If You’re Relying On Appreciation, You’re Gambling
KAJ 18 reports from Montana. “New buildings have been going up around the Gallatin Valley, and reporter Keele Smith found out how much construction is going on - and what we can expect down the line. Randy Stevens just moved to Bozeman to work at Montana State University. He and his wife bought a home in Loyal Gardens subdivision without ever going inside. ‘We quickly found out that this is a crazy home buying market and things move really fast, and we were not prepared for that,’ says Stevens.”
“Ami Grant is a broker for Prudential Montana and helped the Stevens find their new home, and says most people like new construction if they can afford it. ‘There’s a huge demand in the $250,000 range, $275,000 but very solid demand in the $300,000’s and low $400,000’s as well,’ Grant said. Many buyers are looking for the same thing, which is getting hard to come by. ‘Single family homes for sure, but there’s a big town home market as well because there’s only a few homes under $250,000 in Bozeman right now,’ Grant says.”
KMVT in Idaho. “The local housing market is booming, but sellers are having to wait a while before moving into their new houses, Because they haven’t been built yet. Property values are climbing again, which means you can get more money for selling your home right now. Homeowners who’ve been waiting to sell are finally putting their homes on the market. But appraisals are having a hard time keeping up with rising real estate prices.”
“Sid Lezamiz, owner of Lezamiz Real Estate Company, says, ‘We’re seeing more presold new construction being sold right now than we have since 2007. So we’re almost at the level we were in 2007, which was the peak of the market.’”
The Pacific Northwest Inlander. “For weeks, a deluge of advertisements for these FortuneBuilders seminars flooded Spokane radio stations. Call now, said the voice of Than Merrill (FortuneBuilders founder, ex-NFL player, former Flip This House star) and get two free tickets to learn how to rake in profit with very little risk. Spokane is the perfect market, he said, for house flipping.”
“Tony Natoli — once Merrill’s disciple, now one of his evangelists — speaks at FortuneBuilders seminars across the country, dangling the promise of big wealth through savvy real estate transactions. “There’s those people that say money’s not everything, money’s the root of all evil, money won’t buy you happiness. Why would they say that?’ Natoli says. The crowd murmurs their response. ‘Don’t have any, right. Listen, guys: I’ve tried it without money. I’m here to tell you that sometimes having a lot of money makes things a lot easier.’”
“‘Some people say, ‘Wow, I don’t need all of that,’ Natoli says. ‘But I’m telling you, deep down inside, you want it. And also I’m going to tell you you deserve it, if you’re willing to do what you need to do to get it.’”
“In the radio ads, Merrill claims Spokane is the perfect market for his system. He explains that the region’s low price point — plenty of homes under $250,000 — make it ideal for flipping. It’s an iffy claim. In October, listing service RealtyTrac named the high-priced home-flipping markets as the hottest, with the low-end market having decreased significantly.”
“Marianne Guenther Bornhoft, president of the Spokane Association of Realtors, says Spokane sale prices have been stagnant. ‘Prices are up 3.7 percent,’ Bornhoft says. ‘If you’re a house flipper, you need to have increases that are way higher than 3.7 percent.’”
“Merrill argues his system relies on solid home improvements, not appreciation. ‘If you’re relying on home appreciation, I think you’re gambling,’ Merrill says.”
The Bend Bulletin in Oregon. “Real estate has been a bright spot in Central Oregon’s economic recovery this year, with homes selling at a pace not seen since 2006, prices rising, foreclosures falling and building activity rebounding. But talking to a half-dozen local real estate officials will yield a half-dozen different opinions about the state of the market today and the near-term outlook. Not all of them are rosy.”
“‘Things have without a doubt slowed down,’ said Kip Lohr, owner and principal broker of Lohr Real Estate in Bend. ‘There was a point even two months ago where I could put a property on the market, and in two or three days it would have five offers and end up selling for $10,000 above the listing price. Now, almost like a light switch, we’re seeing very well-priced properties stay on the market.’”
“‘I’m worried interest rates will continue to climb,’ said Jim Mazziotti, owner and principal broker of Exit Realty Bend. Another factor could be a decline in the buying of foreclosed properties by investors who stormed the Bend market in the years after the 2008 housing collapse. ‘I think what some people think is a red flag is really a false indicator of the drop-off in investor activity,’ Mazziotti said.”
“Lohr said there’s some concern that prices could continue to drop over the next year, driven by a state foreclosure mediation law that prompted banks to hold off on thousands of pending foreclosures, creating a backlog. Lohr said his office has counted roughly 1,600 homes across Central Oregon that have received a notice of default on their mortgages or notices of judicial foreclosure, but haven’t come onto the sales market. Some of them have been in limbo since 2009, he said, with the owners giving up hope on keeping the home years ago.”
“‘We’ve got a backlog of these distressed homeowners. I think a lot of them have just abandoned their homes,’ Lohr said. ‘I think we’re going to see a lot of distressed inventory come onto the market’ into 2014.”
I loved reading that Pacific Northwest Islander article. I felt as if I was reincarnated.
I think these days there’s one born every second, not every minute.
Oops! Merrill might be aiding and abetting in a crime. It’s against the law to flip a house under one year in Washington unless you have a contractors license or do less than $500 in renovations .
Well you know, real estate always goes up- except for when it falls precipitously for extended periods of time…
Wherever there is an imbalance there is opportunity.
“Wherever there is an unbalance there is opportunity.”
I’ll say! This is especially true when the type of imbalance is a mental one.
It comes from watching to much HGTV.
I agree with this. If you’re close to going off the deep end, stay away from Prego Millenial HGTV. PBS Create’s home and garden shows are actually sane.
Stay away from PBS also. It lowers testosterone.
realtors are liars
What kind of a horrible world do we live in where even a hard working flipper can’t make a fortune any more.
I used to work at a movie studio. The odd thing was that you would always be working on something that didn’t come out for 4-6 months in the future. Then by the time the movie came out, it was old news for you.
Every single real estate article needs to be read from this perspective.
And there exists opportunity, only because one of the parties in the trade is going to take it in the shorts. Big time.
Yet, the irony is housing depreciates…. always.
Reading the Bend, OR article, one theme stands out….
The 12-18 month dead cat bounce was to draw in more suckers, by design.
Think about it…. these people are underwater already and the price correction just got started.
Bend is loaded with stupid money imported from So.Cal. Not much efficiency there.
So the severest losses are taken by CA Donkeys.
L.A. is mule city!
“Listen, guys: I’ve tried it without money. I’m here to tell you that sometimes having a lot of money makes things a lot easier.”
All you have to do is believe!
‘Merrill had only been investing for about three years when the housing market began to teeter. But that didn’t stop Merrill, in his late 20s, from launching his housing seminar business and starring on the third, fourth and fifth seasons of A&E’s Flip This House. His business has thrived amid the recession, growing more than 800 percent over a three-year span. In 2010, Inc. magazine called FortuneBuilders the fastest growing education company in America.’
‘Another star, Armando Montelongo Jr., has also topped Inc.’s fastest growing education companies with his own brand of seminars. But Montelongo’s seminars have been branded with a Better Business Bureau “F,” and earned him a Forbes profile headlined “Meet Armando Montelongo: The Home-Flipping Huckster Who’ll Make $50M This Year.”
While I enjoy laughing about this stuff, it should be noted these guys are making tens of million, even while the media is screaming fraud. That says a lot about the mental attitude toward house flipping these days.
From the website, it costs over $1,000 to take one of these courses. I met a local gal a few years ago who did this sort of seminar and then sunk her entire fortune into properties to rehab as rentals. She was all tears that she couldn’t sell the properties for “what they were worth”. She didn’t have a fortune anymore.
For every $50 million huckster, there are untold billions thrown at the housing bubble by their dupes.
“She was all tears that she couldn’t sell the properties for “what they were worth”.”
Just like our very own Tears Of Joy……
She doesn’t have a fortune anymore either.
Let me guess…. she’s got a job fetching coffee for the boss at 60+ years old.
For every $50 million huckster, there are untold billions thrown at the housing bubble by their dupes.
Indeed, if these hucksters really have valuable information, why sell it?
“While I enjoy laughing about this stuff, it should be noted these guys are making tens of million, even while the media is screaming fraud. That says a lot about the mental attitude toward house flipping these days.”
There truly is a sucker born every minute. After a bitter argument, a past girlfriend dragged me to a “free seminar” at a local hotel which amounted to some pyramid scheme. A friend of hers’ husband was getting into it and invited us along (ex-military guy with no common sense whatsoever; a total mouthbreather who annoyed the sh!t out of me). I could see right through the whole sham, and it was sickening. After the ‘pump the people up’ speech, they worked the large crowd for money in a cocktail party sort of setting with no cocktails or food. I told the GF I was done with the nonsense and would see her at the car. When she came out she was mad at me about the whole thing, for not “keeping an open mind.” At that point I had enough and asked her if she was really that stupid, or just trying to appease her friend. We never talked about it again.
“I’m here to tell you that using other peoples money makes things a lot easier”.
‘Randy Stevens just moved to Bozeman to work at Montana State University. He and his wife bought a home…without ever going inside’
Let me in this guys class.
It’s funny how these articles report stuff like this. What’s the message? Throw common sense out the window people, there’s a HOUSE for sale! Look honey, they’re selling a HOUSE! Get a sleeping bag and let’s make fools of ourselves.
How long would it have taken to walk inside the darn thing?
All you have to do is believe!
Does anybody in Montana make decent money? I’ve never been, but I’ve read that it is a poor state, in the bottom third as far as per capita income is concerned.
I have been to eastern Idaho and was shocked. It seemed like the only legal thing that was thriving was the Mormon Church. I’ve also been to Bend; I asked a local if there was any industry in town besides real estate and she said “no, that’s about it.”
Mt. Bachelor ski resort, and there is a large vacation-home community called Sunriver.
Bend is a tourists destination, 2nd home retreat and retiree destination…Their employer base is not one that would support the cost of housing there particularly with the re-bound they have seen…Low interest rates are the culprit as far as I am concerned…Change that dynamic and prices will fall back…
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&ved=0CDQQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gobend.com%2FTopEmployers.htm&ei=b42LUvaJBMWIigLkw4GIDA&usg=AFQjCNGH81y0_BuThwFnIEisXFE89WcDSw&sig2=3Q5SfVAn0ZMGeHerb9dfNQ&bvm=bv.56753253,d.cGE
Unless things have recently changed, Montana has the second lowest wages in the country next to Mississippi. It’s just another of the beautiful mountain states where the rich own everything worth owning, and almost everyone else lives hand to mouth, or worse.
It’s just another of the beautiful mountain states where the rich own everything worth owning
For the most part I think the Govt owns almost everything worth owning and everybody else fights over who gets to use it how they want.
Anybody who’s done a long-distance move knows that it’s both scary and exciting at the same time,” Stevens says.
Lets see record highs in dec. Jan. and Feb. 60’s lows minus 40
I foresee frozen engine block repairs very soon….not to mention heating costs…..that job must pay super good.
http://classic.wunderground.com/NORMS/DisplayNORMS.asp?AirportCode=KBZN&SafeCityName=Bozeman&StateCode=MT&Units=none&IATA=BZN
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-19/junk-glistens-under-bernankecare-as-worst-win-in-stocks-bonds.html
‘The Federal Reserve’s near-zero interest rate turns five years old next month, the longest period without an increase in history. Coupled with more than $3 trillion of asset purchases, it adds up to “Bernankecare,” said Joshua Brown, chief executive officer of Ritholtz Wealth Management in New York. And it’s causing parts of the market to behave strangely. Stocks of companies with weak balance sheets are rising twice as fast as stronger ones; junk borrowers get rates lower than their investment-grade counterparts did before the credit crisis; and initial public offerings are doubling on their first day of trading.’
‘Carl Giannone says he’s given up hunting for quality stocks. Now he’s simply riding the wave of upward momentum in the U.S. market.’
“It’s a game of musical chairs,” said Giannone, who manages a team of stock pickers at T3 Trading Group LLC in New York. “You just want to make sure you can sit down.”
Again the musical chairs analogy. The problem is that the Fed and Congress are doing their best to make sure the bankers have a chair, to the extent of taking away chairs from people who aren’t even playing. That’s “leadership” for you.
1937-8 the fed reached this level in % of gdp- all we need is a WWiii to clear things up
War with China, two birds, one stone. Solves China’s problems from their end also. And we’ll need Mexico to take over supplying the crap China now does.
“And it’s causing parts of the market to behave strangely. Stocks of companies with weak balance sheets are rising twice as fast as stronger ones”
This is what happens when you tinker too long with the market through Q.E. Distortions happen people think irrationally. Strange times.
“‘We’ve got a backlog of these distressed homeowners. I think a lot of them have just abandoned their homes,’ Lohr said. ‘I think we’re going to see a lot of distressed inventory come onto the market’ into 2014.”
If shadow inventory cargo cultists can just keep the faith alive for a few more years, I’m sure we will see a lot more homes on the market some year soon.
I’m sure we will see a lot more homes on the market some year soon ??
If the shadow inventory does exist in the volume that is suggested then we will see this ZIRP for another year at least…There is no way the bank can un-load these houses anywhere near what the balances are on the loans without the ZIRP support…
With that said, if the “shadow” inventory really does not exists, then we could see interest rates move up with the abandonment of QE and raising the discount rate…
Dual mandate of GDP & Unemployment is the suggested purpose of the FED…In the past five years ZIRP, IMO, has been about allowing balance sheets to heal…
Oregon could be the most aggressive state for limiting foreclosures, either through the courts, or federal/state policy. I can show you one visible aspect of the shadow inventory:
‘HARP is an acronym, short for the Home Affordable Refinance Program. Part of the housing stimulus program launched in 2009, HARP is rolled under the government’s Making Home Affordable program and is sometimes called the Obama Refi.’
‘From this desire to “do more”, HARP 2.0 was born. HARP 2 didn’t make a lot of changes to the HARP 1.0 guidelines. The ones it made, though, were major. One such change was to grant clemency to HARP 2 lenders in the event that certain loans defaulted. It meant that Chase Mortgage, for example, could HARP refinance a Bank of America loan without worrying about mistakes that Bank of America (or Countrywide) may have made in the original loan file.’
‘This provision made cross-servicer HARP loans possible. Homeowners no longer had to refinance with their current bank or lender.’
‘Another big HARP change was to allow refinanced loans with unlimited loan-to-value. No matter how far your mortgage was underwater, with HARP 2.0, you could be program-eligible. Under HARP 2, nearly three times as many homeowners are getting refinance assistance as compared to the original HARP 1.’
Looking at the chart, Oregon has nearly 4% of houses refinanced using HARP. A program that has a double digit re-default rate in the first 2 years of loan origination.
This “article” uses the word normal 5 times:
‘Foreclosures, defaults in Sacramento area plummet to ‘normal’ levels’
‘Both key indicators are now in line with median levels over the past 20 to 25 years, said DataQuick analyst Andrew LePage.’
So was there a HARP/HAMP program in those past years? Was there a Homeowner Bill of Rights? 5 years of QE? Still there were 2,300 foreclosures and NOD’s in the 3rd quarter. At a time when we’re told investors are buying up everything in sight. All of this is an effort to normalize the abnormal:
‘these numbers are evidence that policies like the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing program, which have driven mortgage rates to historical lows, are encouraging buyers to snap up homes aggressively in certain markets. And some real estate analysts like housing market veteran Mark Hanson think that analyses like Kolko’s are too optimistic. Writes Hanson:
“When comparing house prices and affordability today vs the bubble years people make a critical error. That’s, they don’t “normalize” the bubble years metrics to account for the fact that the incremental buyer/refinancer used “other than” 30-year fixed mortgages. In other words, they forgot about the popularity of “exotic loans” and assume everybody always used market-rate 30-year fixed rate financing.”
Nice research Ben…Last paragraph makes an excellent point…
Compared to So.Cal it’s a drop in the bucket.
If prices (or any other bullish indicator) are up, it’s recovering. When it heads down, it’s stabilizing:
‘Sales of existing homes in Canada declined in October from September, suggesting the summer surge in sales was boosted by homebuyers who jumped into the market amid the threat of rising mortgage rates, dampening demand as the year draws to a close.’
‘The industry group for Canadian real estate agents said…we are inclined to look through the weakness of this report and focus on the longer term trend where we see the theme of stabilisation in the housing market carry the day.”
‘The housing sector has been a major driver of Canadian economic growth coming out of the recession, but the market has been plagued by worries it has over-extended itself and is due for a correction.’
don be HARPin on me,yo
Yo Than, If you’re stupid enough to repeat the same mistakes of only 5 years ago by using lemmings money then you get what what’s coming to you. America suffers from extreme short-term memory loss and high fructose addiction.
‘If you have been paying any kind of attention to the mainstream media the past few years, you may have noticed quite a bit of bubble chatter…The cover of Barron’s this weekend was literally a bubble — the second such bubble cover in two years.’
‘In any historical asset bubble, we do not get bubble magazine covers in major news media at the height of the bubble. If anything, it’s the precise opposite…I am hard-pressed to recall when any sort of bubble was accurately identified in real time on the cover of a major media publication. If anything, the opposite is true.’
From the comments:
‘Try this one. Barron’s Cover | MONDAY, MARCH 20, 2000. Burning Up.
‘Warning: Internet companies are running out of cash — fast
By JACK WILLOUGHBY
When will the Internet Bubble burst? For scores of ‘Net upstarts, that unpleasant popping sound is likely to be heard before the end of this year. Starved for cash, many of these companies will try to raise fresh funds by issuing more stock or bonds. But a lot of them won’t succeed. As a result, they will be forced to sell out to stronger rivals or go out of business altogether. Already, many cash-strapped Internet firms are scrambling to find financing.’
Another:
‘When housing in NYC, SF, Washington DC, Boston and in other big cities is the same price as it was (or higher) in 2007 that is a bubble now b/c it was a bubble, then.’
‘When junk bond prices are higher now than Treasuries of equal maturity were in 2007 that is a bubble b/c junk is junk, risk exists whether gamblers choose to acknowledge it or not.’
‘When the US imports 40% of its fuel supply, insisting that the US is doing otherwise is a lie, yet this lie supports all of the US markets. We insist to ourselves that what Americans have done in the past will carry on forever, which is nonsense.’
‘We are good at massaging appearances and have done so for quite awhile now. Everything reverts to mean.’
So, the proof that there is no bubble is that someone is warning us that there is a bubble. Mania logic.
‘The housing recovery has finally come to Chino Valley, and the issuance of building permits indicates that the recovery started in June. Like Trout, Jim Reed, project manager for Yavapai County for Phoenix-based Mandalay Communities, said the availability of a “more affordable price point” makes Chino Valley an attractive market for buyers. The homes Mandalay is building in Bright Star range in price from around $230,000 to $290,000. They cover just under 1,900 square feet to about 2,500 square feet, and contain three to four bedrooms and two to two and a half bathrooms.’
This part of Arizona is so broke, I’m surprised they have a newspaper. I guess I’ll have more foreclosure work there in the future.
Almost $300k in some desert scrub sh!thole? What kind of jobs support those prices?
Practically none. Mobile homes outnumber stick built houses in Chino Valley, IMO.
You’ll also have some down here in Tucson. Another one of those buy-to-rent-and-bet-on-the-appreciation houses just got foreclosed in my nabe. It’s one of, oh, about 10 that have gone that route.
These builders are the real story. Those homeowners that saw prices rising and put on the market hoping to sell at a profit can continue to sit tight when their shack doesn’t fetch their wish price. These builders have to sell but they can’t do it at a price that won’t bankrupt them.
They are doing the same in Phoenix southeast. Throwing up houses that are priced far higher than jobs or the used home market supports. 400-600 k in neighborhoods where sales were in the low 200-300s.
I think they all know it and have scammed out their cut already, just like in the movie business, where a movie flopping doesn’t mean that a bunch of people didn’t profit heavily getting it made. Who ultimately holds the loans to the builders and holds the bag? Look in a mirror.
So. Cal. Cooling. Bellflower re-do house flip…35 days on Zillow and already $15,000 price-cut. I think you’re flipping late.
The pain has already permeated yet the public seems unaware of it….. yet.
Not to worry…the SoCal market will come back after the Souper Bowl.
I was reading some comments on an article regarding real estate the other day, and someone chimed in that they had purchased 5 houses in 2012-2013 in Sequim, WA where the population is less than 7k people. The level of speculation is truly stunning. This bubble is due entirely to speculators, and nothing else. And, when it pops, I expect them to show up in huge numbers again. The mentality just will not die.
Someone from Washington state once challenged me to correctly pronounce the name of that town. I gave up after a few tries. Apparently it is pronounced “squim.”
Overheard colleague at work today discussing how Seattle was crashing now after rising for a bit.
“Squim” is correct.
You’ll love this…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-18/chinese-steer-billions-abroad-in-quest-for-safety-real-estate.html
The Chinese are about to be realtored!
Bejing will not be happy after they’ve been fleeced downtown style.
From the article:
More than a dozen Chinese developers gathered for breakfast at a Los Angeles hotel one Sunday earlier this month before taking off for meetings with property brokers, attorneys and potential business partners.
“We like the stable and mature investment market in the U.S. relative to the Chinese market,” Jianrong Qian, chairman of Shanghai-based Chiway Holding Group Co., said through an interpreter before heading off to eat with the rest of his group at the InterContinental hotel in Century City. “We were encouraged by the pace of the recovery here in the U.S. after the financial crisis. It shows the resilience of this market.”
Think they’re gettin’ the truth, the whole truth, and nuttin but the truth, so help em? Doubt it.
Hard to imagine that the bubble in the US is more attractive than the bubble in China. I guess their realtors aren’t quite as polished and slick as ours.
Remember, I said this not too long ago. With all our problems, which are legion, they see the US as a safe and stable place.
“Hard to imagine that the bubble in the US is more attractive than the bubble in China”
It isn’t. It’s a safe place to hide their money and a life boat should “reforms” back home turn out to be potentially hazardous for them.
Plus Vancouver has become ludicrously expensive. And there is a better supply of servants to hire in California.
I guess they’ll be learning Spanish before they learn English
Billions, bah. They need trillions to be able to save this sinking ship. This is just a feel good business puff piece that is mostly dealing with commercial RE.