Bits Bucket for October 26, 2013
Post off-topic ideas, links, and Craigslist finds here.
The Housing Bubble
Examining the home price boom and its effect on owners, lenders, regulators, realtors and the economy as a whole.
About Me
Name:Ben Jones
Location:Northern Arizona, United States
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Day 3-
To Our Blog Liar “Rio”:
Post up a phone pic of your “ocean” or a simple scene in “brazil”. Make sure you got your middle finger in the picture so we understand clearly that it’s you.
Show us “Rio”
He can’t. He’s on the run from the law.
Post up a phone pic of your “ocean” or a simple scene in “brazil”. Make sure you got your middle finger in the picture so we understand clearly that it’s you.
Day 3:
If I post it. You have to donate $500 to Ben’s blog. Deal?
(If you’re so sure I don’t live in Rio, this would be no money from you right?)
It’s got nothing to do with Ben Jones.
It’s all about you liar.
It’s got nothing to do with Ben Jones.
This is dumb. Really dumb even for you. But, I don’t entertain clowns for free who have lost their marbles. I can be at a Copacabana webcam anytime today you agree to give Ben’s blog $500. Chicken? If you’re correct you’re out nothing. You should do this. Prove to everyone I’m a liar. You should do this.
http://copacabana.com/cameras/
It’s just like this liar. It’s easy. Take a picture of the ocean you boast about. You’re a liar.
http://picpaste.com/pics/c2c3cff8c7bddd43ede90cf02f5306b9.1382815088.jpg
I am now a believer!!!
It’s easy. Take a picture of the ocean you boast about.
Promise to donate $500 to Ben’s blog and I will. Take a pool. Get all your fascist friends who I school to chip in. You should do it. Coward.
I am now a believer!!!
Bill, you say you’re rich. Will you donate $500 to Ben’s blog if I dance an Irish jig today in a White Cowboy hat in front of a Rio live street webcam today? You will right?
I’m beginning to believe that HA really does work around construction: first a picture with rulers plans in the foreground, then a picture with masonry and scaffolding.
Maybe he really is what he pretends to be on the internet??
You’re a joke.
I’m beginning to believe that HA really does work around construction:
Why would you ever doubt? What’s the big deal? Is it like he would want to lie about it so he seemed like he knows what houses cost? It’s obvious he knows how much houses cost to build. He just never considers the land cost. In that sense he puts out fraudulent info on a daily basis.
Run you coward.
You’re a joke.
No joke. If someone donates $500 to Ben’s blog in the next half hour, (I have stuff to do) I’ll dance an Irish jig in a White Cowboy hat in front of a Rio live street webcam today.
Who want’s to see if I’m lying or that Housing Analyst is truly off his rocker?
Come on people let’s do it
Why would you ever doubt? What’s the big deal?
(in best Foghorn Leghorn voice) “It’s a joke, son.”
I never doubted it, truth be told—but on the internet, as the saying goes, no one knows you’re a dog.
As he is constantly accusing others of being liars, I thought there was some entertainment value in asserting that he was not.
The HA contrapositive, as it were.
Run coward run.
Why would you ever doubt? What’s the big deal?
I was also suggesting HA’s assertion that I don’t live in Rio is kind of dumb.
Why would anyone doubt it? What’s the bid deal? What advantage does it give me in discussions? It’s strange, HA’s OCD.
As he is constantly accusing others of being liars,
I find him a odd, angry little dude. His constant name calling to so many peeps makes me think something is not quite right in his world.
I was also suggesting HA’s assertion that I don’t live in Rio is kind of dumb.
Ah, sorry if I missed _your_ point.
Agreed. What possible reason would there be for someone to lie about being an expat living in Rio??
Hiding coward.
If someone donates $500 to Ben’s blog in the next half hour, (I have stuff to do) I’ll dance an Irish jig in a White Cowboy hat in front of a Rio live street webcam today.
Hurry!……See if HA is a paranoid nut or if Rio’s a liar. AND as an added bonus, you get to see if I’m a guy or a gal. (Which anyone who’s paid attention already knows) Hurry. It be gettin’ dark soon.
That’s me, right there in the yellow car.
That’s me, right there in the yellow car.
Dancing an Irish jig in a Rolling Stones t-shirt and white cowboy hat?
It’s easy to prove you’re not a liar.
You can’t seem to do it.
It’s easy to prove you’re not a liar.
You can’t seem to do it.
Of course it’s easy. I just don’t respect you. Why do I need to prove something to someone I don’t respect?
It also makes you look like an idiot so I’ll milk it.
You’re afraid.
Why is that?
Bill, you say you’re rich.
Huh? Where did I say I was rich? I wish I was rich. Then I would diversify my addresses into various places around the world: Hong Kong, Switzerland, New Zealand, USA, and Singapore.
I can retire now and live in a red state (Arizona) that has castle doctrine and I can enjoy owning and target shooting with my LE 6940 instead of miss my gun from California.
You got nothin’ HA.
Your bluff has been called and now you just look petty. One could even say, troll-like.
Do need a bigger shovel? More rope?
You’re dreaming again.
We don’t want to see an idiot dance. Anywhere.
“And always remember……. Depreciating assets like a house always represents a loss. The losses are magnified tremendously when the asset is financed.”
Exactly.
And always remember……. Depreciating assets like a house always represents a loss.
Not true. My paid off house will have paid for itself in “free rent” next year. And the house will be worth the next 5 years in free rent, and after that, it will be too. So where’s the loss?
My paid off house will have paid for itself in “free rent” next year. And the house will be worth the next 5 years in free rent, and after that, it will be too.
Wait, didn’t you say at some point that your house had gone up quite a bit since you bought it? I seem to recall it doubling, though I could be way off on that.
But that would suggest that you purchased it for about 2.5yrs worth of rent payments.
How can that be possible? That sounds remarkably cheap…
That sounds remarkably cheap…
It was cheap and not typical. I built my house, not bought it. This is all in this blog’s history. The first time I want to Brazil was the late 80’s. The lot was bought years before we built - during one of Brazils Currency crises when today’s one million dollar apartments were going for about a small fraction of that. It’s also in a villa (narrow cul de sac with single family houses and duplexes as opposed to hi-rises) These were not popular 15-20 years ago because Rio people were only used to apartments and ungated villas were not safe. Now villas are all the rage. And Now that they’ve added an awesome security gate on the this villa, it is even more all the rage.
“I built my house.”
- “You didn’t build it.”
This just keeps getting more comedic.
Interesting; thanks for the details–I had missed those somewhere along the way.
- “You didn’t build it.”
Your right, I had it built but I did work on it too. And there are many ways to build a house. To do it totally legal and with all the correct papers is something else.
My house is also in a “historical” zone which requires a whole other deal with a totally different f*&(*d up government office.
(See Bill, I don’t like all government, far from it)
Hey can you spot HA $500?
Wonderful. Liberals living in million dollar gated enclaves while in the slums next door poor kids are shot by the cops. Great place from which to preach about how hard working people of this country should fork over even more money to keep the socialist elite afloat.
Romney, bahh!
Wonderful. Liberals living in million dollar gated enclaves while in the slums next door poor kids are shot by the cops. Great place from which to preach about how hard working people of this country should fork over even more money to invest in America so it does not become a country of the rich living in million dollar gated enclaves while in the slums next door poor kids are shot by the cops.
Fixed it. Read it 4 times so you can think about it.
Obama, bahh!
Walk the walk then. You are a lib. You champion the poor and downtrodden. Convert your house to allow 20 poor Brazilian people to live with you. Also be sure to pay for their health care.
You keep pushing for spreading the wealth around. It should begin with you.
I kind of expected him to deny living in a million dollar gated enclave next to slums where poor kids are shot by cops. Instead, he equates paying money to keep the socialist elite afloat with investing in this country.
I don’t think anyone here really has much of a problem with helping out the poor, especially to try to get on their feet and out of an awful situation many were just born into. The problem is the abled bodied being subsidized to stay at home, develop no work ethic or skills, and continue the cycle of poverty that handouts from your liberally minded masters have enshrined into our system. Your solution and the solution of those with your same bent is always the same, more and more money for more and more entitlement programs that do nothing to move towards a solution. Crickey, how many more poor children do you need to see condemned to this cycle of poverty before you admit that it just isn’t working.
Convert your house to allow 20 poor Brazilian people to live with you
I’ll get right on that -have to ask my HOA.
Also be sure to pay for their health care.
Why? They get it for “free”.
You keep pushing for spreading the wealth around. It should begin with you.
I have. Probably a lot more than you.
You are a lib.
No, I’m in the middle. Everything I champion, progressive taxes, universal health-care and good jobs are majority supported issues in the USA. By definition, that puts me in the middle. It is you who are totally off the grid when it comes to public opinion and reality.
I kind of expected him to deny living in a million dollar gated enclave next to slums where poor kids are shot by cops.
Why would I? I didn’t invent the Brazilian system dude.
he equates paying money to keep the socialist elite afloat with investing in this country.
No. Dude. You are wrong. I equate USA investing in it’s middle class with the USA not turning into a “country of the rich living in million dollar gated enclaves while in the slums next door poor kids are shot by the cops.”
Try to use ur noggin. It’s fun.
BS. Rio went down there to take care of his parents. Now he has their estate. Mama would have kicked his butt for stuffing toilet paper in his ear and then screaming like a baby if she were still kickin.
Doesn’t matter how you got the goods, you are headed for a bit of a writedown.
BS. Rio went down there to take care of his parents. Now he has their estate.
Fail. My parents are American.
Anything is possible with a liar.
“Anything is possible with a liar”.
HA’s father discussing HA’s future. 1974
What are you so afraid of?
“What are you so afraid of?”
HA’s mother after HA peed his pants again. 1998
Your fear is showing again.
HA……hahahaha….HA is a laugh a minute!
Rio, I posted up $1000 to Ben in August when I sold a house (1% of the gain…….HA said I would lose lose money). I’ll post another $500. Just let me know when you prove him wrong. He said I lied about being in Lehigh Acres a few weeks ago too, so I am sure HA will lose your challenge also!
And you really think anyone here believes you? LOLZ
Jingle,
See comment on your kind review.
Now you have me curios…..getting out of warm bed to go to computer!
You’re a fraud.
If you take on mortgage debt at current massively inflated housing prices, you’ll enslave yourself for the rest of your life.
“Debt is bondage.”~ Suze Orman, May 11, 2013
Don’t Be A Debt Donkey®
“How do you make a small fortune? Borrow a large fortune and buy a house.”
You better believe it Mister.
“Why would pay more than new construction cost ($55 per square foot) for a rapidly depreciating 20+ year old resale house?”
Let me guess…… Because realtors tell you that the cost of a house cannot be evaluated using math?
“A single family residence always results in a net loss.”
Especially when you double the loss by financing.
I am busy this weekend and I don’t have time to fact check his “math.”
But it looks alot worse than I have realized.
From market-ticker web site…..
Folks, if you have read me recently you know that I’ve said that you are the problem and that the reason this is true is that you won’t go on strike, you won’t picket DC and refuse to leave until the government stops stealing from you and debasing the currency, you won’t reduce your spending and income to only that which provides necessities, and most of you go on to justify your behavior with “my kids (and/or family) deserve what I can provide.”
You’re fools and I’m going to prove it.
Further, I’m going to prove — by arithmetic — that if you follow the above path you will destroy yourself along with your children and grandchildren.
Here’s why.
There were 108,592,000 people in the United States in the fourth quarter of 2011 who were recipients of one or more means-tested government benefit programs, the Census Bureau said in data released this week. Meanwhile, according to the Census Bureau, there were 101,716,000 people who worked full-time year round in 2011. That included both private-sector and government workers.
None of the people getting means-tested government benefits will ever vote to reduce them, nor vote for any politician that will reduce them.
But it’s factually much worse than it first appears because federal government workers will not vote to fire themselves either, just as the 17th Amendment (ed: The worst thing to ever happen to this country) is inviolate because The Senate will never vote to fire itself.
So we must in fact subtract 21,880,000 from the full-time worker count.
In other words you’re outvoted by 36%.
Does it make sense yet? This is not a small margin and it cannot be politically reversed because the margins are too high. Were the skew relatively small (and it looks small until you subtract out federal workers) you could potentially do so, because some people won’t vote and you could “motivate the base.” But note that with the federal workers out, and we’re not subtracting the State workers, which also exist on this same largesse, you can’t get there because this means nearly 40% of those receiving such benefits would have to stay home when reductions are proposed, and they never will.
As such you cannot vote your way out of this.
You cannot politically organize your way out of this.
You can’t do it in the Democrat Party and you can’t do it in the Republican Party. Nor can you do it in a third party.
Every single person who argues otherwise is an idiot or worse, a fraudster (if they have run the numbers above.)
Delusions persist because people don’t examine the facts in detail. I recognize that I participated in attempting to politically change things for far too long because I did not look, in detail, at the math.
But I can no longer make any logical argument that political activism is useful in any way, shape or form. It is a waste of energy, time and money that I can expend elsewhere on something that brings me more joy, rather than tilting at windmills.
There is only one remaining peaceful way to change things: Withdraw your consent and thus intentionally but peacefully and lawfully destabilize the underpinning of the government debt market, thereby denying the government the means to continue screwing you, your children and grandchildren irrespective of the vote count.
The only other choices remaining are consenting to your own economic death, along with that of your children and grandchildren, or violence.
If you claim that you will “get yours” for “your kids” (or your spouse, or just yourself) you’re deluding yourself as the odds are that (1) you will fail and (2) even if you “succeed” the victory will be both temporary and pyrrhic as you cannot overcome the voting block deficiency.
In short, read this Ticker again in light of the above mathematical facts.
Then act, or not, but the math doesn’t care if you agree with it or not.
Link please.
I don’t know how to post a link, but google “peaceful path Karl Deninger” and the market-ticker link to it should come up.
Thanks.
This is why my analogy of voting is like that mechanical horse race gambling joint in Robin Williams’ Popeye movie. Everyone gambling thinks they have a chance of winning. It is all rigged by the casino operator.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
As we watched and blogged about the Housing Bubble here from 2004 or so on, there were many who saw what was happening and correctly called the bust on the radar. What happened next is what really proved to me that we are living inside a 3 ring circus with Corporate, Government and means tested beneficiaries running the rings and the show.
Since the Bubble burst what I have seen is a shocking manipulation of our economy and a shift of power “from each according to their abilities to each according to their needs”. In truth this shift has been underway for far longer. Hayek raised the flag in 1944 with “The Road To Serfdom”. His Conclusion included, “We shall not grow wiser before we learn that much of what we have done was very foolish.”
Continuing to believe that a political solution is possible is, IMHO, very foolish. I no longer wish to be in the Big Tent, I see no personal value watching the Acts, being entertained, nor part of the oohing crowd.
So what’s a person to do? Not many of us are wealthy industrialists a la Howard Roark or Dagny Taggart who can walk away on their own dime. Most have familes and kids, bills to pay, groceries to buy.
We’re captured in a way, tied by a sense of responsibility. But what if we started making different decisions about how we spend our money? What happens if we each individually assess our ways with one question.
“If I choose to do this, does it help keep the Circus in town?”
If I choose to eat at a restaurant instead of cook my meal at home who gets the real benefit?
If I choose to buy a new car on credit instead of repairing my paid off car am I really better off? Am I safer, more attractive, a better person? Really? Or just deeper into debt and further held inside the Big Tent?
If I work my butt off to try to put away enough money to retire and live a lifestyle as if I were working full time will I be really happy?
If I just keep ding the same things I have learned or been taught to do each day will anything change?
What if we chose to fix our cars instead of throwing them away? A car is one of the consumer goods that are the most consumptive of raw materials. Who is more “progressive” and mindful of the environment, the shade tree mechanic who keeps his 1972 F150 going for years or the Hollywood starlett who buys a new Prius?
Small changes, individual choices, mindfully applied every day may, just may, be our only vote left.
I don’t know about you, but I am a bit tired of the Circus.
You are on the right track. Add to the list renting instead if buying a house. The thugernment (”progressives”) know you will become meek by being part of a community. And home moanership means another captive property taxpayer. Also becoming a parent makes you meeker. You also provide more units to be brainwashed in progressive (I mean public) schools. I choose to spend little, keep my car and stack more gold and cash and bottles of wine.
If I choose to buy a new car on credit instead of repairing my paid off car am I really better off? Am I safer, more attractive, a better person? Really? Or just deeper into debt and further held inside the Big Tent?
That depends on the age of the paid off car. If it was built before air bags, you’d probably be safer with a new car.
Funny how I finally felt like a first-class citizen when both of our cars had airbags.
If we could get 30% of the population to stop borrowing for a year, we could probably crash the banking system.
The only other choices remaining are consenting to your own economic death, along with that of your children and grandchildren, or violence.
There will be a time in the not-to-distant future when those who have worked for everything and still have something to lose realize that the socialists, statists, and leaches of society will not stop until they take everything. They will wake up and realize the dim future is now, and they will revolt, violently.
History has not been kind to those who ignore the lessons it has taught. How many countries have seen violent revolt in the last 200 years? The last 50 years? Think it’s different this time? It’s not…
$17 TRILLION in TAXPAYER bailouts and 0% loans to bailout the kings of capitalism, Wall St.
What’s that about “socialists” again?
You’re right. Let’s include the crony capitalists in the mix as well. When the time comes, their walled compounds and private security won’t save them from the gallows and the wrath of the
former middle class.
Northeasterner I hope you are not right. But you might be right. Pink Floyd line said “quiet desperation is the English way.” Probably not the American way. People kill here for minor things. They will kill for their freedom too.
The above article here will be forgotten completely from this HBB in five weeks. Then resurrected in a different form by someone, maybe Cruz, maybe me. But the fact remains. The figure “47%” that somehow got Romney busted was actually a true deal. But even truer is this article that points out that the government employees and FSA combined make a permanent Democrap “Progressive” majority.
This fact will be more and more pronounced until the average ostrich here will no longer be infatuated with OMarxist care.
There will be one more presidential election. After that, unless the big nonviolent withdrawal of consent takes place, there will be a violent withdrawal of consent.
Pack heat. One reason why I have one foot in a pro gun state and my cache there. I’m starting a wine collection as well. You can pay to store wines. They gain value over the years. The free people still want to drink good stuff. By “free” I mean those who withdrew consent and are fully into freedom.
One point the article does not stress enough: The FSA / government employee bloc has the vote numbers to continue Democrapic “progressivism,” but the ones who provide the means for that group are the taxpayers. Without the taxpayers that group might as well piss up a rope.
The taxpayers have the power, not the FSA. Not the government.
The Free Sh*t Army is on the march. And our wallets are in the crosshairs.
From yesterday’s board:
“A 2011 study funded by the Department of Homeland Security also characterized Americans who are “suspicious of centralized federal authority,” and “reverent of individual liberty” as “extreme right-wing” terrorists.”
A fine example of domestic imperialism brought to you by the NeoCon-Progressive Party of America.
The 1960s-era hippies ended up losing after all. They wanted freedom and equality for all but ended up achieving neither.
Your NeoCon-Progressive Party is hard at work, replacing 1960s hippie-era do-your-own-thing Individual Rights with 2000s-era Master Group Rights.
Our NC-P Party adherents continue to push for the restriction of YOUR do-your-own-thing opportunities, no matter how YOU choose to identify yourself, if you choose to do so at all.
If I was a 1960s-era hippie, I’d be hopping mad.
Teddy Roosevelt, Republican, Started the Bull Moose Party. The first big progressive. Other Republican progressives: Nixon, Ford, and both George Bush presidents. McCain and Romney too. Section 8 and Prescription medical benefit programs both started by Rs.
progressivism means the welfare warfare state and spying on Americans. The erosion of our freedoms.
If I was a 1960s-era hippie, I’d be hopping mad
True, unless you are a hippie who accepts that most people want to be told what to do, when to use the toilet, how much money they can keep from what they earn, and so on. Because why worry?
I lived a counterculture life for decades. I tried to conform a few times - was a mortgage payer for awhile. Decided I did not like stucco boxes. I proposed to a gal and got cold feet. I never paid more than $21,000 on a car and this one is ten years old with 74,000 miles on it. Good for another ten years at least. I only vote (absentee) to help maintain my Arizona residency. But in a few years when I move back to Arizona I will stop voting at all - I know voting is a waste of time otherwise. I am on strike against this “progressive” culture that wants people to buy homes and have kids. When you get to that point of buying homes and having kids, they got you. You are less likely to run from a big state and local government and flee to a small government place such as Wyoming. Same thing for men with marriage. 50% of marriages end in divorces. And most court cases hammer the men and force them to pay their ex wives. Yes “progressives” want men to marry also.
Do as much as you can to thwart the “progressive” plan.
If you buy into the whole libertarian philosophy, the difference between California and Wyoming is actually pretty small.
Particularly if you deal on a cash-only basis and you rent. My preference of course is California since it has the geography characteristics of all the climate ranges of the world in a confined space.
Those who operate according to “How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World” and ignore government can live in many places, even California. I’m not at that point yet. I pay social security, federal taxes and state taxes to two states.
I was referring to the laws of the states. For example, earlier this week there was discussion here about states that have legalized medical marijuana and the two that have legalized marijuana use for recreational purposes.
The libertarian philosophy is that all drugs should be legal, including pharmaceuticals. So if a person sees a commercial on TV for Lipitor and thinks that he would benefit from it, he should be able to just go to his local drug store and buy it without a prescription. It might be bad for his health to that, but that’s none of the government’s concern.
On a similar note, you might apply the same idea to drunk driving laws. If I decide to drink a six pack of beer and then get in my car and drive around town, it’s none of the government’s business what my blood alcohol level might be. That’s the height of big government right there, to arrest people based on what is in their blood. Of course, if I get into an accident caused by my bad driving, that’s another matter altogether.
When it comes to laws to like these, there’s not much difference between the states.
This is the housing bubble blog. My good friend Bill is discussing housing. Maybe you should be too.
‘The libertarian philosophy is that all drugs should be legal’
Well, I don’t presume to speak for all libertarians, but I guess you do.
Put another way, many libertarians would suggest that these drugs are here and available. It might be better if there was a way for the government to react other than shooting, arresting and filling prisons with pot users, for example.
You may know that many of the pot laws were really aimed at minorities and that to this day minority drug offenders do prison time way out of proportion to their population. And the drug war has been the tool for many civil liberty encroachments by the governments for many decades. A lot of this has nothing to do with drugs themselves. Like huge budgets at the DEA, etc.
‘you might apply the same idea to drunk driving laws’
Yes, this is the old, ‘we’re fixing to have anarchy any day now because someone is a libertarian’ line. As we now are being watched on this blog, listened to on our phones. Off-shore prisons are full of people who haven’t faced trial; heck, they weren’t even charged! And the torture; don’t talk about that much do we? Why we just had a government takeover of the health business, and here is Mike warning us of an impending libertarian rampage! You just might be concerned about the wrong things Mike.
I’m not really worried about any of those laws being changed. Very few Americans would favor such changes. It’s really just an abstract discussion of libertarianism, which Bill subscribes to.
I suppose that I could have written “Many libertarians believe…” instead of “The libertarian philosophy is that…” However, from reading of libertarianism that I have done, my understanding is that the basic idea is that the job of the police is supposed to be to prevent people from hurting other people. If people want to do things that are bad for their own health, that’s not a police matter.
And yes, I’m aware that non-minorities are arrested more on drug charges than whites. I think that I even posted a link on this blog a few months ago about how blacks are four times more likely to get charged for marijuana possession even though blacks don’t use weed any more than whites do. Similarly, the prohibition movement that was going strong 100 years ago was motivated in part by xenophobic and anti-Catholic sentiments.
My preference of course is California since it has the geography characteristics of all the climate ranges of the world in a confined space.
You’ve never been to the tropics I guess. Your world is small.
I proposed to a gal and got cold feet.
Figures.
“The 1960s-era hippies ended up losing after all. They wanted freedom and equality for all but ended up achieving neither.”
They did achieve it.
And then it was all slowly stolen away by the neocons over the last 30 years.
Realtors don’t wash their hands after going to the bathroom.
“I wash my hands before…”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9XpjCeEo6g
What Recovery? “4,594,000 Mortgages Going Unpaid in the U.S.”
Friday, October 25, 2013 9:44
Mike Whitney * Counterpunch
Buying a house is a lot like buying a car. If you don’t look under the hood, you could wind up with a lemon. Only with housing, it’s not as simple as checking the dipstick or looking for oil under the rear axle. No, smart home buyers check the data to see what’s really going on. That’s the best way to cut through the hype and separate the fact from the fiction.
Lately, interest rates have been inching higher while prices have been rising. The combination of the two has put the kibosh on sales leading to a more generalized slowdown. But sluggish sales and higher rates don’t tell the whole story. For that, we need to take a peak under the hood and see what the cheerleaders in the media have been hiding from view. And what they’ve been hiding is nearly 5 million homeowners who’ve stopped paying their mortgages altogether. That’s no small matter. Here’s the story from DS News:
“Lender Processing Services provided the media with a “first look” at the company’s mortgage performance statistics for the month of September….LPS counts a total of 3,266,000 mortgages nationwide that are 30 or more days past due but not yet in foreclosure. That tally represents 6.46 percent of all outstanding mortgages…..
Of the more than 3 million delinquent loans, LPS says 1,331,000 have missed at least three payments but haven’t started the foreclosure process. Another 1,328,000 mortgages are currently winding their way through foreclosure pipelines, according to LPS’ data….
All-in-all, there are 4,594,000 mortgages going unpaid in the United States.” (“Number of U.S. Mortgages Going Unpaid = 4,594,000″, DS News)
Yikes. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a bad time to buy a house, but one should at least be aware of the fact that there’s a gargantuan stockpile of backlogged homes just waiting to flood the market once the banks get their act together. Of course, maybe that day will never come, right? After all, we’re already 5 years into this thing and the banks are actually dragging the process out longer today than ever before. Maybe you don’t believe that. Maybe you think that there’s actually a shortage of supply which is why prices have been going up for the last year or so. Okay, but why not withhold judgment until you check this out. This is from an article at Housingwire titled “Prolonged liquidation timelines shake up home prices”:
“Timelines on distressed inventory continue to drag on, while elevated mortgage loss severities continue to offset positive gains on home prices…..
Liquidations increased 32.2 months for the third quarter, up from 31.1 months for the second quarter, and also up from 28.3 months a year ago. In aggregate, timelines have increased every quarter since the fourth quarter of 2008 and remain at historical highs…
Nonetheless, the most seasoned inventory continues to prove difficult to liquidate, skewing aggregate timelines higher.
“The percentage of distressed mortgages that are five or more years delinquent has tripled just in the last year,” Nelson said.” (“Prolonged liquidation timelines shake up home prices”, Housingwire)
Read that last line over a couple times and let it sink in: “The percentage of distressed mortgages that are five or more years delinquent has tripled just in the last year.”
http://beforeitsnews.com/economy/2013/10/what-recovery-4594000-mortgages-going-unpaid-in-the-u-s-2564666.html - - Cached - Similar pages
19 hours ago
“4,594,000 Mortgages Going Unpaid in the U.S.”
With 4.6 million vampire homeowners, it is going to be a very scary Halloween this year. I’m not sure I even want to let my kids go trick-or-treating.
Why not? If they aren’t paying the mortgage, they probably have money to buy and give away good candy.
Vampires and zombies and debtbeats OH MY!
Originally published October 17, 2013 at 5:22 PM | Page modified October 17, 2013 at 9:07 PM
Real-estate market haunted by ‘vampire’ foreclosures
By Kimberly Miller
The Palm Beach Post
Vampire foreclosures are homes that have gone through the court proceedings and are bank-owned but are still occupied by their previous owners. Nationwide, 47 percent of bank-owned homes are still occupied by their previous owners.
Just in time for Halloween, RealtyTrac has issued a new report on “vampire” foreclosures.
Vampire foreclosures are defined as homes that have gone through the court proceedings and are bank-owned but are still occupied by their previous owners.
Why would the previous owners still live in them? Because they can, said Daren Blomquist, a vice president at the Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac.
“They are accustomed to living there for free without any consequence,” Blomquist said. “And up until recently, the banks have not had a huge motivation to kick them out because home prices were not increasing and the banks had so many properties they were dealing with.”
Nationwide, 47 percent of bank-owned homes are occupied by their previous owners. Blomquist said vampire foreclosures will slow price appreciation as they start to go up for sale and tilt real estate more to a buyer’s market.
“These are still distressed properties and will typically sell at a cheaper price,” he said.
…
Foreclosed Homes Overrun by Vampires, Zombies
Posted October 11, 2013 in Foreclosure Real Estate by Josh Crank
The foreclosure crisis has turned many American neighborhoods into ghost towns, but a new report adds an even more terrifying twist: nearly half of foreclosed homes are occupied by vampires.
That’s what real estate publisher RealtyTrac is calling them, at least. According to their figures, 47 percent of foreclosed, bank-owned homes still have the previous occupants living in them. These “vampire foreclosures” are often hard to distinguish from their neighbors because the people living inside tend to maintain the properties and keep the utilities turned on.
As if vampires weren’t enough, the report says an additional 20 percent of foreclosed homes are plagued by zombies. “Zombie foreclosures” are homes that have been abandoned by the previous owners before the foreclosures have been finalized. With no one to maintain them, these homes sometimes decay and their lawns become overgrown, potentially racking up fines and property taxes against unwitting homeowners who have packed up and moved on.
Something Strange in Your Neighborhood
…
Great to see June Fletcher is still out there writing on real estate. She penned memorable stories about purchasing Florida investment properties in the tailwinds of hurricanes back during the bubbly Florida summer of 2005.
‘Zombie’ homes sit in limbo in Florida, nationally
Posted: Thursday, October 24, 2013 8:41 am
By June Fletcher
Scripps Howard News Service
Steven and Janet Sparker never planned to leave the house they purchased in 2006 in Golden Gate Estates in the southwest section of Florida.
But when Janet, 57, lost her six-figure job, and the home’s value fell by more than half from the $585,000 they had paid for it during the recession, they decided to leave their home and let the bank foreclose on it.
Only the bank didn’t — and still hasn’t.
So the Sparkers’ home became a so-called “zombie” home — an unloved, unlived in home in a twilight limbo state — that’s become a pariah for the owner, the lender and the neighborhood.
Zombie homes are a burden to the owner who bears all the responsibility, yet reaps none of the benefits of homeownership.
”Many homeowners who stop making mortgage payments and abandon their homes are looking for a fresh start,” said Daren Blomquist, chief economist of RealtyTrac, which tracks distressed houses. “They don’t even realize that they are still responsible for taxes and bills.”
They’re also unwanted by banks that already have too many foreclosures on their books, and are in no hurry to assume the headaches of protecting and maintaining them.
…
A shout-out to ya, Phony….
Thanks for the great set of finds you’ve posted recently. Very interesting stuff from you this past Sunday re: Hechinger Report/Common Core.
Sorry I can’t always read and respond in “real time”. I’m often quite busy.
“In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” - George Orwell
“In a world gone mad, a sane man must seem insane”
roughly quoted from the old movie “Serial” with Martin Mull.
w lots of gov programs Japan has made it last 23 years
Maybe you think that there’s actually a shortage of supply which is why prices have been going up for the last year or so.
One thing many people are ignoring is that the high numbers of “vampire foreclosures” also suggests that while there may not be a shortage of supply, the pent-up supply may be much smaller than the delinquency numbers would suggest as well.
If those houses have people living in them, then those people have to go live somewhere else when they do finally get the boot.
Net effect on supply due to such a foreclosure turning over and being resold: zero.
“If those houses have people living in them, then those people have to go live somewhere else when they do finally get the boot.”
Bingo–a giant game of musical chairs.
The opposite is what you need to worry about…”Zombie” Foreclosures (empty and going through the process)…and overall vacancy.
The only true excess supply is an empty home that is not empty on purpose (vacation home).
And cue HA talking about nonsensical numbers of “excess, defaulted, and vacant homes”.
The Census will come out with their vacancy numbers in a couple of weeks…we’ll see what they say.
The non-current loan rate is every loan with one or more missed payments.
This number is NEVER zero, and is typically about 5%.
With 50MM mortgages, “normal” is approximately 2.5MM.
“The percentage of distressed mortgages that are five or more years delinquent has tripled just in the last year.”
Yes. Last year, 5 years ago was 2007…there were hardly any delinquent mortgages in 2007. Of course the number went up dramatically from 2012 to 2013…especially in non-judicial states.
Welcome to Pimped Nation, conceptualized and developed by Democrat and Republican elected officials From DC to Anytown, USA.
We have relatives fleeing FL ad they want to know if they can help us by selling us their house. LMFAO.
And perhaps soon, you may be asked to help them by allowing them to move into your house.
The global deflationary spiral is postponed only temporarily. Obscured by a minor technical trend, the spiral will resume and then rage.
Are you ready for it?
What makes you certain the central banker cabal will not print enough to defuse deflation? Or do you believe they will try but fail in their efforts?
Why?
“The global deflationary spiral is postponed only temporarily” Robert Prechter, 1989
Why can’t it be indefinitely postponed?
Why would it?
And it seems the plan fell off course since 2008.
Deflation…. it’s your best friend.
A house will get you some free appreciation so you can tell your boss, “I quit”.
A lot of people are making more money in equity than they are working.
It pays to own appreciating assets.
Far more moolah is being made in stocks. Last time I heard a guy brag about not needing to move up in his career because he makes more money in stocks, the market crashed. Realuze gains periodically and rebalance. Cash will be king sometime. Maybe in 7 years.
the market is ripe for a crash. there is no value here. Its a matter of time.
The sheep never learn. wall street has a new group of lemmings every 10 years.
If there is a crash now, it will be a short-lived one because there have been a lot of companies out there with real good earnings reports. I read Yahoo Finance and I know this is a fact.
The stocks will crash for several years if there are crummy earnings.
Here you go….Lio in Rio finally spotted.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/senior-testicle-bat-cancer-research-article-1.1367516
BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! Thats him!
Post Of The Week!
OMG…they use that costume in the presence of 10-year-old girls?
that’s ‘progessive’ in brazil
Mr. Balls looks Marxist, so I think you found Rio
You mean Ms. Balls.
“Senhor Testiculo”
“At first blush, the mascot’s name is rather endearing: Mr. Balls.”
“But for those who might find that descriptive title offensive, the scrotum-shaped character also answers to “Senhor Testiculo” in Brazil, where he is a spokes-thing for a group that is seeking to raise awareness of testicular cancer research.”
“RELATED: MAN WITH STOMACH PAIN DISCOVERS HE’S A WOMAN”
It mostly strikes younger men, late teens, 20s. Some guy I went to high school with got it and had one testicle removed. Not sure what his future was like. I imagine he had to take hormonal therapy since that’s mostly how testosterone is manufactured. BTW I am glad I never took steroids. Steroids, without prescribed and necessary medical use shrinks those things. In essence, makes you less of a man. But if used properly they have to be taken with other drugs and you have to take regular blood tests to be sure your chemical levels are balanced. If not balanced then some or most of those scary warnings about steroid use will happen.
Two words: Lyle Alzedo.
Is the Housing Bubble back? Or did it just never go away just yet?
Check out this list!
Conspicuously absent are the U.S., the UK and China…
Inflatable
The world’s five largest housing bubbles: A brief, whirlwind tour
By Matt Phillips @MatthewPhillips
October 24, 2013
Goldman Sachs analysts spotlighted some of the world’s fast accelerating housing markets this week, in a bid to try to sniff out potential for problems in the making. (After all, it was the high-flying US housing market that served as the epicenter for the financial crisis that set off the Great Recession.)
Here’s a quick rundown on what’s been happening in some of the hottest housing markets in the world.
Israel
A pricy view in Tel Aviv.Reuters / Nir Elias
Since the depths of the Great Recession home prices in Israel are up roughly 40%. And the inability of young couples to get a foothold on the “housing ladder” has become an increasingly politicized issue. (The bubble helped elevate domestic issues and place them at least on equal footing with the perennial security problems in January’s general election.)
…
Norway
Oslo has been uncharacteristically hot.
Reuters / Cathal McNaughton
With prices up roughly 30% since the worst of the Global Recession, Norway has pulled far ahead of even its strong Nordic neighbors in terms of housing prices. The rise is due, in part, to surging incomes and population thanks to immigration. Supply is tight because of land use restrictions and relatively stringent minimum size and quality standards. But the ongoing surge in prices is making some a bit jittery.
…
Switzerland
Taking in the amenities at the Paradeplatz in Zurich.
Reuters / Arnd Wiegmann
Historically low interest rates and a flood of cash into the Alpine banking bastion have driven housing prices up more than 20% since the the first quarter of 2009, according to Goldman. Mortgage debt surged to 140% of GDP, high both for Switzerland historically and compared to other nations.
…
Canada
They’ve been building up in Vancouver.Reuters / Jason Lee
With real home price appreciation near 20%, Canada’s home price growth has been raising eyebrows. Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz doesn’t see a bubble, but others aren’t so sure.
…
Germany
A deal in Dortmund?
Reuters / Ina Fassbender
Nearly half of all Germans rent, which makes the nation a somewhat odd candidate for a housing bubble. But there are signs that officials are concerned about puckish surges in housing prices.
…
Fed’s Fisher warns of potential U.S. housing bubble, MBS buys
By Jonathan Spicer
NEW YORK | Thu Oct 17, 2013 11:14am EDT
An empty mail box is seen at the front door of a foreclosed house in Miami Gardens, Florida in this September 15, 2009 file photo. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/Files
(Reuters) - A top Federal Reserve official said on Thursday he is seeing fresh signs of a U.S. “housing bubble” and warned about the central bank’s ongoing purchases of mortgage-based bonds.
“I’m beginning to see signs not just in my district but across the country that we are entering, once again, a housing bubble,” Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher told reporters after a speech in New York. “So that leads me … to be very cautious about our mortgage-backed securities purchase program.”
A mortgage-market bubble in part caused the 2007-2009 financial crisis and Great Recession from which the world’s largest economy is still recovering. In response, the Fed has depressed interest rates and is buying $85 billion in assets each month, including $40 billion in mortgage-backed securities (MBS).
Fisher, a vocal hawk on monetary policy, repeated he would not support a reduction in the quantitative easing (QE) program at a Fed meeting later this month in large part because of the fiscal “mess” in Washington.
But citing rising year-on-year house prices in Texas cities, and elsewhere in the country, he warned that the central bank’s hyper-accommodative policies could be inflating dangerous asset price bubbles.
…
“I’m beginning to see signs not just in my district but across the country that we are entering, once again, a housing bubble [...] So that leads me … to be very cautious about our mortgage-backed securities purchase program.”
Fisher, a vocal hawk on monetary policy, repeated he would not support a reduction in the quantitative easing (QE) program at a Fed meeting later this month [...]
In other words: Liar, liar, pants on fire.
He wants to sound concerned, but he wants to continue on their existing course.
He believes the Fed has caused a bubble, but that they should also continue to inflate it??? WTF?!?
What kind of sense does that make?
Liar.
I’m beginning to see signs not just in my district but across the country
Not to mention: how about all around the GLOBE?!?
Housing bubble, take 2
As homes in hard-hit cities languish in foreclosure, U.S. housing prices are reaching dangerous new heights
by Tamsin McMahon on Friday, October 25, 2013 10:12am
Joe Raedle / Getty Images
America’s housing collapse was supposed to be the kind of catastrophe that comes around once in a generation. Instead, some analysts are warning that a new bubble is forming just five years after the last one burst. This time, it’s not subprime lenders helping to push up prices, but easy-money government policies and billion-dollar hedge funds.
Home prices are up more than 12 per cent across the U.S. this year, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index. And they are soaring in some past bubble cities: up nearly 40 per cent in Las Vegas, 30 per cent in Phoenix and 20 per cent in San Francisco. Bidding wars are erupting in cities that were among the hardest-hit during the crash, where thousands of homes languish in foreclosure, even as buyers complain about a shortage of new listings.
…
Meanwhile, 80 per cent of the nearly 525,000 homes in foreclosure in the U.S. still haven’t been listed for sale, sometimes years after they were repossessed by the bank, according to a new report from foreclosure-listing firm RealtyTrac. Laws in many states weren’t designed to handle the sheer volume of foreclosures, says RealtyTrac vice-president Daren Blomquist. At the same time, several major Wall Street banks were forced to suspend proceedings after employees were found to be foreclosing on millions of homeowners with improper—sometimes fraudulent—paperwork. That’s led to a massive backlog in foreclosures, which has helped push up house prices even further by restricting the supply of new listings. Nearly a third of bank-owned homes are sitting vacant, while nearly half are still occupied by previous owners, who are now living there mortgage-free. “These properties are going to be listed for sale at some point, but they’re being held off the market, in many cases, for a lengthy period of time,” says Blomquist. “That could, in the short term, be artificially inflating house prices.”
…
the economy is too dependent on equity to let the bubble die.asset appreciation is taking the place of jobs.
Which means you should not think of getting a second job to make ends meet, instead you should think about getting a second house.
What would be the advantage of buying a second house just before the next wave of housing price collapse?
Wait…don’t even bother answering that one. I just remembered that once you own a home you bought with a mortgage, there is no longer any need to make payments. So, for example, you could borrow at or over 100% loan-to-value, stop making payments, and rent the home out, for 100% profit.
Vampire landlords rock!
Allow the house to buy itself. Suck out the forever rising equity to make the payments and then party on what’s left over.
“Allow the house to buy itself. Suck out the forever rising equity to make the payments and then party on what’s left over.”
That strategy is so 1997.
Housing bubble danger means Bank of England should do its own stress test
Martin Taylor chose wrong place to reassure borrowers on visit to West Midlands, but the risk is real
Larry Elliott
The Guardian, Monday 21 October 2013 18.52 EDT
Construction cranes in London, where house prices have soared 10% in a month, unlike Wolverhampton where prices are falling. Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA
The asking price for a home is falling in the West Midlands according to Rightmove, so Wolverhampton was perhaps not the most appropriate place for Martin Taylor to muse about the risks of a housing boom-bust.
As the independent member of the Bank of England’s financial policy committee (FPC) no doubt discovered, there is no bubble in the West Midlands.
It’s a different story in London, where Rightmove reported asking prices up 10% – or £50,000 – in a month. That smells like a bubble, and Taylor wanted to reassure his Wolverhampton audience that the FPC was on the case, monitoring whether borrowers could withstand higher interest rates.
…
If there were no bubble, why would bubble fears need deflating?
Re-Examining The Chinese Property Market: Deflating Bubble Fears
Oct 25 2013, 11:43
In economics, a so-called bubble is any deviation of an asset’s market price from its intrinsic value. Such deviations can be driven by a range of irrationally exuberant and speculative behavior: overly confident views of the future, rampant optimism, bandwagon effects, herd mentality, or a misplaced faith in one genius as an investor. Whether the Chinese property market represents a bubble of epic proportions hinges upon the nature of the demand. Do the country’s sky-high property prices reflect genuine, realistic views on the future consumption of housing services? Or are they speculative purchases driven solely by the overconfident expectation that house prices can go nowhere but up?
…
For an unbiased opinion on whether there is a bubble, why not ask a home building industry CEO?
Travis Perkins confident UK will avoid housing market bubble
By James Davey
LONDON | Fri Oct 25, 2013 5:04pm BST
Geoff Cooper, the CEO of building supplier Travis Perkins poses for a portrait in London, October 25, 2013. REUTERS/Neil Hall
(Reuters) - Britain’s housing market will avoid a price bubble resulting from the government’s latest ‘Help to Buy’ scheme, because supply will catch up with demand, says the head of Travis Perkins, the UK’s biggest building materials supplier.
“As long as there’s people wanting to sell and move as well as buy and move then the market is helped to be in equilibrium,” Travis Perkins’s chief executive Geoff Cooper told Reuters on Friday.
…
The situation now is virtually the same as it was in 2006, except the bubble is ubiquitous, raging not only in the U.S. but on at least three other continents.
Why do you think it is different this time?
“…at least three other continents.”
Before finishing my first cup of java, I realized this was a severe understatement, as I came across articles generally all published since last month and mostly published over the last week describing housing bubbles in North America, South America, Asia, Europe, Africa and Australia.
I’m unsure at this point whether there is a housing bubble in Antartica.
I’m unsure at this point whether there is a housing bubble in Antartica.
There’s a tent bubble.
Want to buy houses for fun? Stick to Monopoly
Our fascination with house prices and desire to buy second homes fuelled the property bubble. And we know how that went, writes Michael Wolsey
21 October 2013
First the good news. House prices are moving up at last. A year-on-year survey by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) has shown two consecutive increases in Northern Ireland for the first time since 2007.
…
A house, after all, is for living in. Well, that’s how it used to be. When did it change? Ten years ago, 15 maybe.
That’s when lots of us suddenly decided that a house wasn’t just for living in. It was an investment you could rent out for other people to live in.
Why have just one when you could as easily own two, or three? One here, one there and another one abroad.
So what if you couldn’t find a tenant? A house was still a sound investment. Sure everyone knew the price of property only ever went up. You bought the second house with money borrowed on the equity of the first, which had jumped in value.
Yes, those were the days, my friend. At the height of the boom, my wife and I went to a sale of foreign properties in a city hotel.
People were buying here, there and everywhere with a kind of crazy desperation, as if they might miss the boat and be left the only family in their street without a holiday home; objects of ridicule from more savvy neighbours.
At the top of the market were houses in California, then France and Spain. People were buying in South Africa and even in Shanghai. The lowest prices were for apartments in Bulgaria and they, too, were being bought, unseen, straight off the plans. People were putting down deposits on homes that had not been built, in a town they had never heard of, in a country they had never visited.
…
People were putting down deposits on homes that had not been built, in a town they had never heard of, in a country they had never visited.
Money quote!
That line is _awesome_.
Shiller Warns of Housing Bubble After 225% Surge: Brazil Credit
By Blake Schmidt & Marisa Castellani - Sep 5, 2013 11:41 AM PT
Robert Shiller, who predicted the collapse of the U.S. housing market, is warning that a bubble is emerging in Brazil at a time when a sluggish economy and persistent inflation are eroding investor confidence.
Since January 2008, home prices in Sao Paulo have soared 181 percent and jumped 225 percent in Rio de Janeiro, according to the FIPE Zap index. That’s as much as twice the increase in rent prices, signaling that the housing market has become overheated, according to Shiller, a Yale University professor who helped create the S&P/Case-Shiller Index (SPCS20) of U.S. home prices, which has dropped 13.7 percent since 2007.
The warning comes as Brazil’s economy heads for its weakest two-year expansion in more than a decade and the central bank raises interest rates by the most in the world to contain inflation. Mortgage lenders such as Caixa Economica Federal will have to pass on rising borrowing costs to consumers already struggling with record debt by boosting the referential rate linked to mortgages, according to the Institute for Applied Economic Research. The average mortgage rate rose to 8 percent in July from a record low 7.74 percent in February.
“Why would prices double in five years?” Shiller said at an event in Campos do Jordao, Brazil, on Aug. 31. “What could account for that other than excitement? The prices go up every month. They always go up.”
No Bubble
…
Since January 2008, home prices in Sao Paulo have soared 181 percent and jumped 225 percent in Rio de Janeiro,
That’s not possible. “Housing’s always a loss”
So you mean my house has almost paid for it self in “free-rent” AND has gone up 225% since 08? (Actually it’s gone up about $350% because the land was bought earlier)
So my house has “tripled”, almost paid for itself in rent and “housing is always a loss”.
With losses like that, ya don’t need gains.
(I think Brazil is in a bubble but it’s different here)
So my house has “tripled”
In the past five years:
Has the utility provided by an equivalent house increased by a factor of three?
Has the currency devalued by 66%?
Has the average income gone up by a factor of three?
Or was housing undervalued by a factor of three 5 years ago?
And yet you were arguing a year or so ago that you weren’t sure that there was a housing bubble in Brazil???
In the past five yearsAll the favelas in Copacabana/Ipanema have been taken over by the cops. This has greatly increased public safety here. Night and day.
5 years ago is about when affordable mortgages came out.
5-10 years ago the currency became “stable” for the first time in a generation.
10-9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 years ago Brazil’s economy was growing quickly.
For about 30 years, there has been no new land available to build in Copa/Ipanema.
And yes, almost “everybody” in Rio wants to live in Zona Sul.
I’ve said for years Brazil might be in a bubble but if it were, it was a different kind of bubble.
Australia’s rising property prices spur bubble concerns
24 October 2013
Last updated at 04:19 BST
Property prices in Australia’s major cities such as Sydney and Melbourne have started to soar in recent months, driven in large part by record low interest rates.
But some home buyers and sellers are now starting to wonder whether Australia’s market is headed for bubble territory.
The BBC’s Phil Mercer went to a housing auction in Sydney to find out.
Speaking of Australia, this is a great story here. FYI, an Australian dollar is worth around 95 US cents.
Million-dollar first home
With prices rising, more parents are stepping in to help their children buy property.
On one of the biggest auction days Sydney and Melbourne have seen came more evidence of the grim truth facing Australia’s young home buyers: in our inner cities, there’s often little hope without parents’ help.
With sellers encouraged by rising prices, Australian Property Monitors said 693 auctions were scheduled for Sydney and a whopping 1356 in Melbourne. The number of properties going under the hammer was up more than 30 per cent on last year in both cities.
In red-hot inner-city Surry Hills, first-home buyer Claudia Crause, 23, a student at the University of NSW, snapped up a two-bedroom terrace at 45 Rainford Street, Surry Hills, for $1,094,000, $119,000 over the $975,000 reserve.
‘‘The market’s a bit hot at the moment. There’s a lot of people wanting terraces with potential,’’ Ms Crause said.
‘‘Prices are going up … I think we got a pretty good deal.’’
Parents Ron and Theresa Crause, of Mosman, were happy to help.
‘‘We knew we had to contribute and try and make this happen for her,’’ Mr Crause said.
‘‘Even though the market is hot, I don’t think it’s going to get any easier in the future.’’
Mrs Crause chipped in: ‘‘There are a lot of foreign buyers coming in … it helps us with not having to pay the rent because she’s a full-time student and it gives her an opportunity to get a foothold into this market, which is very high.
http://smh.domain.com.au/real-estate-news/milliondollar-first-home-20131026-2w8ch.html
Is it a housing boom or bubble?
Michael Yardney
The Australian housing market has many people scratching their heads.
On the one hand many analysts see great times ahead with double digit capital growth predicted for some of our capital city real estate markets next year.
On the other hand, there are those who are convinced our market is an unmistakable housing bubble and expect an eventual significant drop in house prices which will leave ugly, rich property investors nursing heavy losses.
So are we in a housing boom or is there a bubble?
The bottom line is we are not in a “bubble”, but home prices lifting from their trough in the middle of last year.
…
The Australian housing market has many people scratching their heads.
I told my Australian friend not to buy there in 08 because it was a bubble. He bought anyway he’s glad he did because my advice turned out bad.
Rio, please contact me off site about your bet. Username at wild blue net.
Rio, please contact me off site about your bet. Username at wild blue net.
How?
^
LMAO
Rio, please contact me off site about your bet. Username at wild blue net.
How?
It came back twice but I spelled it wrong “ahanson”. Sorry Went thru now.
Nobel prize winner warns of housing bubble
October 15, 2013
Matt Wade
Senior writer
ANALYSIS
Housing guru: Robert Shiller speaks at a press conference in Connecticut.
Yale professor Robert Shiller believes many countries are “looking bubbly”. Photo: Reuters
Robert Shiller, the joint winner of the Nobel prize for economics, is worried about bubbles. The Yale University professor expressed alarm at the rapid rise in global house prices soon after the award was announced.
“There are so many countries that are looking bubbly,” he said.
If he’s right, and bubble trouble besets Australia, it’s bad news for growth and jobs.
The Reserve Bank has cut interest rates to record lows to encourage businesses and consumers to spend and invest as the effects of the mining boom fade. The aim is to boost non-mining sectors like home building, retail and tourism so they can take over from mining as drivers of national economic growth.
…
Posted: 12:00 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 26, 2013
Short sales tax deadline creates time crunch for homeowners
By Kimberly Miller
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
BOCA RATON —
Florida borrowers hoping to complete a short sale on their home are running out of time to benefit from a massive tax break that can mean savings of tens of thousands of dollars on a single deal.
Since 2007, homeowners whose banks have forgiven unpaid mortgage debt after a short sale, principal reduction or foreclosure have not been required to count that money as income on their tax returns.
This story continues on our new premium website for subscribers, MyPalmBeachPost.com. Continue reading/get access here »
Posted: 7:52 p.m. Friday, Oct. 25, 2013
Man fatally shot by police at hospital
The Associated Press
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. —
Officials say police fatally shot a man at a St. Petersburg veterans hospital.
A Bay Pines VA Medical Center spokesman says a man walked into the emergency room Friday evening and became uncooperative. The man reportedly began waving a knife around, which prompted Veterans Affairs police officers to shoot him. The man was wounded and later died.
The man wasn’t immediately identified, and it was unclear how many officers fired on him.
The hospital spokesman says the emergency room was evacuated out of an abundance of caution.
Copyright The Associated Press
James Taylor momentarily forgets he’s singing the national anthem
By Nate Scott – October 24, 2013 at 8:31pm EDT
James Taylor sang the national anthem at tonight’s Game 2 of the World Series at Fenway Park.
Or, he sang it eventually.
Taylor actually began by singing “America the Beautiful” before quickly transitioning back to the “Star-Spangled Banner.”
Now, it’s not clear if Taylor forgot the song he was singing. The transition is so smooth and so quick, it might have just been Taylor taking some creative license at the beginning of the song, a little flourish to remind everyone out there that he’s James Taylor and he can do that sort of thing.
Or he just got really cold and forgot the song.
http://ftw.usatoday.com/2013/10/james-taylor-national-anthem/ - 124k -
Dear MLB
If it goes to game seven I would be available for the National Anthem.
She was a fast machine she kept her motor clean
she was the best damn woman that I Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?
damn woman that I Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light
LOL
And I think he just forgot.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ls1YVhcLD2c
Is warning on incipient housing market crashes a part of the Fed Chair’s duties?
Did Janet Yellen Really Warn Us about the Housing Bubble?
Mark Skousen | October 24, 2013
The media recently has lauded Janet Yellen, Obama’s choice to become the next Fed chairman, for her prescient warnings in the mid-2000s that the housing bubble could cause a financial crisis. For example, Alan Blinder wrote in the Wall Street Journal, Janet Yellen “warned, as early as 2005, that the titanic real-estate market was heading for an iceberg.”
Really? In a speech in October, 2005, at the Haas School of Business in San Francisco, Yellen sought to answer three basic questions about the real-estate bubble: “First, if the bubble were to deflate on its own, would the effect on the economy be exceedingly large? Second, is it unlikely that the Fed could mitigate the consequences? Third, is monetary policy the best tool to use to deflate a house-price bubble? My answers to these questions, in the shortest possible form, are ‘no,’ ‘no,’ and ‘no.’”
She finally concluded that the housing bubble “could be large enough to feel like a good-sized bump in the road, but the economy would likely to be able to absorb the shock.”
In other words, she failed to predict the impact of the housing-bubble crash.
…
May 15, 2005
The president of the Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco, Janet Yellen did an interview with ContraCosta Times. Is the interviewer paying attention. “There are some fundamentals that explain why housing is doing so well at the moment. A key one is low interest rates. Mortgage rates remained quite low, and they really haven’t risen a lot since the Fed started to tighten monetary policy. Incomes are rising. People feel more optimistic about the future.”
Why would low interest rates make house prices go up? The issue of rising incomes is touched on in the interview as well.
“The Bay Area economy has roughly stabilized, but we haven’t regained what we lost. We’re just growing modestly. I don’t think the IT sector has revived and is growing robustly enough at this point to really generate strong growth in jobs here.”
The Bay area hasn’t had a big population increase. The interview makes one wonder just how rigorous the selection process is for the Fed.
“Is it a bubble? Nobody ever knows for sure until one pops. I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that there’s a bubble and we could have house price declines ahead.”
http://thehousingbubble.blogspot.com/2005/05/sf-fed-president-speaks-on-bubble.html
One comment:
tomb more said…
(Nobody knows for sure until one pops.)
Kind of reminds me of those stories you read about people who have to be carried to the hospital for removal of 200-lb tumors. By that point, they usually can no longer stand or leave the house.
One might ask, how could a person let a growth on their body grow to 200 lbs? Didn’t they realize that something was amiss when the tumor was 1-lb? Or 10 lbs? Or 100 lbs?
At some point, my guess is that the poor person probably went from thinking “maybe I’ve gained a little weight” to “this is looking pretty serious” to “i’m too scared to do anything so I won’t think about it and maybe it’ll go away”.
Where are we right now with housing? Are we still in the “this is looking serious” phase or have we moved to the “too scared to think about it” phase?
“One might ask, how could a person let a growth on their body grow to 200 lbs? Didn’t they realize that something was amiss when the tumor was 1-lb? Or 10 lbs? Or 100 lbs?”
This brings to mind the old saw about the frog in the pot of water. Supposedly if you raise the temperature slowly enough, the frog doesn’t realize the water is getting warmer until it is too late, and it boils to death.
But I liken these central bankers to weather forecasters who are so busy staring at the fancy instrument panels in their offices that they fail to spot the tornado which is clearly visible through the nearby window. For good measure, they have used state-of-the-art weather engineering technology to foster the conditions which increase the chance of tornadoes.
If their all-seeing eyes do not see the tornado then that must mean it is not there.
If the unschooled and unwashed say they see a tornado then these fools must be suffering from a delusion.
“If their all-seeing eyes do not see the tornado then that must mean it is not there.”
I’m guessing it’s more common and less consequential for a central banker to make such an error than for a weather forecaster to do so.
This goes to show you how corrupt these fed res monsters are.
Hint: They’re not your friends.
Have you stimulated the economy this week?
Wife and I attended a showing of Gravity last night. There were four other people besides us in the theater, which seats 400. Perhaps it was the late start time (9:45pm) that limited attendance. I foolishly joked with one of the other attendees that the dismal turnout could be a sign the economy is tanking again, but I bit my tongue as soon as the words left my mouth.
Cycle of repeated foreclosures in Summit County Ohio:
The small, well-kept home in Lakemore fell into foreclosure in May 2004.
And then again in August 2006.
And yet again in October 2010.
Each time, a separate homeowner failed to pay the mortgage, was hauled into court by a lender and lost the property.
What are the odds?
Probably better than you think.
A Beacon Journal investigation has found that 1,026 properties in Summit County have been foreclosed more than once in the past 10 years. Eight homes topped the list by being foreclosed three times, according to an analysis of Summit County Fiscal Office records.
“We know this is happening statewide and is happening across the nation in weak housing markets,” said Alison D. Goebel, associate director of the Greater Ohio Policy Center in Columbus. “Generally what we know is that the properties that have had multiple foreclosures are the worst of the worst.”
…
Coincidence?
In the majority of the cases, the foreclosures appear to be a coincidence. A homeowner had bad luck, and then so did the next homeowner who bought the property.
In some cases, banks foreclosed because the mortgage wasn’t being paid. In others, the government foreclosed because the taxes weren’t being paid.
The newspaper also found some names — both individuals and companies — popping up again and again on different foreclosed properties. These individuals and companies owned many homes that were foreclosed.
It’s part of a troublesome trend involving people buying properties as an investment and then not being able to pay the mortgage or taxes, experts said. In some cases, they abandon the homes after realizing how much money it would take to rehab them.
It’s unclear how widespread that problem is.
Some examples
Maynley Investments Inc. of Akron had 16 properties foreclosed in Summit County last year, according to county fiscal records. Venture Capitol Holdings of Akron and SEG Commercial Corp. of Mission Viejo, Calif., each had 13 foreclosed.
Ray Maynard, 56, owner of Maynley Investments, said he bought his first investment home after high school. He estimated that he had more than 90 properties in his heyday as a landlord.
But Maynard, who said it was his full-time job maintaining the properties, said the recession did him in.
“I made it all the way until May of 2010,” he said in a telephone interview. “A lot of people didn’t make it that far. I was in it for 35 years. It was my life.”
He said he got into trouble because he rolled cash back into fixing his properties and also tied up his credit lines.
He also said he let some tenants slide on rent when they lost their jobs or benefits, and that hurt his financial bottom line.
He now drives a delivery truck.
Maynard said he watched as some investors started buying up homes thinking they would fix them and flip them for a profit.
“These guys thought they could drive around in a Cadillac and thought they could make all this money,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of guys come to me and say, ‘How did you do it?’ It was hard work.
“They thought they could come in and get rich quick, and then it didn’t work out that way.”
…
Rental properties
There has been another negative result of investors jumping in and buying so many properties, said Dave Vaughan, executive director of Neighborhood Development Services in Ravenna.
Ravenna turned from 54 percent rental properties to 77 percent rental after the foreclosure crisis, he said.
“Homeownership is the backbone of any community, and it’s a tragedy what has happened,” Vaughan said. “And if you get investors who are doing nothing more than slapping some paint on it and renting it out, that’s even worse.”
How about that stock market?
Dow, S&P 500 post 3-week win streak, Nasdaq hits 13-year high
JeeYeon Park CNBC
20 hours ago
Stocks made more gains on Friday, with the Dow and S&P closing higher for the third-straight week, lifted by strong earnings reports that sent shares of Amazon and Microsoft soaring .
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 61 points higher, at 15,570.28 — about 1 percent off its all-time record high.
The S&P 500 finished at a fresh high of 1,759.77 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq rose to a 13-year high, knocking on the door of 4,000. The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX), widely considered the best gauge of fear in the market, closed near 13.
All key S&P sectors closed in positive territory, boosted by telecoms and utilities.
Equities briefly pared their gains during the day after Senator Rand Paul threatened to put Janet Yellen’s nomination as Federal Reserve chairman on hold this week, according to sources close to Paul.
Paul is insisting on a vote on his Fed transparency bill, and has informed Senate leadership of his intentions, according to the source.
…
should I buy FB now?
Here is a repeat of a post I made late yesterday which I am afraid many readers may have missed. I’d be interested in any opinions on the situation.
I was about to get into my car after work yesterday when a colleague who had pulled out just ahead of me drove into a nearby parking spot with her engine idling and stopped to chat. (For reasons beyond my comprehension, some people think I know something they don’t about housing.)
She and her hubby are purchasing an SD condo and locked in rates on a mortgage in early October (for a finance charge) at a local lender; they plan to close mid-November. Since they locked in, rates have dropped.
Her understanding was that the lock protected them against rate increases, but if rates fell, they could costlessly get the lower rate so long as it was before closing. Rates subsequently decreased, perhaps in part due to the shock and awe effect of the government shutdown on the economy plus an extra dollop of precautionary QE3 from the Fed. But when my friend asked whether their interest rate and monthly payments would drop, she was informed that it would cost them another finance charge to make it happen. The new finance charge would roughly cost them their first 15 months worth of payment reductions (i.e. their monthly will go down by $20 but they need to pay another $300 to get the lower rate: $300/$20 = 15 months). Is this a scam, or standard lending practice?
On another note, I asked her why she was buying now, and she was not interested in talking much about it, except to say that their monthly payment will be much cheaper than current rent on a comparable place. She didn’t seem to want to hear my opinion that rising rates going forward may lead to negative home equity wealth effects, so I didn’t bother to offer it.
Advise her to visit another lender.
(Think: Pit the bastards against each other).
The problem is they already took $300+ of her money. She can either pay another lender a finance charge or pay the current lender another finance charge.
P.S. Despite the sunk cost problem, I already gave her your advice yesterday.
I also told her to try to figure out if these “interest rate locks” generally come with unannounced charges to reduce rates even before the loan has closed. I can’t imagine it would take more than 15 minutes for the lender to compute and write in the payments for a lower rate. Why should this cost $300+?
The entire lending industry went “loan shark” on us decades ago.
It’s like so many other thing. Where I live, you have to pay an “application fee” just to apply for an apt. Yes, I know it’s for a credit check, but as you say, how long does that take these days? 15 minutes? AND we’re NOT talking above nice apts either.
We are being scammed on a daily basis by everyone and everything.
“The new finance charge would roughly cost them their first 15 months worth of payment reductions (i.e. their monthly will go down by $20 but they need to pay another $300 to get the lower rate: $300/$20 = 15 months). Is this a scam, or standard lending practice?”
A rate lock is a rate lock. You pay something for insurance against rates rising–the bank MAY have entered into hedging arrangements to protect against the higher rates…it’s typically not free for them to lock your rate. You don’t get your “premium” back. If you don’t want to take the loan, you don’t need to, but they don’t need to lower the rate.
Whac, you can do the math as well as anyone…if the lender is going to sell the loan, what happens to the value of the loan if rates rise between the “rate lock” and when they sell the loan? The value of the loan falls.
To protect against this, they typically enter into hedging arrangements (which cost money) when they lock a rate. There is no free lunch.
Of course, banks can do what they want if you want your business, and especially so if they intend to keep the loan on their books.
I locked in late summer 2012 at 3 7/8 for a refinance, and before closing, the lender dropped my rate to 3 3/4 for no cost. They haven’t made it a secret that they want more of my business though…and I still make payments to the same bank…they kept the loan.
So, the moral of the story is, if you want to have the flexibility to get the lender to drop the rate if it falls after a “rate lock”, you have a better chance of making that happen if they are a “portfolio lender” (ie. keep the loan on their books), than if they expect to sell the loan.
From yesterday:
Comment by Carl Morris
2013-10-25 09:46:05
The patient hasn’t even been able to get up to get to the punchbowl in quite a while. We’ve been administering the good stuff by IV to keep the party going. I’m sure he’s going to be up and at ‘em soon, though.
That’s a very apt analogy, Carl: QE is effectively _injected_, whether the patient wants it or not.
QE, the stimulation punch-bowl in an IV bag.
Yes…. all that wondering if you got ripped off…. and the attempt to convince yourselves that you got a bargain….. it’s all falling apart.
You got ripped off.
The blog LIEberals and GovLovers are spun up into a tizzy. Maggots.
http://www.azcentral.com/community/phoenix/articles/20131026phoenix-police-investigating-homicide-abrk.html
This happened today in a town house neighborhood in Phoenix. I would guess the shooter was stuck with a mortgage. His neighbors had annoying barking dogs. Tragic. The shooter not only shot both dogs but shot and killed four people and killed himself.
He should have rented. You can handle barking dogs for a year and then move on if you have a year lease. But a home owner is stuck. Yes barking dogs and Harley Davidsons that have loud pipes are dam annoying. But I sympathize with the dog owners here only because there should have been a nonviolent way to handle this situation. If it was the other way around, the dog owners shooting someone complaining about the dogs, I would have reversed.