It’s Going To Go Up If Prices Are Going Down
The Denver Post reports from Colorado. “Colorado homeowner Haidy Emard arrived at the ‘Save the Dream Tour’ at the Colorado Convention Center $40,000 behind on her mortgage payments and on the brink of foreclosure. Emard, who is working two jobs, said her mortgage-servicing company refused to accept payments on her interest-only loan because she was too far behind. In March 2007, she was involved in a car accident that led to the loss of her job. Three months later, her husband lost his job. She hoped Boston-based Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America’s five-day mortgage modification event would add relief to her ailing financial health.”
“NACA CEO Bruce Marks said that typically more than half the homeowners who attend the events leave with ‘affordable solutions.’ Emard’s affordable solution was a mortgage payment of $1,840, $60 more than what she was paying when she arrived at the convention center. However, she now has a fixed annual interest rate of 4.5 percent compared with her previous flexible rate, which was steadily rising. She said if she had not modified her loan, her monthly payments would have risen by July to more than $2,000.”
“‘Now I can make my mortgage payments and keep my house,’ Emard said. ‘That’s the most important part.’”
From ABC 15 in Arizona. “Dottie Sosnicki has owned a 17,000-square-foot home in Litchfield Park for the past four years. She is a realtor while her husband is a custom home builder. ‘The economy happened and he really hasn’t built a custom home in about four years now,’ Sosnicki said.”
“Sosnicki and her family could barely afford to pay their bills, so they began renting out their backyard, which has a playground, pool, waterslide, basketball court and even a miniature pony. Sosnicki said they recently have seen a rise in business, with plenty of groups booking events on the weekend. They charge $10 a person in a group of at least 35 people for four hours.”
“‘We needed some way to continue making our house payment and paying our bills,’ she said.”
The Arizona Daily Star. “Saguaro Ranch, the luxury development in the Tortolita Mountains northwest of Tucson, has gone back to its lenders after a lengthy battle in U.S. Bankruptcy Court. Kennedy Funding Inc. and Anglo-American Financial LLC, the beneficiaries on the loan in default, were the only bidders at a trustee sale Thursday. They won the auction with a bid of $14 million.”
“The lenders filed a foreclosure notice in late February because the developers, led by Stephen Phinny, defaulted on a $50 million loan recorded in December 2005. Phinny - whose grandfather Daniel F. Gerber founded the iconic baby food company Gerber Products Inc. - had high hopes for Saguaro Ranch before the housing crash. He blasted a tunnel through the mountains to reach a pristine desert setting and touted the project as a world-class development. Lots there sold for about $1 million.”
“But the project struggled as property values plummeted. Phinny called it a ’sad day,’ adding, ‘We tried very hard to hang on to this project … so we could pay everyone back.’”
The Salt Lake Tribune in Utah. “There are signs the hardship on Utah homeowners in the early stages of foreclosure will soon worsen. Two years ago, Utah steered nearly $1.8 million in federal stimulus money to strengthening the state’s network of nonprofit foreclosure counselors. That funding is scheduled to end next month, slashing the number of debt counselors by half.”
“‘It is a real concern because, obviously, the problem has not gone away,’ says Marilyn Albertson, a member of the state-backed Utah Foreclosure Prevention Task Force. ‘Many of these people will have to turn to for-fee agencies when they don’t have any money.’”
“But some say the program has failed to make a meaningful difference. ‘Modification, by and large, has not worked,’ says Julia Borst, president of the Utah Mortgage Lenders Association. ‘A lot of people still go into foreclosure.’”
“In Saratoga Springs, Curtis Page is on the edge of eviction and numb from frustration with his bank. When the recession struck and his wife’s online business fizzled, Page negotiated a lower mortgage payment with his lender. Six months into the program, the bank called to say it had lost the papers. It has been a nightmare ever since.”
“Page has argued so long and so hard about a house payment he says he never missed that, whenever a loan agent now calls, the ex-high school football coach simply hands the phone to his wife. ‘Those people that are working there, they’re getting paid minimum wage, $6 to $7 an hour. They don’t know crap,’ he says. ‘It went on and on and on and on. I can’t deal with this anymore.’”
“Loan servicers ‘are numb about this,’ says Raul Campos, a real-estate investor and adviser to foreclosure-threatened homeowners. ‘We used to be able to pull their heartstrings, but now, they could not care less.’”
“Analysis also suggests that foreclosures have thrust a glut of properties onto Utah’s housing markets, with nearly 20,000 homes since July 2008 listed as ‘real-estate owned’ (REO) after delinquent owners were evicted and their homes failed to sell. Overwhelmed banks and management companies often let maintenance on these properties languish, further depressing home prices and devaluing property values for neighboring homeowners.”
“Michael Thornell, a 72-year-old retired civil servant in South Salt Lake, is praying that property values in his area will rebound now that a new family has moved in next door. For 18 months, Thornell watched helplessly as a neighboring home was stripped of its fixtures and left empty, dandelions growing 2 feet high. ‘It brings the neighborhood down, makes it look trashy,’ Thornell says. ‘It looks better now than it has in four years.’”
The Las Vegas Business Press in Nevada. “Foreclosures, distressed sales and dampened demand battered local land values in the first quarter, Las Vegas-based business advisory firm Applied Analysis reports. Vacant Southern Nevada property prices averaged $156,716 an acre at the end of March, or $3.60 per square foot, excluding higher-priced resort property. It reflects a 14.1 percent year-to-year decrease, Applied Analysis said.”
“The price decline worsens when compared against valley land values during real estate’s heyday. First-quarter property values were 83.3 percent less than those at the end of 2007 when the building boom was concluding.”
“The outlook doesn’t look like it will brighten anytime soon, Applied Analysis said. ‘An oversupply environment in all real estate sectors continues to put downward pressure on overall demand for new construction, and ultimately vacant land,’ said Applied Analysis principal Brian Gordon. ‘As more raw land is returned to lenders or sold through distressed transactions, pricing will continue to be impacted.’”
“‘Real estate is about supply and demand, and right now, there is a huge supply in the valley. I haven’t seen many bidding wars lately,’ said Commercial Executives’ corporate broker Soozi Jones Walker. ‘Prices have floated down because of a lack of activity. Trustee deals represent the bulk of activity, which chases values down.’”
From Vegas Inc. in Nevada. “Falling home prices in Las Vegas and prospects they won’t recover soon may trigger a new wave of people walking away from their homes. That’s the concern of those who track the Las Vegas housing market, which is undergoing its own mini version of a double-dip decline in prices. Studies have suggested about one-fourth of Las Vegas foreclosures are so-called strategic defaults in which people walk away even though they can afford their payments.”
“‘I do have concern because as the prices go down further, it might provide more incentive for people to strategically default,’ said Nasser Daneshvary, director of the Lied Institute for Real Estate Studies at UNLV. ‘They still owe the same amount of money to the banks, but I think it’s getting bad enough that the ethical issues become less important to people.’”
“Frank Nason, the corporate broker of Residential Resources Inc., said he’s more concerned about strategic defaults than ever. ‘Friends and associates that would have never considered walking away a year ago to 18 months ago are,’ Nason said. ‘It’s about the dismal outlook going forward. They see it’s going to take a decade before there is any daylight in their house.’”
“Las Vegas housing analyst Dennis Smith, president of Home Builders Research, warned about the problem worsening as well in his recent newsletter to clients. People are angry about sending money to bailed-out lenders.”
“‘The public anger that was apparent in the last congressional election has not dissipated in severely affected housing markets like Las Vegas,’ Smith said. ‘The loss of artificial wealth can be accepted by most, however, it has gone way beyond that and many have also lost a great deal of their life savings and retirement funds in order to honor their obligations on underwater homes.’”
“Richard Plaster, the president of Signature Homes and a leading advocate for people to walk away from their homes, said when homeowners see corporations and other companies getting out of their debt, that makes the alternative more palatable. ‘I don’t think people can stay stupid forever,’ Plaster said. ‘It is definitely going to go up if prices are going down. People who keep paying on their mortgage are going to lose.’”
Let’s contrast a couple of things:
‘Emard, who is working two jobs..Emard’s affordable solution was a mortgage payment of $1,840, $60 more than what she was paying when she arrived at the convention center’
‘Stephen Phinny, defaulted on a $50 million loan recorded in December 2005. Phinny - whose grandfather Daniel F. Gerber founded the iconic baby food company Gerber Products Inc. - had high hopes for Saguaro Ranch before the housing crash.’
‘Lots there sold for about $1 million.’ Phinny called it a ’sad day,’ adding, ‘We tried very hard to hang on to this project … so we could pay everyone back’
I can’t say this developer has the money to ‘pay everybody back’, but I’d bet there’s a chance some of that baby food money is still around. So why doesn’t he just ‘pay everybody back’? Cuz he doesn’t have to.
And neither does the lady in Denver.
Can anyone speak about the pristine desert area that was accessed for this pipe dream?
Didn’t know there was any left in southern Az. If there were any justice, the greedhead who wanted to rape it would spend the rest of his life in abject poverty.
Rogue gallery:
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/get-out-of-town/Content?oid=1074834
That list was very entertaining. Here’s an example:
“If cheap stucco houses are cancer cells metastasizing through our community, KB Home is Tucson’s most dangerous carcinogen. … Whether you’re paying out $93,000 in Arroyo Vista on Drexel Road or $192,000 in Riverhaven on Fort Lowell Road, you’re buying into a walled (but not gated) compound crammed with look-alike beige piles dominated by garage doors.”
“Meanwhile, KB Home continues to dump its excrescencies onto such prime sites as a Phoenix airfield used by pesticide-laden crop dusters and an old bombing range in Texas that had not been certified clear of live ordnance.”
I sure can speak for this pristine desert. It’s saying “Ahhhhhhgggghhh!”
You sound like the desert Lorax.
“Emard, who is working two jobs, said her mortgage-servicing company refused to accept payments on her interest-only loan because she was too far behind. … ‘Now I can make my mortgage payments and keep my house,’ Emard said. ‘That’s the most important part.’”
Emard clearly states that making the mortgage payments and keeping her house is the most important part. It’s the choice she made, and she is willing to work two jobs to make it happen. Why should anyone stand in her way?
The only thing in that story that is standing in her way is the $40,000 she is already behind. If that $40K is money the servicer has but just hasn’t credited to the account, she might be fine. If is is money she wrote the checks for, but the checks were returned and she did not spend the money so she can make a single “catch up” payment, she is fine. If the new payment is part of a brand new loan that incorporates paying off the $40K (capitalizing the skipped payments), she may be fine.
If she has a new payment that she can just make with her two jobs but she also has to come up with $40K that she doesn’t have in the bank in the next few weeks, she probably isn’t fine.
Cuz he doesn’t have to ??
Exactly…These power developers have a uncanny ability to get unbelievable amounts of financing…I know they are required to have some skin in the game but they get that skin back early in the deal through all sorts of fee’s…At the end of the day, the bag-holders are the banks or other passive investors…I am sure Mr. Phinny is down in Southern Florida enjoying the good life…
Did he finish the tunnel through the mountain at least? Tunnels are cool.
He finished it, all right. Oh, boy did he finish that tunnel. All designed to keep the rest of us riff-raff out.
“For 18 months, Thornell watched helplessly as a neighboring home was stripped of its fixtures and left empty, dandelions growing 2 feet high. ‘It brings the neighborhood down, makes it look trashy,’ Thornell says. ‘It looks better now than it has in four years.’”
In Salt Lake City? I thought everyone was a lily-white Mormon.
“Watched helplessly”? I guess it never occurred to him to go next door and mow the lawn.
The DataQuick folks seem to be refraining these days from offering bottom calls with their San Diego data releases (e.g., “We expect the housing market to bottom out by later this year.”). I personally take this as a sign that San Diego home prices are falling with no end in the foreseeable future, but this is just my personal conjecture, so take it with a large grain of salt. But with transactions dropping off from April to May this year, the red-hot summer sales season is not shaping up to be very hot.
Don’t miss the lively comments from the online version of the SD Union-Tribune, posted below.
San Diego home prices, sales fall from one year ago
County saw the steepest year-over-year sales drop among the SoCal counties
By Lily Leung, UNION-TRIBUNE
Monday, June 13, 2011 at 5:47 p.m.
Home sales and prices in San Diego County declined in May from a year ago, in line with the rest of Southern California, DataQuick Information Systems reported Monday.
Some industry experts say the region’s real estate market continues to feel the effects of weak consumer confidence, low job creation and the absence of government incentives that boosted sales a year ago.
“(The numbers) show we’re still not in recovery territory,” said Michael Lea, director of San Diego State University’s real estate center.
San Diego County recorded 3,087 total sales in May, a 20.4 percent drop from the same time a year ago and a 5.8 percent decrease from April. DataQuick records show the local market was 27 percent below its average sales volume for a May, which is 4,257.
The median price for all home types was $324,500, falling 4.6 percent from last year but up 0.9 percent from April.
Throughout Southern California, sales remained at a three-year low in May and the median price fell by 8.2 percent, the largest year-over-year drop in 20 months, DataQuick researchers found.
One year ago, federal and state homebuyers’ tax credits played a big part in luring buyers to the market and causing sales numbers to swell in San Diego County and throughout the state. Without that “artificially induced demand,” Lea said, sales and prices fell.
“It’s just a low number,” he said. “It wasn’t that great last year historically.”
Andrew LePage, a DataQuick analyst, said some neighborhoods in San Diego and throughout the state are “really close” to their post-boom price lows in 2009, while many are about 5 percent above that level.
May’s S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index, another key housing monitor, also showed home prices declining in San Diego County. Prices fell 4 percent in March, the biggest year-over-year decrease in 18 months. The Case-Shiller report, which tracks sales of the same properties, has a two-month lag.
Distressed properties continue to influence the San Diego market, LePage said. Foreclosures made up 30.9 percent of the resale market, up from 29.6 percent one year ago. About 19 percent of total sales in May were short sales, down slightly from last year, at 20.5 percent.
Other factors that analysts say are likely pushing down prices: hesitant consumers waiting for prices to bottom out, strict lending guidelines and homeowners unwilling to move because they’re severely underwater on their mortgages.
…
Click on the link and scroll down to the bottom of the SD U-T web page if you want to read the comments.
San Diego Home Prices Are Down… Again
By Tom Fudge
June 13, 2011
SAN DIEGO — Dataquick today said that the median home price last month in Southern California was down 8.2 percent compared to May of 2010. The price drop in San Diego County was only about half of that. But San Diego led all other So-Cal counties in its falling number of home sales.
Home sales in San Diego last month totaled 3,087, down more than 20 percent from May of last year.
The new home market has been especially slow. Only 1,152 new homes sold across Southern California in May. Dataquick said that represents the fewest home sales for the month of May since at least 1988.
The sluggish market is blamed on anxious consumers, tight credit and a stubbornly high rate of unemployment. Most home-market experts point out that last year’s sale numbers were inflated, due to federal homebuyer tax credits that have since expired.
…
“‘I do have concern because as the prices go down further, it might provide more incentive for people to strategically default,’ said Nasser Daneshvary, director of the Lied Institute for Real Estate Studies at UNLV.
At least the Institute was appropriately named.
What are those all-cash investors going to do with their falling knife purchases, given the never-ending march of SoCal home price declines? I suppose they can hang on to their vacant properties forever if they choose to do so. It seems like very many people are banking on the Fed creating high inflation some time soon, and I just don’t see it happening this time the way it did in the late 1970s. To put a point on it, you can’t inflate yourself out of the greatest period of residential real estate price inflation in history.
Published: June 13, 2011
Updated: 4:44 p.m.
SoCal home sales drop for 11th month
By JEFF COLLINS
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Southern California home sales fell on a year-over-year basis for an 11th consecutive month in May, falling 17.4% from May 2010 levels, DataQuick Information Services has reported.
Sales drops occurred throughout the region, ranging from a 15% decline in Ventura County to a 20.4% drop in San Diego County.
The median price of a SoCal home fell 8.2% to $280,000.
“We sit in the market doldrums,” said DataQuick President John Walsh. DataQuick blamed the continuing slump on buyer uncertainty, tight credit and lackluster hiring.
South Orange County agent Steve Thomas reported that a Google search of the term “housing double dip” turns up 782,000 hits since May 30.
Cash sales accounted for 29.1% of all Southern California deals in May, DataQuick reported. Distressed property sales accounted for more than half of the existing homes resold last month.
“From a nonscientific basis we can feel that (sales drop),” observed central Orange County agent Dick Lobin, with Century 21 Olympic Team. “Usually we get a seasonal pop in May, June, July and August. We don’t feel it (this year), and in fact, it’s down.”
…
What are those all-cash investors going to do with their falling knife purchases, given the never-ending march of SoCal home price declines?
They are going to walk away, and the bank’s liabilities will simply be transferred to taxpayers. This is what the sheeple keep voting for despite their supposed protests.
“Dottie Sosnicki has owned a 17,000-square-foot home in Litchfield Park for the past four years. She is a realtor while her husband is a custom home builder … [who] hasn’t built a custom home in about four years now. Sosnicki and her family could barely afford to pay their bills, so they began renting out their backyard, which has a playground, pool, waterslide, basketball court and even a miniature pony.”
Thanks for the laugh Ben. They can’t afford to pay their bills but they are trying to hang on to a 17k sq ft home? I didn’t even know such homes existed, and assume you have to earn well over 150k just to pay for taxes, insurance, utilities and maintenance. Doesnt sound like much of a retirement plan.
It was the only way to get rich. Was.
Not very well hedged these folks. Both working in the real estate boom and all in on the same horse with their “investments”.
“Let’s see, rich people have big houses and a lot of stuff, so if I buy a big house and a lot of stuff, I’ll be rich!”
If I were one of Dottie’s neighbors, I’d be on the phone to the city of Litchfield Park in a nanosecond. Or I’d be using that city’s online code violation reporting form.
Why? Because I’ll bet that she doesn’t have a business license for her little venture. Furthermore, since it’s in a residential area, she probably has to have what the City of Tucson calls a Home Occupancy Registration. I have one for my studio here in Tucson.
In essence, a Home Occupancy Registration comes with a set of rules that home-based businesses are to follow. Included among them is the requirement that your business is not to make noises or emit smells that go beyond your property line.
Methinks that parties attracting dozens of people are making noises and emitting smells that go all over the neighborhood.
Yea but she and her husband prayed about it, she must have been approved by god to charge for parties.
‘The economy happened and he really hasn’t built a custom home in about four years now,’ Sosnicki said.”
~ I love it! “The economy happened” Really? Wow!
~ I love it! “The economy happened” Really? Wow!
Slim here. I’ll be the first to admit that the past five years haven’t been rosy for my little design and photography studio.
However, this is not to say that I’m sitting on my slender little haunches and saying, “The economy happened.” No way. As hard as it is to find business, I prospect every working day. That’s a given.
And I’ll confess to something: It was only after two years of business sliding down the hill (between the summer of 2005 and the summer of 2007) that I realized that it was time for me to do something different.
After all, I couldn’t live on the repeat business that I had for a long time. Between the end of 2005 and mid-2006, two of my golden repeaters went away, never to return.
So I started cold calling. Warm calling. Doing more cold calling. And warm calling. It just doesn’t stop. It can’t stop. That’s how things are in business.
You have to keep finding new leads and reaching out to them. Repeat business is not enough. Nor is depending on word of mouth referrals. Because people have lots of other things to talk about besides you and your business.
If God exists, I suspect that Dottie and her husband are abominations in his eyes. A 17,000 sq foot house? Talk about wretched excess and living beyond your means. These people are the epitome of the grotesque materialism and indifference to sustainable living that has overtaken America.
I see the potential for a reality tv show here. Let’s call it “Pimping my Pony”.
I went to the link, and she credits the renting-out-the-backyard idea to God, who allegedly wants them to keep a house big enough for that reality-television idiot with four wives and seventeen kids.
I have a sneaking suspicion that she has neither incorporated nor upped her homeowners insurance coverage to address the potential liabilities here.
Well, lookie here. It’s info on how to report code violations in Litchfield Park, Arizona. Have fun!
“Well, lookie here. It’s info on how to report code violations in Litchfield Park, Arizona. Have fun!”
Yes, and I’ll bet they are hiding/housing People in their attic too, they must be reported to the authorities at once, after all, sensibilities have been offended too.
Why, we can’t allow these homeowers to think they can do as they please as long as they don’t hurt anyone, that just wouldn’t do.
That which is not permitted is prohibited.
Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato
Why, we can’t allow these homeowers to think they can do as they please as long as they don’t hurt anyone, that just wouldn’t do.
If I was a neighbor I’d dime these people out in a minute. On weekends the last thing I’d want to hear is a mini-amusement part next door or to have their “customers” parking in front of my house. If they aren’t zoned for this, I wouldn’t put up with it.
“On weekends the last thing I’d want to hear is a mini-amusement part next door or to have their “customers” parking in front of my house. ”
… and how would that be any different than if they were doing this for free and with friends and relatives?
Birthday parties are criminal acts?
Social gatherings are criminal acts?
Garage sales are criminal acts?
Offending sensibilities are criminal acts?
Welcome to the new U.S.S.R.,… or is that the new East Germany?
I woke up this morning and thought “Did I REALLY read an article about a RE agent owning a 17,000 square foot house with a pony?” I had to come back here to verify that yes, I did.
This just floors me. 17 THOUSAND square feet! If you could afford it then go for it - I can’t remember how large Shaq’s House was when I saw it on MTV Cribs, but it was large and he could afford it.
Just to compare - Mount Vernons’ square footage is roughly 10,000 square feet.
Maybe these people should start marketing their home to NBA stars. ‘Cause once their little rent-the-yard scheme is outed, they’re toast.
If anyone who reads here doubts at this stage that the $8K tax credit was an abysmally bad idea, I am highly interested in the reasons; please post your explanation!
As regards the “median home price falling by 6.3 percent to $150,000″ in San Bernardino County, this size price decline would be sufficient to have shaved off 0.063/(1-0.063)*$150,000 = $10,085, more than fully offsetting the value of the $8000 tax credit to new home buyers.
Housing market
Sales hit 3-year low
Business suffers all over SoCal
Sandra Emerson, Staff Writer
Posted: 06/13/2011 09:22:11 PM PDT
Southern California home sales last month were 29 percent below the May average, and new homes sold at their lowest level for a May since at least 1988. San Bernardino County home sales dropped 18.1 percent from last year. (LaFonzo Carter/Staff Photographer)
Southern California home sales continued at a snail’s pace in May while the median sale price fell by the largest amount in 20 months.
The poor performances were due to buyer uncertainty, tight credit and lackluster hiring, according to San Diego-based DataQuick Information Systems.
Last month’s home sales for all Southern California counties were 29 percent below the May average.
Sales in May were only lower in three years: 1993, 1995 and 2008.
“It just speaks to the weakness in the housing market,” said Andrew
LePage, an analyst for DataQuick. “Historically speaking, these are very weak sales across Southern California.”
The 1,152 newly built homes that sold in the Southland last month
marked the lowest new-home total for the month of May since at least 1988, according to DataQuick.
The number of homes sold in San Bernardino County dropped 18.1 percent since May 2010, with the median home price falling by 6.3 percent to $150,000.
However, according to economist John Husing, the $150,000 home price has remained steady for several months, and comparing median home price to a year ago is a false comparison.
“The reason for that was a year ago there was an upward movement in price because federal tax credits were convincing an inordinate number of people to go out and buy houses, so it was an abnormal situation,” Husing said.
He said the volume of homes sold also surged last year due to the tax credit.
…
Maybe if all unemployed Southern Californians would just find jobs with Hollywood production teams, we could turn this housing crash around!
Southern California home prices continue slide in May
The median price falls 8.2% from a year earlier to $280,000, the region’s 11th consecutive decline. Sales drop 17.4% to 18,394, a three-year low for May.
By Alejandro Lazo, Los Angeles Times
June 14, 2011
Southern California’s housing market weakened in May, with prices and sales dropping in all of the region’s counties, providing further evidence of a sluggish spring shopping season.
The region’s median home price fell 8.2% from the same month last year to $280,000 and was unchanged from April, according to DataQuick in San Diego. It was the largest amount the median has fallen year-over-year in 20 months and represented the 11th consecutive decline.
Sales fell 17.4% from May 2010, with a total of 18,394 newly built and previously owned homes sold in the region last month. That sales tally was a three-year low for the month. Sales were essentially flat from April to May, up 0.3%.
Lingering economic uncertainties have left the market soft since the expiration of tax credits for home buyers, which fueled the market last year. Some economists also have said bank lending remains tight.
“People are gloomy,” said Richard Green, director of USC’s Lusk Center for Real Estate. “But if you look at our job numbers over the last year, we are not doing bad.”
The difficulty of getting a mortgage is a big part of the problem, Green said.
“Hollywood is hiring, Silicon Valley is hiring. I think things are getting better in California,” Green said. “I think housing is about as much about the availability of credit as anything else.”
…
The son of a former coworker was hired by Hollywood. Last I heard, he was a union stagehand.
From what his mom (my former coworker) said, such jobs are NOT easy to get. You have to have sterling recommendations just to be considered. And then you have to work like a dawg to keep your job.
Yah… Silicon Valley is not hiring all that aggressively. A lot of companies are out of hiring lock down, but they’re not staffing up in anticipation of massive growth, that’s for sure.
““‘I do have concern because as the prices go down further, it might provide more incentive for people to strategically default,’ said Nasser Daneshvary, director of the Lied Institute for Real Estate Studies at UNLV. ‘They still owe the same amount of money to the banks, but I think it’s getting bad enough that the ethical issues become less important to people.’””
Tell me again why is it, when a business does a strategic default, it’s a sound business decision, the responsible thing to do, but when Joe Homeunderwater does the same thing for the same reason, suddenly it’s a major ethical issue?
why is it, when a business does a strategic default, it’s a sound business decision, the responsible thing to do, but when Joe Homeunderwater does the same thing for the same reason, suddenly it’s a major ethical issue?
One reason is because 90% of the media is owned by 6 mammoth corporations. Unlike business BK protections, strategic mortgage defaults hurt mammoth corporations and mammoth corporations like to stick together.
Unlike business BK protections, strategic mortgage defaults hurt mammoth corporations and mammoth corporations like to stick together.
I’m visualizing a picture of a bunch of wooly mammoths stomping around. And they’re not at all happy about this juxtaposition of their behavior with that of Joe Homeowner’s.
I too find this interesting. The media, who made home ownership into a huge game of investing and flipping and profiting and the easy way to wealth suddenly paints a picture of shame for the “homeowner.” It’s either a home or a business decision. Pick one.
People who make decisions based on information in the corporate-owned media are empty-headed sheep who deserve to be fleeced and financially slaughtered.
I find this quite hypocritical. These mammoth corporations who like to Stick Together and Merge and Form Holding Companies just so happen to be the same corporations who hate “union goons” and encouraged — nay, FORCED — everyone out of union pensions and into separate 401Ks so that we could control our OWN destiny? That is, the big boyz like their monopolistic union collusions on a grand scale while the little guy gets to fend for himself individually, with “hard work.”
Julius Ceaser could not have divided and conquered more effectively.
why is it an ethical issue to default?
You both signed the contract. If you don’t make the payments, as specified in the contract, then they repossess your house, as also specified in the contract. All very business-like and proper, AND ethical.
The fact that the idiot bank officers never considered that the collateral on the loan could become worth less than the balance on the loan is NOT the borrower’s fault.
The Denver Post reports from Colorado. “Colorado homeowner Haidy Emard arrived at the ‘Save the Dream Tour’ at the Colorado Convention Center $40,000 behind on her mortgage payments and on the brink of foreclosure.
They should call it “Save the Scheme.” It isn’t about “helping” underwater homeowners and FBs; it’s about persuading them to to exercise the “squat rent free for an average of 540 days” option. Screw the banks and their servicers. They and their Republicrat henchmen created an environment of moral hazard; now the FBs have torn a page out of the bankster playbook and are flipping off their liabilities onto someone else - ultimately, Ben Bernanke’s printing press.
“Richard Plaster, the president of Signature Homes and a leading advocate for people to walk away from their homes, said when homeowners see corporations and other companies getting out of their debt, that makes the alternative more palatable. ‘I don’t think people can stay stupid forever,’ Plaster said.
People have lost all respect for lending institutions, and deservedly so. FBs who took out liar loans and lived beyond their means could not be expected to have any reservations about gaming the system or walking away from underwater loans (which is why 20% down should be mandatory). Banks who engaged in fraudulent and unsound lending practices thinking they’d dump their toxic waste mortgages on MBS bagholders should’ve been forced to repurchase those loans, even if it drove them into bankruptcy. Instead they dumped those liabilities onto Uncle Sam, and forced the dwindling tax base to involuntarily pay for the banksters’ swindles and recklessness. I for one have no qualms now about advising acquaintances who are under water to stop paying the mortgage and demand to see proof the foreclosing bank actually holds the title. This is the logical consequence of the moral hazard that government meddling in the housing market, and banker control of our political process, has brought about.