by Karen who had a horn in her hand and was singing outdoors.
Karen Lueders is in custody and is set to undergo a mental health evaluation.
Willard was taken to Froedtert Hospital where doctors hoped to reattach his tongue. A spokesperson for the hospital says Willard was discharged, but would not give FOX6 details on Lueders’ surgery
Even if they can reattach the tongue tissue, a 79-year-old man won’t regenerate nerve function, so it will just sit there. They should just let it heal, and when it does the remaining tongue should function well enough to let him swallow and make himself understood.
Wow. That’s passion.
Leave these love birds alone…
Wife bit off husband’s tongue, then sang Christmas carols
She wanted a Silent Night.
The 911 dispatcher, unable to understand the victim, holds the phone to his supervisor’s ear asking, “Do you hear what I hear?”
“Hark! The Herald
AngelsNutballs Sing”I apologize.
Police say when they arrived, the were greeted by Karen who had a horn in her hand and was singing outdoors.
Someone got into the liquor cabinet.
What Can $5.7 Billion Get You in Michigan?
By James M. Hohman | Dec. 9, 2010
Michigan governments would save $5.7 billion if the employment benefits of Michigan’s state and local government workers were set at private sector averages.
State and local governments currently employ roughly 400,000 full-time workers in Michigan. It may be procedurally difficult to attain all of the $5.7 billion in a single year, but a policy that public-sector employees will not be paid more in benefits than private sector averages will eventually result in these savings.
Here’s what $5.7 billion can buy:
A year’s clothing budget for every family in Michigan.
A round of golf for every Michigan resident at both Arcadia Bluffs and Bay Harbor.
A brand-new 50-inch 3-D plasma screen T.V. for every household in the state.
A year’s worth of electrical bills for every household in Michigan.
But as a policy matter for legislators:
Michigan can eliminate the Michigan Business Tax, resolve its budget deficit and still have $2 billion left to spare.
It can eliminate its personal income tax in its entirety.
http://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/14142
“Here’s what $5.7 billion can buy:”
Did they mention the decline in the quality of government services, as government workers move on to other places with better pay and living conditions?
I thought not…
If they wanted to actually push this policy, they could come up with a better list of alternative uses of the money.
Clothing imported from China? Plasma screens imported from South Korea? Golf?
Where are these “other places with better pay?” Are there lots of job openings there?
He must be talking about Sugar Mountain.
Get real, Bear. Michigan public workers are the only ones with jobs, and there are no state or local governments hiring nationwide. Maybe Michigan will be the first test case to break union contracts. I certainly hope so.
Did they mention the decline in the quality of government services, as government workers move on to other places with better pay and living conditions”
Decline of just about everything as this housing bubble bust plays out. We can’t pay for the best anymore, best medical, best government, best anything.
Another guy I work with is leaving going back to China with his 30 years of American Engineering experience he can make more money there.
This what I keep trying to explain to my Republican/Tea bagger friends.
If you start paying cops and law enforcement people like Mexican/Third World policeman, it won’t be long before you have a Mexican police force.
Uh, what better jobs? Who’s hiring?
If they cut the budget, do I still get a free flatscreen?
Michigan governments would save $5.7 billion if the employment benefits of Michigan’s state and local government workers were set at private sector averages.”
I see this alot threats to cut government workers pay because private workers have taken cuts in pay.
This is not inflationary
J6P’s wages haven’t had anything to do with inflation for a long, long time.
Meanwhile:
———–
Most Americans Say They’re Worse Off Since Obama Took Office, Poll Shows
By Rich Miller - Dec 9, 2010
More than 50 percent of Americans say they are worse off now than they were two years ago when President Barack Obama took office, and two-thirds believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, a Bloomberg National Poll shows.
The survey, conducted Dec. 4-7, finds that 51 percent of respondents think their situation has deteriorated, compared with 35 percent who say they’re doing better. The balance isn’t sure. Americans have grown more downbeat about the country’s future in just the last couple of months, the poll shows. The pessimism cuts across political parties and age groups, and is common to both sexes.
The negative sentiment may cast a pall over the holiday shopping season, according to the poll. A plurality of those surveyed — 46 percent — expects to spend less this year than last; only 12 percent anticipate spending more. Holiday sales rose by just under a half percent last year after falling by almost 4 percent in 2008.
It was President Ronald Reagan who popularized the question, “Are you better off or worse off than you were four years ago” in his 1980 campaign against Jimmy Carter.
What, the President’s magic wand is broken?
Send Monica in to find out!
“Most Americans Say They’re Worse Off Since Obama Took Office, Poll Shows”
W pushed the economy off the cliff just before leaving office as a welcoming gift to Obama. The best part is that, despite efforts by Hank Paulson to cover it up, the recession we have been mired in since late 2007 started on W’s watch. Makes it kind of hard to pin the problems we now face on the new guy, don’t you think?
Don’t bother. Anyone foolish or biased enough to blame the recession on Obama is not worth wasting the breath. The economy is out of recession, but needs a couple decades to recuperate - that is how bad the stewardship of the GOP and the Wall Street friendly Democrats have been.
Don’t bother. Anyone foolish or biased enough to blame the recession on Obama is not worth wasting the breath.
I respectfully disagree. Please bother. Some foolish enough to blame the recession on Obama might be swayed by logic.
Why? Well they’ve obviously been swayed by bad logic so it’s worth a try.
Maybe?
Don’t confuse him with the facts. He’s already made up his mind.
Don’t confuse him with
the facts“Trueideas™” .sab•o•tage:
2. Treacherous action to defeat or hinder a cause or an endeavor; deliberate subversion.
tr.v. sab•o•taged, sab•o•tag•ing, sab•o•tag•es:
“To commit sabotage against lil Opie the (Non-Hawiian) Muslim Islamist destroyer of America!”.
Cheney-Shrub Legacy Effect #3: “We left y’all with the worst POS economy in 80 years…see ya!”
Don’t confuse him with
the facts“Trueideas™” .sab•o•tage:
2. Treacherous action to defeat or hinder a cause or an endeavor; deliberate subversion.
tr.v. sab•o•taged, sab•o•tag•ing, sab•o•tag•es:
“To commit sabotage against lil Opie the (Non-Hawiian) Muslim Islamist destroyer of America!”.
Cheney-Shrub Legacy Effect #3: “We left y’all with the worst POS economy in 80 years…see ya!”
True, of course it’s also true that Clinton handed W a recession as the tech bubble burst as well. Of course that was a much smaller recession.
It’s like blaming the tow truck driver for the damages to the bus that he retrieved from the bottom of the cliff.
What really matters to Obama is the state of the economy in 2012. We’ll see if his gamble pays off.
And I predict that he’s also going to get lucky in his opposition. As in, lucky the way Nixon was with McGovern in 1972, Reagan with Mondale in 1984, Bush I with Dukakis in 1988, Clinton with Dole in 1996, Bush II with Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004.
I’d say Bush II got luckier with Pat Buchanon then Al Gore.
How do you mean “get lucky” here? Because that’s WAY more presidential scandal than I heard about!
Were you better off after eight years of BushDeuce?
Yeah, I didn’t think so.
Most Americans Say They’re Worse Off Since Obama Took Office
So they voted more Repubs into office in Nov. The very party that successfully voted against ending tax breaks for offshoring jobs in Sept.
People is be smart.
Do they some how account for all the toxic mortgages the Fed took on to its balance sheet? Or the hundreds of billions in GSE losses? I would guess not, but don’t know for sure…
Treasury: Financial bailout income at $35 billion
(AP) – 9 hours ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — The government’s heavily criticized $700 billion financial rescue program has earned nearly $35 billion in income over the past two years, according to data obtained by The Associated Press.
The data showed that income from the Troubled Asset Relief Program rose nearly 17 percent through November, compared to where it stood in October. The income was boosted by the government’s ongoing sales of Citigroup stock.
The $35 billion estimate will be included in the monthly report on the bailout that is due to be released later Friday. The AP obtained the data in advance.
The new total is up from the nearly $30 billion in income shown in the previous report covering the program’s finances through October.
Much of the added income came from the government’s sale of Citigroup common stock. The Treasury Department sold off the last of its stake in the giant banking company Tuesday, ending up with a profit of $12 billion on the government’s investment of $45 billion.
Smaller amounts came from dividend payments from other banks that received support from the bailout fund, and also from dividends from the support provided to the former financing arm of General Motors.
While income from the bailout has risen, the estimates of its overall final costs have been dropping. Last month, the Congressional Budget Office slashed its estimate of the projected losses from the bailout program to $25 billion, down from an August projection of $66 billion and a March forecast that the program would cost the government $109 billion in losses.
…
So we’re only going to lose 400-500 billion dollars? Outstanding job, everybody take the week off!
Somehow they overlooked the cost of keeping the zombie GSEs going when they figured the bailout costs. I hope my trust is well placed in the new class of Republican Congressmen to oppose programs which would force taxpayers with no interest in mortgage contracts to make FBs whole.
Housing agencies clash over mortgage-relief program
By Dina ElBoghdady and Zachary A. Goldfarb
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, December 10, 2010; 1:07 AM
The top federal agencies responsible for setting housing policy are clashing over a new program designed to help borrowers whose homes are worth less than they owe on their mortgages, according to industry and government sources.
…
At issue is an FHA program launched in September that would allow some underwater borrowers who are current on their mortgages to refinance into more-affordable loans with a smaller loan balance and lower interest rate.
The agency, which answers to President Obama, says the program is an intelligent approach to avoid foreclosures among borrowers whose homes have substantially declined in value.
But without the participation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which control more than half of the mortgage market, analysts say the FHA’s program is likely to have little impact on the depressed housing market.
In an interview, FHA Commissioner David H. Stevens said that any major mortgage company that refused to consider taking part in the FHA program would be “short-sighted” and that he would be “concerned if Fannie and Freddie are resisting it.”
But the other regulator, the FHFA, which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, has so far resisted the program because it could cost the companies, increasing their losses.
This second agency, which is independent of the Obama administration, is charged with minimizing losses at the companies. Taxpayers, through the Treasury Department, are on the line for covering these losses. The companies have already cost taxpayers more than $130 billion.
…
MarketWatch First Take
Dec. 9, 2010, 12:11 p.m. EST
Mortgage rates are up so the sky must be falling
Commentary: Boy have we been spoiled by low rates
By MarketWatch
CHICAGO (MarketWatch) — One thing low mortgage rates are sure to cause: a panic when they start to turn higher. There’s nothing worse than missing a good deal, but when that deal entails saving every month over 30 years it’s a rip-your-hair-out affair when it passes you by.
We’re going to see a lot of that hand-wringing now as mortgage rates have jumped off historic lows, rising this week for the fourth straight time to reach — gasp! — 4.61% on the benchmark 30-year loan. Read more on mortgage rates jumping this week.
Yes, you heard that right. People are going to be miserable because the 4% mortgage is a thing of the past. Already we’ve seen the monthly payment on a typical $200,000 mortgage go up $50 versus the lowest rate you could have gotten a month or two ago.
Is Fed bond buying a success?
David Reilly says that when it comes to bolstering growth prospects, or at least investors’ belief in them, the Fed may deserve a better grade than it’s been given credit for.
OK, $50 is nothing to sneeze at. But let’s face it: Mortgages have been the bargain of the century the past few years and we’ve gotten spoiled.
Remember the last time the 30-year fixed-rate loan was at even 6%? That was May of 2008, more than two years ago. Six percent sound pretty high, you say? Ask somebody buying a home in the 1950s or 1960s and they’d say 6% sounds reasonable. Ask somebody buying a home in the 1970s or 1980s and they’d say 6% would be a rate you’d get only if your lender was smoking something.
…
When they hit 8%, people can start whining.
And HBBers might think about buying. You know, the ones who weren’t dumb enough to buy early like me.
More reasons not to invest in real estate:
1) YOUR TENANT MAY TURN OUT TO BE A WANNABE UNABOMBER.
2) THE GOVERNMENT MAY OFFER YOU NO COMPENSATION AFTER THEY REDUCE YOUR INVESTMENT HOME TO ASH.
After much planning, ‘bomb factory’ house reduced to ash
By Karen Kucher, J. Harry Jones and Debbi Baker,
Originally published December 9, 2010 at 6:46 a.m., updated December 9, 2010 at 6:10 p.m.
A house containing pounds of dangerous explosives and chemicals near Escondido was set ablaze Thursday morning in an operation officials said went off flawlessly.
The home was set on fire at 10:56 a.m. and quickly became engulfed in flames, sending up a plume of dark smoke that could be seen for miles.
By 11:26, walls had burned away and just the frame of the house could be seen.
Interstate 15, which was shut down as a precaution during the controlled burn, reopened about 12:30 p.m.
…
Timeline
6 a.m. — Upward of 100 people involved in the operation participated in a final briefing. They are told an inversion layer had settled over the area, which could have kept the plume of smoke from the fire from rising as high as desired, so the timing of the fire would be delayed by about an hour or two.
9:45 a.m. — The inversion layer lifts and the Highway Patrol is given the go-ahead to start shutting down Interstate 15, routing cars around the closure on Centre City Parkway and state Route 78
10:56 a.m. — A member of the sheriff’s Bomb Squad ignites the first detonator. Gray smoke starts to rise from the house’s garage.
10:59 a.m. — The smoke gets thicker and darker.
11:01 a.m. — The first of a series of four loud pops or small explosions are heard. The noise was probably caused by ammunition or perhaps grenades exploding, although such noises are not uncommon during any house fire, officials said.
11:03 a.m. — Thick, dark smoke billows into the air, rising about 2,500 feet. It then starts to drift to the east, just as authorities hoped and predicted.
11:10 a.m. — A crackling sound like bullets or firecrackers going off is heard steadily for two to three minutes. Smoke continues to billow. Flames four-stories high can be seen.
11:26 a.m. — The fire’s intensity diminishes considerably. Small amounts of smoke continue to be seen for the next two hours as the flames die down as is allowed to smolder.
12:20 p.m. — Interstate 15 is reopened.
2 p.m. — Residents who were evacuated are allowed to return home.
How the house was torched
The fire was set by remote detonation.
Members of the Sheriff’s Bomb & Arson Unit placed detonators throughout the house, which were augmented with black explosive powder and wooden pallets.
“It was basically like making a fire out at your campsite,” Sheriff Bill Gore said.
“It was actually a very planned event from room to room and it burned exactly to plan,” said San Marcos Fire Chief Todd Newman.
Igniter or detonator line was then strung from the house all the way to the intersection of Nutmeg Street and Via Alexander several blocks away. The first detonation was in the garage, where most of the dangerous chemicals were believed to be located. In rapid succession the other detonators were then triggered.
Earlier in the day member of the San Diego Fire Department had broken holes in the ceiling and left doors open to properly vent the house, making it easy for the fire to burn and spread, Gore said.
The house burned quickly and intensely, with temperatures reaching the 1,500-1,800 degree level needed to destroy the hazardous materials.
That’s a reason for 100% financing right there!
“2) THE GOVERNMENT MAY OFFER YOU NO COMPENSATION AFTER THEY REDUCE YOUR INVESTMENT HOME TO ASH.”
Is there some reason their insurance wouldn’t pay?
I think the insurance will wind up paying, but you can bet your left testes that they will fight it in court for years.
Governmental actions are apparently a standard exclusion under home owner’s insurance policies. Caveat landlord!
‘Bomb House’ Owner Unlikely To Get Compensation
By Kyla Calvert
December 9, 2010
SAN DIEGO — The Escondido house where George Jakubec allegedly stockpiled explosives is now a pile of ashes. Jakubec was renting the home. However, the home’s owner is unlikely to get any compensation for the loss.
If a government entity decides to build a freeway where your house sits, it can take your home. But, you must be paid for the loss under eminent domain laws. The same rules don’t apply to the home filled with explosives the Sheriff’s department burned down in Escondido, according to Mitchell L. Lathrop.
“Normally when you have police action like this the government is not liable,” said Lathrop, who specializes in insurance issues.
The other most likely source of compensation would be the homeowner’s insurance. But Lathrop said that’s another likely dead end.
“As a general rule, under property insurance there will be exclusions for any damage caused by governmental action.”
…
“As a general rule, under property insurance there will be exclusions for any damage caused by governmental action.”
All the more reason to:’
1. Screen tenants carefully. Do a criminal background check. And a credit check. And whatever else your state laws allow you to check.
2. Keep an eye on your property. You could drive by to take a look. Or you could have trustworthy neighbors watch the place while not telling the tenants that they’re doing so.
I guess that landscaper was ‘watching the place,’ in a manner of speaking?
Sounds like a way to create “rent leverage” with a mean-spirited landlord…Heeheeheeee
Exactly the reason I finally quit being a LL. To many rentals get used as Meth houses. The cost of cleaning up a Meth house may well exceed it value.
Don’t you wish all real estate investments ‘blew up’ similarly to the way the Bomb Factory House did?
“Normally when you have police action like this the government is not liable,” said Lathrop, who specializes in insurance issues.
The other most likely source of compensation would be the homeowner’s insurance. But Lathrop said that’s another likely dead end.
“As a general rule, under property insurance there will be exclusions for any damage caused by governmental action.”
Still think you have rights?
The serial bottom caller brigade is losing their battle for the hearts and minds of the American people.
Housing recovery after 2012, consumers say
Nearly a quarter worry it won’t come till after 2015, Trulia and RealtyTrac survey shows
By Roger Showley
Tuesday, December 7, 2010 at 10:05 a.m.
Nearly 60 percent of Americans believe the housing market won’t recover until 2013 or later, according to a survey released Tuesday by Trulia.com and RealtyTrac.
Conducted Nov. 2-4, just before the midterm election, the survey of 2,034 adults also showed 49 percent are interested in buying a foreclosure home but 66 percent are worried about hidden costs.
The recovery has already taken place, 5 percent said, while 10 percent expect it to occur next year and 27 percent in 2012. The post-2012 recovery is predicted by 58 percent — 24 percent in 2013, 12 percent in 2014 and 22 percent in 2015 or later.
“More and more American homeowners, sellers and buyers are tamping down their expectations for a swift recovery in the housing market and bracing themselves for a long, slow climb back to a healthy real estate market,” said Pete Flint, cofounder and CEO of the Trulia.com realty website.
…
Next year, yeah that’s the one.
2012 is getting AWFULLY close to what a lot of people on HBB were saying in 2007. I know that was the year I tried to talk my wife into waiting until.
It looks a little worse now, but 2012 might actually be closeish.
So what will this “housing recovery” that is coming in 2012 consist of ? Housing prices will instantly shoot back up to their 2005 levels, and ever after appreciate at “normal” 15% - 20% yearly numbers ?
No, I think most of the people on this board expect prices, when they bottom, to just scrape along the bottom for years.
Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya, tomorrow….
The serfs who live across the pond are getting restless.
Prince Charles’s Car Attacked During Student Protests Over Fees
Friday, December 10, 2010
…
I’ve said before that if we got a little more agitated in the US, maybe we could change a few things. Remember when the French protested recently? By golly they got the politicians attention.
‘protesters set upon the heir to the throne’s Rolls Royce as it drove through London’s busy West End Thursday night. A group of up to 20 protesters, some chanting “off with their heads!” smashed a rear window and splashed white paint on the vehicle.’
http://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Protesters-attack-car-containing-Prince-Charles-871070.php
The serfs around here are to busy watching the hoff and housewives.
A reality show about protestors is something Americans would sit on the couch and watch, but sadly that is where it would end.
“Protesting with the Stars” could air at any time.
You just think you’re joking.
I’m old enough to remember the 1968 riots in my home town. It was truly scary. Curfews, closed schools, National Guardsmen with rifles on building rooftops, etc.
I worry that since many don’t seem to constructively vent their frustrations and state their demands that some sort of destructive flash point is possible.
When real unemployment settles at about 18%, and UE among the young is double that or more, you are likely to see civil insurrection again. Young people without hope and a lot of time on their hands is a dangerous thing.
As soon as they finish playing thier Xbox360 they will get to it.
I’ve said before that if we got a little more agitated in the US, maybe we could change a few things.
Well, Mr. Ben considering that couple that got ARRESTED at a Cheney-Shrub GOP speaking engagement, simply because the repubican security staffers saw them park their car with a anti-war bumper sticker…I’m tending not to get within a digital recordings ability to contribute any “legal bastards” knocking on my door,…unannounced with guns pointed in my face and smiling that smugly/smirk. :-/
They should have been smashing the windows on a bankster’s car. I can’t blame them for being pissed. The bankers clean up and leave the bill to the little people.
The need to learn from our politicos. You don’t triple tuition at colleges overnight, you just raise it 10% year after year.
It’s moments like these that give me hope in the masses. The necessity of this type of action cannot be understated and the crowd couldn’t have chosen a more perfect target. However, aside from the slime bucket UK crown, high dollar elites and their elected public policy minions are still out there and need the same treatment.
Someone in in the crowd cried “off with their heads!” when Charles and Camilla drove through a crowd of student protesters on the way to the opera in their armored Rolls Royce. This is why this clueless twit will never be king of England.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/theroyalfamily/8193351/Prince-Charles-and-Camillas-Rolls-Royce-was-wrong-car.html
Yup, his mother will live as long as Queen Victoria. Just to spite him.
Queen Liz will hand the crown to William as her successor, methinks.
Abolish it!
Even a poor country like Nepal abolished morarchy few years IIRC. Useless and utterly clueless people.
I agree- they should abolish this disgusting display of pretension.
“Queen Liz will hand the crown to William as her successor, methinks.”
And Harry will tickle Kate as needed.
ELizabeth is alredy older than Victoria when she died age 82
Heads will indeed roll before the whole “economic crisis” plays out.
I don’t think people in England get to choose the next King.
I read posts from a couple days back between in Colorado and Carl Morris with regard to the Holden Monaro rebadged as a Pontiac GTO.
I bought an ‘06 earlier this year after careful consideration. I had given myself a $30-50K budget for my 40th birthday present but once a friend made me aware of this car I just couldn’t bring myself to pay twice the money for something that didn’t have better performance.
I’ve not yet taken it for a run at Bonneville but I’ve had it at 140mph at 4500rpm, smooth as silk. It corners like a rocket on rails.
I’ve been wanting so badly to buy one, but with kids in college it will just have to wait.
Totally worth it, I even find myself looking at Ebay for another one just in case this one blows up. I love this car, and IMHO they will probably only get more expensive from here based on production numbers and the propensity of yutes to total them.
Another tidbit I just learned, they apparently have a kagaroo crushing plate under the engine that weighs around 100lbs. The old girl can go on a very effective crash diet if needs be. If I do modify her it will be a supercharger and a 6 speed auto with paddel shifter but I’m fairly certain that would be equivalent to suicide for me. It is already scary fast. I will not modify (except Y99s) until I’ve established a baseline.
It took me 18 months to find the deal I wanted and I drove her cross country from JAX to LAX (in 37 hours). I don’t love her more than my wife and kids, but just barely.
I dunno……
Performance-wise, it’s the biggest “bang for the buck” out there.
(except for that early 90s Corvette I was looking at, which is still for sale BTW……)
OTOH, the look still hasn’t grown on me…….from the doors forward, it’s okay (I prefer the earlier ones, w/o the hood scoops). Can’t get excited about it from the doors back. And to me, it looks like it should have bigger tires.
Do they make air shocks for them? Some Mickey Thompson L50-15s and some 15 x 10s ought to fix it. …..
The GTO/Monaro’s look has been compared to the Chevy Cavalier.
I’ve seen 2004’s with 40K miles listed for $15K out here.
Very tempting.
As far as looks go it is also ideal for me. I am not a “look at me!” kind of guy. I would much rather just have the fastest car on nearly any road I drive and not have anyone around me know it…
…until I blast off leaving those little cartoon curly cues in my wake.
I agree on the bigger tires, but the traction control (which on most powerful cars is an interference) feels more like a tool on this car.
Example, traction control on full stop, stomp on the gas and leave 159ft. burnout before full grip at around 60mph.
Traction control off full stop, stomp on the gas and leave a double looping burnout into the ditch about 50ft. down the road.
http://www.bigboystoysspokane.com/
This guy always has a couple on his lot, and they seem to sit for a long time.
RWD’s aren’t much good in snow country.
RWD’s aren’t much good in snow country.
I find driving a high performance car very fun even in the snow…as long as it’s AWD. The most disappointing thing is that Holden made an AWD version of the car that was only sold in Australia.
My buddy just picked up a 2011 Caddy CTS-V 556 HP Supercharged Sedan. Good God. He eats Subaru STI’s for breakfast and poops out modified Hondas for dinner.
One.Bad.Ride. Too bad it has the GM cloud over it.
They’re a cool, fast car. But guys like him end up highly frustrated when they run into my friends if they’ve got an ego about it. We all enjoy beating up on kids in stock and mildly modified cars once in a while, but the people who are serious about it are in a whole different league. And part of their entertainment is keeping an eye out for cars like that :-).
Yup. I feel ya.
I drive an 01 subi & I race NOBODY.
Cool. If I wanted a RWD car it would definitely be toward the top of my list.
Isn’t the Pontiac line gone?
They’re not making any more, but there are plenty of nice ones still out there on the used market.
Correct. The GTO was sold in the 2004, 2005 and 2006 model years. They sold new for about 30K, and used are sometimes cheaper than 10+ year old Trans Ams.
And if you don’t need the GTO emblem, the top of the line G8s are equivalent. They were sold through 2009.
“Isn’t the Pontiac line gone?”
Gone but not forgotten bay-bee!
Careful of the struts - believe there was/is significant issue with wheel well clearance, and a related GM recall/bulletin. I looked at this one quite a bit too - great car.
Damn. The Social Security Administration has changed the rules on me again.
It used to be you could elect to take early benefits at age 62, then “change your mind” at age 66 by paying back all the money you received. You could then collect “full benefits” going forward.
Today the SSA changed that, effective immediately.
http://ssa.gov/pressoffice/pr/withdrawal-policy-pr.html
Is this perhaps a response to the increase of the un-and-underemployed filing for benefits at 62?
Have a recently unemployed neighbor who is going to claim in a few months when she turns 62. She doesn’t see any alternative as her job prospects are slim.
Well then I don’t have to ponder that one after all…I’m not good with decisions.
Thanks!
The old policy made it so you DIDN’T have to make a decision early on. You just took benefits at 62. Then right before your 66th birthday, you would have a heart-to-heart talk with your doctor about how long you were going to live. Then you could either do nothing (doc has bad news for you) or pay it back in a lump sum and take the higher pay (doc has good news for you.
So our wonderful government is happy to give 0% loans out to rich bankers…..but people who are relying in part on SS don’t get any of that cheap loan money.
Rule #1 of… ruling: always stick it to the poor because after all, what can they do about it!
U.S. Must “Man Up and Take the Pain”
Periodically, Japanese officials would stop stimulating, but the resulting economic pain would compel them to start again.
Of course, there are important differences between Japan and the U.S. Most importantly, Japan is dealing with a “horrible demographic profile,” Katsenelson says, citing its aging population, low birth rates and limited immigration.
With its savings rate falling, Japan’s aging citizenry is reaching a tipping point where it will no longer be able to purchase Japanese Government Bonds (JGBs) at anywhere the same level as in the past 20 years, when over 90% of JGBs were purchased internally.
As a result, Japan will soon have to tap the global markets to fund its borrowing. Katsenelson predicts JGBs will get a cold reception from international buyers because of Japan’s demographics and the fact its debt is already almost 200% of GDP, or roughly double America’s. (Relatively speaking “were doing great,” he quips.)
JGBs current sport much lower yields than comparable U.S. or German government debt but Katsenelson says that won’t continue. With rates rising, Japan’s government will be forced to make the Hobson’s choice of drastically cutting services or printing yen in order to monetize the debt.
“This is a case where you go from deflation to inflation,” he says, and a warning to America to change its ways before it’s too late.
“Japan is proof that a country cannot borrow itself to prosperity,” Katsenelson writes. “The U.S. and other developed nations still have a chance to make the politically difficult but right decision to cut fiscal spending and stop looking for government to be the source of sustainable growth - which it never is.”
The US “….must man up and make the serfs take the pain…..”
Fixed it.
Beat me to it.
zackly
Irony alert: The unusually chilly global-warming summit
Cancun is hosting the U.N. conference on man-made climate change — amid record cold temperatures. December 9, 2010
The irony: As negotiators from nearly 200 countries met in Cancun to strategize ways to keep the planet from getting hotter, the temperature in the seaside Mexican city plunged to a 100-year record low of 54° F. Climate-change skeptics are gleefully calling Cancun’s weather the latest example of the “Gore Effect” — a plunge in temperature they say occurs wherever former Vice President Al Gore, now a Nobel Prize-winning environmental activist, makes a speech about the climate.
Although Gore is not scheduled to speak in Cancun, “it could be that the Gore Effect has announced his secret arrival,” jokes former NASA scientist Roy W. Spencer.
UN guys plan a party in Cancun under the guise of a meeting and its too cold for a wet T-shirt contest. Now that’s irony.
Or…. it’s the PERFECT TEMP for a wet T-shirt contest.
God does have a good sense of humor.
All I know - NEVER take a winter vacation where Al Gore is going to speak - unless it is a skiing vacation.
Silver price manipulation stalks bullion market
But on Thursday, silver prices declined sharply to touch at $28.76 per ounce. Though analysts have argued that the drop in silver prices has been thanks to market corrections, there are some bullion dealers who suggest that the silver price is being manipulated these days.
Here is what Silver Investing News reported this week on possible silver market manipulation by banks:
Webmaster’s Commentary:
Both J.P. Morgan and COMEX are massively shorted on silver. They have ample motive to try to manipulate the price of silver downward in order to not be driven into insolvency covering the longs.
http://tinyurl.com/2wxbuyv
All these take-downs of silver and gold by the banks are gifts to the Asians and others that have learned this game. Always buy on the massive dips and at some point there will simply be no supply of silver at the artificially created “paper contract” price resulting in an enormous upward price readjustment.
Not that the price of oil & gas has any effect on households…
Gas prices on track for unseasonable spike ~ USA TODAY
Motorists, brace yourselves for a lump of coal this holiday season: higher-priced gasoline.
Nationwide, a gallon of regular unleaded gas averaged $2.977 on Friday and more than $3 a gallon in 20 states. That’s up nearly 10 cents the past week and 34 cents higher than December 2009, AAA spokesman Troy Green says.
Benchmark crude oil opens today at $88.37 a barrel. If crude crosses $90 for the first time since 2008 and continues to rise, as many industry experts forecast, the average price of regular unleaded could hit $3.15 or higher by year’s end.
Gasoline is already at or near that in California, Connecticut, Maine, New York, Rhode Island and Washington.
Can ‘t remember the last time I paid under $3 in NY.
Remember when high oil prices alone would cause a recession and cause inflation…
Of course, it’s all due to fundamentals; no speculation here.
I’d ask why anyone believes China’s oil consumption numbers, when every other government statistic they generate is suspect, but that just me.
I’d ask why anyone believes China’s oil consumption numbers, when every other government statistic they generate is suspect, but that just me.
Many years ago, when I was a young Slim at the University of Michigan, I took a course on the Chinese economy.
Prof was a world-renowned expert on the Chinese economic system. And he was one of the first Western economists to go there after Nixon visited in 1972.
Any-hoo, our prof told us many a story about getting reliable data out of the Chinese government-generated statistics. (In a word, it was hard.)
Not to mention getting straight answers when he had face-to-face conversations with his Chinese counterparts. He spoke fluent Chinese, but he still couldn’t get them to level with him.
Memories, Slim. I went to a lecture in the Nat Sci Bldg (remember that?) in 1974 given by a guy who had just returned from China. The place was packed because people just wanted to see his slides - nobody had seen the inside of China since before the revolution.
Gas and oil prices have been decoupled from RETAIL supply and demand for decades.
The Fed first launched a bond-buying attack on long-term rates in the depths of the financial crisis. This first round of so-called quantitative easing ended in March. After Mr. Bernanke signaled in late August that a new round was coming, long-term rates began falling in anticipation. The average rate on prime 30-year mortgages stood at 4.36% the day before Mr. Bernanke sent the signal. It got as low as 4.17% in October.
John Donnelly was a beneficiary—and so was a car dealer. On Oct. 12, the retired sales manager in West Hartford, Conn., locked in a 4.25% rate on a new $240,000 mortgage loan. He used about $45,000 of it to buy a Mercedes for his wife. Though his new loan was bigger, his monthly payment hardly changed, thanks to the lower interest rate. “It’s like free money,” he said.
In Glastonbury, across the Connecticut River, medical-device sales manager Paul Popovich missed this window. He applied to refinance the mortgage on his home in mid-October, hoping to lop $150 off his $2,200 monthly payment. But rates started rising again before he could complete the process. “We were hoping for some relief, and it hasn’t occurred yet,” he said. Rates on 30-year mortgages now average 4.61%, their highest in six months, according to Freddie Mac.
Lowering rates can’t put money in the pockets of many others because banks won’t lend to them. About 11 million homeowners owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth, making refinancing practically impossible.
Steve Ross, an apparel entrepreneur in Eastern Shores, Fla., has a $200,000 mortgage with an interest rate of 6.75%. He estimates the seaside condo he bought for $300,000 in 2006 is now worth $150,000—too little to serve as collateral for a new loan that could reduce his $2,000 a month in mortgage costs and condo fees. The Fed’s stimulus “is not doing me any good,” Mr. Ross said. “The bank isn’t going to call me up and lower my interest rate.”
Poor Ross… he has to honor the terms of the contract he signed… BOO HOO!
Seaside houses, like condos, are poetic justice for all involved. And not the good kind.
“Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking.”
~ John Maynard Keynes
Buy it today! 0% down!
(misdemeanor or felony word assault)?
Not true
“This one goes up to 11″
“You talk like a f*g and your sh!t’s all effed up, skrode!”
TJX to Cut 4,400 Jobs, Shutter Stores
FOXBusiness
T.J. Maxx and Marshalls parent TJX Cos. (TJX) announced plans on Friday to slash more than 4,000 jobs and shut down its A.J. Wright division.
Framingham, Mass.-based TJX said it plans to convert 91 A.J. Wright stores into T.J. Maxx, Marshalls and HomeGoods stores. The remaining 71 A.J. Wright stores will be shuttered.
The move is aimed at improving overall profitability by focusing on its more successful brands.
As a result of the moves, TJX will eliminate 4,400 positions, most of them part-time jobs. The retailer employed about 154,000 employees as of October.
“While I believe this move makes us a much stronger company and will benefit TJX in both the near-term and long-term, it was not an easy decision as many positions will be eliminated and it will be difficult for our affected associates,” CEO Carol Meyrowitz said in a statement. “However, it will allow us to focus our financial and managerial resources on our highest return businesses, all of which have significant growth opportunities.”
The A J Wright stores I’ve seen all seem to be located in poorer areas, which have most likely been hit hard on discretionary dollars.
It’s bad when the discount stores of discount stores have to close that many stores.
Execs keep health perks as workers’ benefits dwindle.
USA TODAY
Though millions of workers face rising health insurance costs and dwindling benefits in 2011, many CEOs will retain employer-paid medical plans and health benefits worth thousands of dollars.
Hundreds of top corporate managers get medical benefits and supplemental coverage far beyond what’s offered to rank-and-file employees. Benefits include “executive” physicals and reimbursements for out-of-pocket costs, deductibles and co-payments, according to corporate filings.
“The great hypocrisy is this is going to the people best able to pay for this stuff,” says Nell Minow of The Corporate Library. “Executives should pay for this on their own or be covered by the same plan as everyone else at the company.”
Or be taxed on what they get beyond the average worker?
When he was still HP’s CEO, Mark Hurd had expense accounts that allowed him to charge non business related meals, lodging and travel (use of corporate jets) worth hundreds of thousands of dollars per year to HP.
It’s good to be the King.
Hundreds of top corporate managers get medical benefits and supplemental coverage far beyond what’s offered to rank-and-file employees. Benefits include “executive” physicals and reimbursements for out-of-pocket costs, deductibles and co-payments, according to corporate filings.
If I worked for one of these companies, I’d make it a point to be sick as a dog, but go into work. After all, it might be kind of fun to infect one of these better-than-me types, just to see how good their insurance really is.
At HP you couldn’t get anywhere near the CEO. Czarly had bodyguards, and I suspect that Mark Hurd did as well.
One thing I like about my CEO…one time he flew in for an all-hands and they had a signup sheet for doing a small group discussion with him afterwards. Hardly anybody was signing up for it so I did. Me and about ten other people hung out with him in a conference room for about an hour and no subject was off-limits. I enjoyed it. There were no bodyguards :-).
““Normally when you have police action like this the government is not liable,” said Lathrop, who specializes in insurance issues.
The other most likely source of compensation would be the homeowner’s insurance. But Lathrop said that’s another likely dead end.
“As a general rule, under property insurance there will be exclusions for any damage caused by governmental action.””
Most already do because they have no choice.
OOOPPS! (dang cut and paste)
post should read:
If I worked for one of these companies, I’d make it a point to be sick as a dog, but go into work.
Most already do because they have no choice.
So they keep their bennies along with their forgiven personal, million dollar loans from the company and having their personal taxes by for them as well.
Marie Antoinette was an amateur.
“Crash Tax”…
NEW YORK (CBS 2) — The cost of driving in New York City is about to get more costly. That is, if you need medical attention after an accident.
In a time of tight budget times, the city is looking for new ways to recoup costs.
And drivers needing help from the FDNY will be the targets.
Getting hurt in a car accident is painful enough, but if firefighters have to respond, expect more pain — in your wallet.
Starting next summer, the city plans to bill drivers in accidents that require an emergency response.
The so-called “crash tax” works like this: A car fire or accident with injury would cost you $490. A car fire without injury, $415. And any vehicle accident without injury will run you $365.
So why do we pay taxes again???
Oh - I forgot - to fund public union benefits and pensions.
If you want any actual SERVICE you need to pay EXTRA for that.
Wasn’t there a story about a trailer burning to the ground in Tennessee because the owner hadn’t paid for fire protection.
Seems tax dollars get diverted in non union states as well.
So why do we pay taxes again???
Oh - I forgot - to fund politicians favoritism to their backers.
Fixed that for you.
Stocks edge higher on encouraging economic signs- AP
Brightening prospects for passage of a compromise tax package and an encouraging trade report has stocks edging higher. The government reported Friday morning that the U.S. trade deficit fell to its lowest level in nine months in October.
Stocks would “edge higher” on any and all news. Why make stuff up about what moves the rigged market? Insulting to the few intelligent people left.
Just 2 more weeks to lock in those bonuses!
There is a new cop in town, and the banksters should be scared — very scared!
Friday, December 10, 2010
Elizabeth Warren on her role and the future goals of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
President Obama and Elizabeth Warren
Elizabeth Warren, special advisor for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has faced objections from Congress and banks for coming down too hard on financial institutions. She chats with Steve Chiotakis about her role and the future goals of the bureau.
Between her and Ron Paul things could get interesting.
Yep. America’s financial system appears to be on an improving trend, politically speaking.
The public is angry enough that appointing tough-on-banksters is politically viable.
Keep dreaming.
I will be most interested to see what alternatives to the Fed-governed too-big-to-fail Wall Street Megabank monopoly banking system Ron Paul and his colleagues propose.
Rep. Ron Paul Says He Won’t Push for End to Fed `Up Front’
By Kevin Costelloe - Dec 10, 2010 7:12 AM PT
Dec. 10 (Bloomberg) — U.S. Representative Ron Paul, a Texas Republican who next month will take over as head of the House subcommittee that oversees the Federal Reserve, talks about his priorities and the need to consider “reforms” of the central bank. Paul, speaking with Betty Liu on Bloomberg Television’s “In the Loop,” also discusses the outlook for a tax compromise. (Source: Bloomberg)
Representative Ron Paul, a Texas Republican who next month will take control of the House subcommittee that oversees the Federal Reserve, said today that he will “not really, not right up front” push for an end to the U.S. central bank.
“But obviously that’s the implication,” Paul said in a Bloomberg Television interview on “In the Loop” with Betty Liu. Paul said he was talking about a “transition.”
…
It’s right there in the Constitution well outlined for all to read. Never happen of course but a least R.Paul will make life at the un-federal reserve far less comfortable!
I wonder if Ron Paul will be co-opted. He’s going to be the recipient of a whole lot of sugar from the big boys who actually run things.
I take the impression that he is above co-option, which makes him well-suited for the position, but time will tell for sure.
Ron Paul’s contributors, career:
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cycle=Career&cid=N00005906&type=C
Chairman End the Fed
Posted by Adam Sorensen Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 2:15 pm
It’s official: Ron Paul, libertarian standard bearer, will chair the House Financial Services subcommittee on monetary policy that oversees the Federal Reserve. It’s a big step for the Texas congressman who’s spent much of his career leveling harsh criticism at the central banking system and, in its own way, a sign of the times. Populist (especially conservative populist) backlash against the Fed is ascendant and Paul now has a platform from which to challenge Bernanke et al. on the transparency, autonomy and, yes, existence of the institution.
…
(especially conservative populist) backlash against the Fed is ascendant and Paul now has a platform from which to challenge Bernanke et al. on the transparency, autonomy and, yes, existence of the institution.
(Heeheeheheehe, …gotta use the most comfortable recliner I can find for this Winters main event, complete with a plush cotton throw & warm slippers…now, eyes need to find a mixer to go with that “drink-for-debacles”…) Wu-wei!
de·ba·cle:
1. A sudden, disastrous collapse, downfall, or defeat; a rout.
2. A total, often ludicrous failure.
Ron Paul to Chair Monetary Policy Subcommittee
Posted Thursday, December 09, 2010 11:34 AM | By David Weigel
The congressman from Texas gets the job he’s been gunning for for years, and hands Tea Party activists their first big victory in a committee fight. He’ll lead the Domestic Monetary Policy Subcommittee in the next Congress.
There were widespread worries that, despite his seniority, Paul’s politics would cost him this job. Incoming Financial Services chairman Spencer Bachus brushes the worries aside.
I know nothing will change but I can smell the Bernanke Grilling. Smells good.
Go BOA!
(WSJ) Bank of America Corp. said it restarted about 16,000 foreclosure cases across the U.S. on Monday, but it may be weeks before it is known whether the bank’s submission of new documents will pass muster with local judges.
The bank instructed its foreclosure attorneys this week to prepare new affidavits in 7,800 cases where court approval is required to foreclose on a home, out of a total of 102,000 frozen by the bank amid documentation concerns. In states where no court approval is required, attorneys were asked to lift the hold on 8,000 delayed foreclosure sales out of 30,000.
The nation’s largest bank as measured by assets is scrambling to get its foreclosure engine restarted amid widespread scrutiny of its mortgage practices. It and several U.S. banks halted foreclosures following allegations employees signed hundreds of foreclosure documents a day without carefully reviewing their contents.
I read either here or elsewhere, that BOA and other giants are selling REO’s in bulk sales?
As a cash buyer looking for a primary residence, this bums me out. Don’t I deserve a place to call home.
The multiple MLS around my parts are pretty dry, and anything truly decent is overpriced.
“I read either here or elsewhere, that BOA and other giants are selling REO’s in bulk sales?”
Chalk it up to the pernicious effects of monopoly power in the banking sector and crony capitalism. Let’s hope Ron Paul takes action to fix this.
Well, that and the fact that the banks have so many that selling them individually would take a ton of time. So they sell them in lots to people who will break up the lots and sell/rent them individually for a profit. I can’t imagine the banks wanting to individually market 10,000 houses.
You can bet that some well connected Hedge Fund that has banking ceo clients is buying up all the property at pennies on the dollar.
No way, dude!
What Forbes missed:
1. Both Miller and Bernanke had (have) to deal with the difficult problem of accumulated war debt.
2. The Phillips curve argument is supported by over a century’s worth of empirical evidence. What backs up Forbes’ argument? (My guess: Hot air.)
Why Ben Is Addicted To Failure
Bad, disproved ideas can be remarkably durable, and Ben Bernanke’s destructive behavior is a prime example. Despite ample liquidity in the financial system, Bernanke announced that the Fed is buying $600 billion in Treasury bonds. That news sent the dollar tumbling and commodities surging. Gold touched $1,400 an ounce. Why did he do it? A false axiom with weedlike durability: the Phillips curve. Back in the 1950s a New Zealand economist posited the notion that there’s a tradeoff between inflation and unemployment. If you want vigorous growth, you need to accept higher inflation; if you want to bring inflation down, you have to be prepared for higher unemployment. In other words, stable money is bad for the economy.
This nostrum is behind all Ben Bernanke’s talk about the need to jack up inflation as a means of kindling a more muscular recovery: “Inflation that is too low can pose risks to the economy–especially when the economy is struggling.”
Bernanke’s beloved Phillips curve is preposterous. Weak, not sound, money is the enemy of innovation and expansion. When Germany had a stable deutsche mark before switching to the euro, it did better economically than did neighboring France, with its chronically weak franc. Switzerland’s tough monetary policy has hardly condemned that country to being an economic backwater. Rising inflation in the U.S. during the 1970s gave us a decade of stagnation and increasing unemployment, which peaked at a higher level than it is at today. U.S. equity values suffered a long-term decline. The Dow Jones industrial average briefly touched 1000 in 1966. By the summer of 1982 it was barely above 800. In real terms the Dow had fallen 60%. In the early 1980s Ronald Reagan slew the inflationary beast. With that and Reagan’s tax cuts the stock market began a long-term climb that saw the Dow Jones increase fifteenfold by the end of the 1990s.
Bernanke is rivaling–and may yet surpass–G. William Miller, who headed Bernanke’s institution in the wildly inflationary late 1970s, as the worst Fed head in history.
…
had (have) to deal with the difficult problem of POLICY-IMPOSED accumulated
warIslamicDemocracy Nation Building… debt. :-/Bernake is no more addicted to failure then the rest of the inbred aristocracy that runs this country.
In other words, you can’t fix stupid. Especially when it’s genetic.
When we were kids my friends and I used to race our bikes around G William Miller’s driveway at his summer-house in Westport, MA. He was never around and we tore the gravel all to hell.
My related question: Will rising long-term interest rates spark a panic-driven selloff in the long end of the bond market? Seems like lots of sheep who were fleeced into purchasing long-term bonds in the parabolic bubble price runup are ripe for a major sheering…
Mortgage rates rise: Is Federal Reserve policy backfiring?
Mortgage rates are evidence that the Federal Reserve ‘quantitative easing’ plan is failing, say critics. The Fed bought $600 billion in Treasury bonds to exert downward pressure on interest rates and help spur the economy.
…
Didn’t they say that they were going to spend 600 billion and then that this # could rise??
I wonder if the banks have been offloading their treasuries?, i believe I saw an article that suggested that they were holding massive levels (20% of capitalization??). If they have been converting to cash and have off loaded enough of their bad debt then rising interest rates may be in our near future. Otherwise I suspect we will see more treasury purchases by the FED. If there was some way to track bank holdings of treasuries you would have your answer.
Remember
Step one loan banks money at 0%
They buy treasuries at 3-4% and collect interest for a period of time.
Then FED pumps up the price of treasuries and they sell.
Banks will be sitting on a mountain of cash when the next crash comes. Then and only then will they start lending. First to well connnected Hedgefunds and then later to Joe 6pk at high interest rates.
Through a series of inflation and deflation the banks will own everything.
What makes you think they don’t already?
I didn’t author this but it really resonated with me.
Anyone who says that the US is a welfare state has never actually been on welfare or known someone on welfare. It’s a pittance given to only the very poor, and if it’s abused, it’s usually by people who are so obviously damaged that they never learned any other way of supporting themselves.
I am sick of tired of listening to any attempt at community spirit or cooperative effort be smeared as collectivism or socialism. “Let the market find its own level” is short hand for “I don’t care what happens to anyone else but me.” Despite its ham-handed implementation, there’s actually a lot of good intent behind what the government has tried to do with HAMP etc. The frustrating point is not that they are trying it, but that they won’t come clean on how woefully short it will come to people’s expectations.
I go to Canada and the people there take it as a given that despite some waste and some abuse, they have a strong sense of collective responsibility for each other. Their legal, social, medical and welfare systems take that as a fundamental assumption - that you can’t have a society built on a bunch of angry little men building moats around their houses and calling any attempt at community-spirit and community benefit as an infringement on their freedoms. It’s foolish rhetoric that is divorced from a more complex reality, and in my opinion, is a far cry from what has always made the United States the great country it is. This emphasis on the “I got mine, forget everyone else” is the most base element of our national personality,
I appreciate your point about looking out a bit more for each other, but how is “Let the market find its own level” opposed to that? I’m not trying screw other people over when I hope for the housing and stock markets to be more reflective of the fundamentals. I would just like to be able to save money for my retirement without being forced to pick up nickels in front of steamrollers.
I have been reading and hearing stuff like this for decades. The one link that always connects, is that it is very easy to point the inadequacies of any given system. However the they rarely point out viable solutions that the majority can agree upon. Most people want the world to be what they envision it to be, that is not the case.
Complaints are easy to come by, solutions are not. There have been and will always be poor, just as there has been and will always be charity. It is truly a shame that all the poor souls can’t be lifted up, and that some have vastly more than others. I don’t see what could ever change that.
Complaints are easy to come by, solutions are not.
Hey is that some type of self-eda-kayshun / self-improvement therapy your practicing on yourself wmbz?
“attempt at community-spirit and community benefit as an infringement on their freedoms”
Shouldn’t REAL patriotism require a concern for the community?
From the constitution: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
establish Justice
oh, it’s “established” alright…
“I sees your hand of justice, and eyes raise ya another $20.00…”
‘“Let the market find its own level” is short hand for “I don’t care what happens to anyone else but me.”’
That’s nonsense. Lower home prices, discovered by ‘letting the (housing) market find its own level,’ would benefit a whole generation of would-be new entrants to the housing market, and might inadvertently set off an economic boom, due to restoration of labor force mobility.
To take this a step further, the First and Second Welfare theorems, which every economics graduate student learns to either love or to hate, are all about describing the conditions under which the market ‘finding its own level’ can make society collectively better off.
Empty platitudes are, by definition, devoid of content.
+1000
You would not have so much money concentrated in real estate and finance sectors, freeing it up to be spent in other areas, resulting in a more diversified economy. Plus, for the most part, private debt just results in the transfer of wealth from debtors to lenders. The industry is very, very lucrative, for very good reasons. I see a lot of parallels between the lending industry and the gambling industry. Both result in immediate gratification in return for long term loss for the customer.
The market is gamed and manipulated 24/7.
Can we move on from this kindergarten canard of the “market has a fair mind of it own” and put it where it belongs with the tooth fairy and Santa Clause?
they have a strong sense of collective responsibility for each other.
You can have a strong sense of collective responsibility for people by talking to and working with them directly, rather than by going through government agencies. In fact, that’s a much more sincere and effective way of doing so.
You can have a strong sense of collective responsibility for people by talking to and working with them directly, rather than by going through government agencies.
Speaking of which, I’m about to head across the street (again) to tell those idiot student vermin types to turn their stereo down. Third time I’ve had to do that this week.
If I have to do it again, I think I’ll just call 911 and press charges.
I’m telling ya, this HBB has magic powers. Right after I typed in the above, the vermin turned it down. I didn’t even have to leave the Arizona Slim Ranch to give them a piece of my mind.
We have plenty of welfare in this country!
For the rich.
“Anyone who says that the US is a welfare state has never actually been on welfare or known someone on welfare. It’s a pittance given to only the very poor, and if it’s abused, it’s usually by people who are so obviously damaged that they never learned any other way of supporting themselves.”
Why do the people who dole out welfare allow the poor to continue to crank out babies? It’s hugely disrespectful to those responsibly climbing out of bed five days a week. The latest round of health insurance increases are simply cruel given the current economic climate. Where are the riots?
NEW YORK (AP) — A former Goldman Sachs programmer was convicted Friday of stealing secret computer code that enables high-speed trading from the company when he took a new job with a rival last year.
The jury in U.S. District Court in Manhattan convicted Sergey Aleynikov of North Caldwell, N.J., of theft of trade secrets and transportation of stolen property in interstate and foreign commerce.
Aleynikov of North Caldwell, N.J., could face up to 15 years in prison when he is sentenced March 18. Aleynikov and his lawyer, Kevin Marino, declined to comment after the verdict.
Why doesn’t he just off to pay 1% of his ill gotten gains and go home without admitting guilt like other Wall Street Criminals?
One strange thing I have noticed. The people who got caught in the financial misdeeds past few yrs seem to be overwhelmingly foreigners or minorities. Good ol’ boys are still kicking it…..
Another reason for the top 2%er to support a crapload of H-IBs……
Caught or prosecuted?
You are right. Prosecuted.
Wrist slaps and fines on the order of less than 1/10 the magnitude of fraud profits don’t cut it towards stamping out fraud. But then one man’s fraud profits are another’s campaign contributions, right?
Sergey should have picked up a few pointers from the Wikileaks crowd.
Yeah his greed got him convicted. I am sure he wanted to benefit from it.
Had he done the wikileaks, he would be a hero.
Well, well, well.
To bad, their wounds are self inflicted. Perhaps one of Fidel’s buds can bail them out…How about Chavez?
US cable: Cuba to be insolvent within 2-3 years
HAVANA(AP) – A newly released confidential U.S. diplomatic cable predicted Cuba’s economic situation could become “fatal” within two to three years, and detailed concerns from other countries’ diplomats — including China — that the communist-run country has been slow to adopt reforms.
The cable was written in February, months before Cuban President Raul Castro announced a major revamp of the island’s economy, laying out plans to fire a half-million state workers and open up the island to expanded forms of private enterprise.
The cable, sent by the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, which Washington maintains instead of an embassy, was released Friday by WikiLeaks. It was apparently written by America’s chief diplomat on the island, Jonathan Farrar.
Don’t think I buy it. They have been saying this about Cuba for some time now. Cuba is still Cuba.
China will bail out Cuba. Allows China to play right in our nose just like we do in the pacific. Karma, Bichez!
“Cuban Missile Crisis II”, coming soon to a Latin American country near you.
open up the island to expanded forms of private enterprise
I’m just a sittin’ & waitin’,…sittin’ & waitin’…Heheheehee
(…that reminds ol’ Hwy, eyes need to check the humidity pad on x1 cigar box I left sitting on a table up in the treehouse)
US cable: Cuba to be insolvent within 2-3 years
Could we not say the same thing about Europe and the US.
Heck except for the printing press and the FED we are already insolvent.
Why don’t we just say that Planet Earth is insolvent and have a massive do-over?
I heard our banks are only a little bit insolvent.
Thank heavens we have sharp cookies like this fellow in D.C. taking care of us…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oXuQWPD1WA
I wish the admiral would have said something smart ass to this clown.
I guess he is for legal pot?
Have I mentioned the inbred aristocracy lately?
I love it…. “inbred aristocracy”
Ah! Friday night in Tampa! After a beer and dinner at Applebees it is great to get “home.”
I think I am swayed to stay in a hotel that is designed for “extended stays”
The location is great, only 12 minutes to my workout place and ten minutes to work. Already furnished, utilities included, free showtime, and cleaned once per week. I will give, throw away, and move some of my Los Angeles stuff in January. I will not bring anything but luggage to Tampa. It is a great feeling to have nothing to do on a December weekend in Florida, but get a haircut, workout, and go to the bank!
Just found out I made a very lucky decision to quit my old lob and come to Florida. All the contractors will be let go indefinitely after December 31. That would include me. I worked on Friday last week at that job, shook hands with many people (caught a cold, oh well), got my time sheet approved, shook hands with the manager as I gave him my badge outside, and started working in Tampa this Monday.
Trying to keep very little downtime between contracting assignments. Had six weeks of non-vacation downtime in my 25 years and six months of working.
Probably won’t see responses to this, as I only have my iPad with me. Don’t know how to search this blog from my iPad yet.
Bill — Good luck to you in FL. It must be fun to be a young 50-something, footloose and fancy free in a new city. This is an experience that might give 50-something dads a tinge of envy.
Well, hey, welcome to the jungle, baby!
If you ever roll in Pinellas and need recommendations, let me know.
ah, Tampa Bay in the winter.
Go grab your rollerblades and head out to Bayshore Blvd in Tampa, the Pinellas Trail, or Fort DeSoto Park.
Hi Bill keep mobile that’s the way to do it
And watch out for alligators
This news should cheers those who worry about future pension costs.
American life expectancy has fallen slightly after years of increases.
A baby born in 2008 could expect to live 77.8 years, down from a high of 77.9 years the year before, according to preliminary data published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
The change of about a month is “minuscule,” said the report’s lead author, Arialdi Minino of the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.
The cause of the slight decline in overall life expectancy is unclear.
“It’s something to keep our eyes on,” said Ken Thorpe, a health policy professor at Emory University in Atlanta, who suggested it could be related to rising obesity rates.
In comparison, Statistics Canada reported in February that a Canadian’s life expectancy at birth reached 80.7 years during the three-year period from 2005 through 2007.
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Robo-signers versus foreclosure defense attorneys? I’d pay good money to see them go twelve rounds in a survival match where both sides are locked inside a cage.
P.S. BIF: Watch out for them gators!
Nationwide Title goes on attack against vocal critics
By Susan Taylor Martin, Times Senior Correspondent
Friday, December 10, 2010
Nationwide Title Clearing, a Palm Harbor company at the center of the nation’s robo-signing controversy, is going on the offensive against its critics.
On Wednesday, the company sued a St. Petersburg foreclosure defense lawyer, Matthew Weidner, for alleged libel and slander.
And it recently obtained an injunction, ordering Sarasota lawyer Christopher Forrest to remove videotaped depositions he had posted of three Nationwide Title employees describing an assembly-line process of signing mortgage-related documents.
The ACLU of Florida said Thursday that it has filed an emergency appeal of the injunction, which it called a “gag order” and a restraint of free speech.
The legal action marks another chapter in a storm over the validity of documents used to foreclose on millions of American homes. Earlier this fall, Bank of America and other lenders temporarily halted foreclosure proceedings because of evidence that many documents contained errors and fraudulent statements.
…
On the hunt for alligator
Nearly 12-foot long alligator caught near downtown St. Pete
Braving alligators to dive for golf balls
7-foot alligator removed from Tampa middle school
Authorities ‘arrest’ gator in East Lake
Gator bites handler during show
Large alligator captured in Clearwater
As growth outlook improves, some investors swap bonds for stocks
Rising interest rates are triggering losses on fixed-income securities, while the stock market is hitting multiyear highs on economic hopes.
By Tom Petruno Market Beat
December 11, 2010
Millions of Americans have turned their backs on the stock market since the 2008 crash. But lately, some of them must be wistfully looking over their shoulders.
The Vanguard 500 Index fund, which tracks the blue-chip Standard & Poor’s 500 index and is a staple mutual fund of 401(k) retirement plans, now is up 13.3% year to date, counting price appreciation and dividend income.
Buy-and-hold bombed as a stock investment strategy from 2000 through 2008, but if this year’s gains stick the market will have generated back-to-back double-digit returns in 2009 and 2010.
Who knew?
…
Wall Street banksters, who were made whole when the rest of the U.S. was thrown under the proverbial bus back in Fall 2008, now has the states by the balls.
* BUSINESS
* DECEMBER 11, 2010
Illinois Seeks Wall Street Cash
State Pitches Plan for Trading Houses and Hedge Funds to Help Pay Its Vendors
By MIKE SPECTOR And MICHAEL CORKERY
Times have gotten so tough for the Illinois state government that it has begun turning to Wall Street trading houses and hedge funds to help pay its bills.
The state owes more than $4.5 billion to vendors large and small, ranging from prison-cleaning crews to schools for the disabled. Tax shortfalls and pension obligations continue to leave the state light on cash.
Quietly, the state has begun reaching out to Wall Street and other investors with a novel plan to plug this shortfall. Instead of further tapping the public debt markets, Illinois is trying to tap private sources for short-term cash to repay vendors.
Such efforts reflect the pressure many U.S. states face and raise questions about the lengths some governments should go to in funding their operations. And they put Illinois, which has endured budget strains for a decade, in the uncomfortable position of pitching its fiscal problems as someone else’s profit opportunity.
…
Is this the moment in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy discovers the man behind the curtain to be the same scam artist she knew back in Kansas?
Up Front Blog
The Fed Uncloaked
Federal Reserve System, Financial Institutions, U.S. Congress
Sarah A. Binder, Senior Fellow, Governance Studies
Mark Spindel, Chief Investment Officer, Potomac River Capital LLC
December 07, 2010 —
Instructed by Congress and the president, and after repeated Freedom of Information Act requests, the Federal Reserve last week finally lifted the veil of secrecy that cloaked more than three trillion dollars in emergency loans made by the central bank at the height of the financial crisis. The list of recipients who came calling at the Fed reads like a Who’s Who of American financial and corporate life: Goldman Sachs, General Electric, Caterpillar, McDonalds, J.P. Morgan, and hundreds more.
The fallout from the disclosures has been a flurry of reporting on the recipients of the emergency loans, here and abroad. Who benefitted from the Fed’s emergency programs? What conflicts of interest lurk in the Fed’s compendium of borrowers? These are important questions, particularly given how much the Fed resisted opening its balance sheet to the public.
Focusing only on the loan data, however, risks losing sight of the political consequences of the Fed’s disclosures. The revelations confirm the worst suspicions of the Fed’s critics on the left and right and will further harm the Fed’s already tarnished reputation.
First, Congress’s Audit-the-Fed movement is taking a victory lap. On the far left, critics like Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) claim that the disclosures are proof positive the Fed cannot be trusted. On the far right, critics like Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) argue that a one-time audit is not enough. What we really need, Ron Paul says, is a Wikileaks episode to expose the inner workings of the Fed. After two decades of his often-solitary campaign to end the Fed, Ron Paul is poised as the likely head of the House’s monetary policy panel to push for additional disclosures.
Second, the disclosures will fuel the fire of anti-bailout activists. News that the Fed loaned billions to the most powerful, wealthy, and politically connected Wall Street firms confirms Main Street suspicions that the nation’s central bank is completely captured by the entities it oversees. The central bank’s impunity in lending to powerful financial interests is bound to raise the ire of Tea Partiers who already distrust the Fed. Tea Party agitation will encourage Republicans to keep the Fed in its crosshairs once the new Congress descends on Capitol Hill. With their new majority, House Republicans are likely to push for more aggressive oversight of the Fed, seeking to open up its decisions to more frequent and wider scrutiny.
Finally, the disclosures will weaken the Fed’s increasingly tenuous political standing. Unveiling of the Fed’s balance sheet comes at a politically inopportune moment for a fragile Fed. The chair of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, Ben Bernanke, has spent the last several weeks defending the Fed from Republican critics of its large-scale asset purchases. The new disclosures increase the Fed’s woes by re-opening its wounds from the financial crisis. The Fed offered over three trillion dollars worth of subsidies to the biggest and richest institutions in the world under a cloak of secrecy, with no accountability. Handouts to financial and other sectors may have been critical to avoiding financial apocalypse, but we had only the Fed’s word to go on. After the fact disclosure undermines the Fed’s credibility, already in short supply.
…
Arizona News from USA Today
Wall Street interests fed financial panel chair Frank’s campaign
by Fredreka Schouten on Dec. 01, 2010, under USA Today News
Wall Street interests, including a bank that received federal bailout money, contributed last-minute campaign funds to House banking committee chairman Rep. Barney Frank’s toughest re-election bid in years, federal records show.
The political action committees of banks, investment firms and real estate interests — all of which are regulated by Frank’s committee — donated more than $106,000 to the Massachusetts Democrat from Aug. 1 to mid-October, a USA TODAY analysis of campaign-finance data shows.
The donations included $5,000 on Oct. 13 from the political committee of Bank of America, which received $45 billion in federal bailout funds.
As chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Frank oversaw billions in bailout money in the 2008 Troubled Asset Relief Program and helped write legislation signed by President Obama this year that imposed rules on nearly every part of the financial industry.
On Nov. 2, Frank beat Republican Sean Bielat by 10 percentage points, his closest margin of victory in years. Two years earlier, Frank won re-election by 43 percentage points.
Overall, Frank received more campaign money from the securities industry than any other sector, a total of $265,000 through mid-October, according to the most recent campaign reports analyzed by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks money in politics. That’s an uptick from Wall Street contributions to Frank in the 2008 election. Alabama Rep. Spencer Bachus, the committee’s top Republican who is in line to become chairman in January, received $132,000 from the securities industry, the center’s data show. He had no Democratic opposition in this year’s election.
Mary Boyle of the congressional watchdog group Common Cause said last-minute donations to vulnerable incumbents raise questions. “Are you beholden to the public and your constituents or to the donors who just saved your job?” she said. “We have a huge concern that … the public interest takes a back seat.”
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REhobbyist —
Congrats on taking the initiative to set out on a new path, and good luck on the new career!