The Housing Bubble

I tried my best to keep this business trip for going into a third day, but I’m stuck away from my desk, so there won’t be a desk clearing post today. Maybe I’ll put something together tomorrow. Thanks for your support and have a good weekend!

Try not to get stucco.

Are you worried rising rates will hammer your bonds?

Thank you, Republicrats, for open borders and unrestricted immigration policies and the vipers you’re letting into our midst.

http://news.yahoo.com/sister-tsarnaev-brothers-arrested-alleged-bomb-threat-212000353.html

Despite trillions in QE from the Fed (much of which went to foreign banks) and the ECB, the Eurozone still isn’t “fixed.”

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/its-confirmed-italy-is-back-into-recession-2014-08-29?link=MW_latest_news

Yellen’s non-existent inflation showing up at grocery stores this Labor Day.

http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=229347

Falling prices would benefit most Europeans - especially unemployed and underemployed young people - but the banksters and their corporate statist politicians must print moar money to inflate away their debts and liabilities.

http://www.businessinsider.com/eurozone-unemployment-and-inflation-2014-8

If you like your eastern Ukraine, you can keep your eastern Ukraine. Meanwhile, markets are pricing in “de-escalation.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-crisis-the-phoney-war-is-over-as-russian-troops-and-armour-pour-across-the-border-9697990.html

What a rigged central-planners market looks like.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-29/sp-futures-surge-over-2000-record-high-collapsing-japanese-european-economic-data-uk

A new English-language Al Qaeda magazine called Palestine–Betrayal of the Guilty Conscience Al-Malahem is suggesting terror attacks in California, New York and Las Vegas.

“The magazine, which is published by AQAP, the media wing of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, uses language that implies an attack will come very soon.

Instructions for making car bombs are accompanied by a list of possible terror targets–including public places such as Times Square in New York City and casinos in Las Vegas, as well as military venues such as the Georgia Military College and the U.S. Air Force Academy. Other targets listed include oil tankers and trains.”

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-California/2014/08/28/Al-Qaeda-Targets-California-in-New-Attempts

Jihad is coming to the US. Are you ready?

Crater.

is there a price possessive county in the us for 3rd quarter
anywhere?

Has Ben identified the market to which he moved to invest in real estate by feeding on the carcasses of busted speculators?

The catastrophically-missnamed Holy Spirit (Espiritosanto) Bank in Portugal implodes amidst standard bankster shell games.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/29/us-portugal-espiritosanto-family-idUSKBN0GT0R320140829

Auntie V Fed and I were having a discussion yesterday about who is Gen X, Gen Y, and Millenials. It appears to be rather murky, but wiki has a decent summary sentence in the Gen X entry:

————–
“George Masnick wrote that the “Census counted 82.1 million” Gen Xers in the U.S. The Harvard Center uses 1965 to 1984 to define Gen X so that Boomers, Xers and Millennials “cover equal 20-year age spans”.[14] Masnick concluded that immigration has filled in any birth year deficits during low fertility years of the late 1960s and early 1970s ”
————–

Boomers were born 1946 to 1965, Gen X were born 1965-1985, and Gen Y Millenial is 1985 to 2005, which sounds about right. If a gereration is only 20 years, then no one generation can really claim to be the parents of another generation. I have a hard time believing that there are over 80 million Gen Xers. Everywhere I look, there are tons of people 15 years older than me and 15 years younger than me and almost nobody the same age.

The MBA last month lowered its forecasts for purchase originations in the third quarter to $159 billion compared with $195 billion in the same period a year earlier. In January, the trade group had predicted the quarterly figure would reach $202 billion.

“We were told through a directive from the Department of Justice (DOJ) that we were not to question or verify – attempt to verify these ages,”

Mayor: Adult Illegal Aliens With ‘Graying’ Hair Enrolled in Public Schools

August 27, 2014 - 3:52 PM
By Penny Starr

(CNSNews.com) – The mayor of Lynn, Mass. says that some of the illegal aliens from Guatemala who are enrolled in her city’s public schools are adults with graying hair and “more wrinkles than I have.”

“They are not all children,” Judith Flanagan Kennedy told reporters at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday.

“One of the things that we did notice when we were processing some of these students coming in was that they were adults,” she said.

She added that the federal government will not allow school officials to verify their ages, even though one of the students turned out to be 35 years old.

Kennedy said that the majority of those from Guatemala who are enrolling in the Lynn Public Schools claim to be between 14 and 17 years of age.

“But there were people with graying temples, hair around the temples,” said Kennedy, adding that although she did not see these individuals in person, she saw photographs of them in registration paperwork. “There were people with more wrinkles than I have around their eyes.”

However, the school district was directed by the federal government not to verify the age of the foreign enrollees, Kennedy said.

“We were told through a directive from the Department of Justice (DOJ) that we were not to question or verify – attempt to verify these ages,” Kennedy stated at the press conference, hosted by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).

Kennedy said that she and the school superintendent in Lynn wanted to know why the number of students from Guatemala “almost doubled” from 56 who enrolled during the 2012-13 school year to 101 during the 2013-14 school year.

When CNSNews.com asked whether she could be more specific about how they determined the ages of those enrolled, Kennedy replied that while school personnel cannot ask for age verification, they have confirmed that some of them are in fact adults.

“We have no ability to confront a student directly and demand an accurate age,” Kennedy said. “Every once in a while, we’ll be able to determine that someone is well above the age at which they would be entitled to an education in the Lynn Public Schools.

“For example, if a student does not show up for a few days of classes, we will send our truant officers out to find out what’s going on at that home,” Kennedy explained.

“One example: the woman who answered [the] door said, ‘He’s 35 years old — he’s not going to show up at school….But we cannot, per DOJ guidelines, we cannot ask them for any more verification of age,” Kennedy said.

“It does become very frustrating,” she added.

cnsnews.com/…/mayor-adult-illegal-aliens-graying-hair-enrolled-public-schools - 49k -

Are you planning to work straight through your “retirement years”?

only gov workers can retire

Are your unaffordable house payments making you too broke to buy a car?

today’s drudge links are pimping the fear that another 9/11 is right around the corner, playing into the hands of sh1tbags like john mccain and lindsey graham, who’ve never seen a war for israel they didn’t like. links include:

the washington times
the uk daily mail
breitbart dot com
the jerusalem post

also note that any time you see a link to a regional subdomain of cbslocal (ex: www dot cityname dot cbslocal dot com), it is a drudge link. cbslocal is a sh1tty website with minimal content and maximum advertising.

a notable exception to drudge’s preference to link to sh1tty websites is infowars dot com.

and now for some housing news as reported by (dianne feinstein approved) real journalists

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/29/us/evictions-soar-in-hot-market-renters-suffer.html

for these lucky ducks, the rent is too damn high

EVERYONE MUST CHECK IN

“you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave”

I had a dream last night that went like this….

PBear and compliment RAL on his suit and ask who he’s wearing (Zegna, btw). Rio shows up in a Prius, slim_az shows up on a bike that has the same basket as mine (props to her), and northTeasterner shows up late due to traffic in a huge gas guzzling suv driven by AqDan that says “clown car commuter” on the side and was paid for by oil lobbyists. All the posters have hot dates, the women have nice shoes and the men have stylish undercuts. Ben gets a lifetime achievement award and gives a shout out to Bob Renny in his speach. Colorado wins for “most normal” poster, which is presented by oxide and polly (Colorado appears to be drunk and kisses polly on the lips rather than cheek). TV cameras cut to an upset wife in the audience. The show closes with an emotional video, produced by alena, recalling the illustrious posting career of highway50, complete with kooky $uBt1tleZ. Mike from Bend hosts the afterparty, with music by nycdj, and generously shares his medical marijuana.

Good Morning Region IV

Blackstone to list 42 story NYC office building for > $2 Billion.

** My note: Bloomberg is using an old picture of that building in this article. This building was completely redone 7 or 8 yrs ago (before Blackstone bought it, actually). It looks like this now: http://www.equityoffice.com/buildingdetail.asp?PortfolioID=888077

————————————-

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-28/blackstone-said-to-plan-nyc-sale-for-more-than-2-billion.html

Blackstone has hired Eastdil Secured LLC to market the 1.2 million-square-foot (111,500-square-meter) property, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans are private. The building, soon to be the headquarters of Verizon Communications Inc., may sell for about $2.25 billion, the person said.

Blackstone, the world’s biggest alternative investment manager, bought the tower in 2007 as part of its $39 billion acquisition of Sam Zell’s Equity Office Properties Trust, then the largest U.S. office landlord. The building, between 41st and 42nd streets and now known as 3 Bryant Park, houses insurer MetLife Inc.’s administrative offices in addition to Verizon, which will make the tower its headquarters on Sept. 1.

Christine Anderson, a spokeswoman for New York-based Blackstone, declined to comment on plans to sell the building. A telephone call to Martha Wallau, an Eastdil spokeswoman, wasn’t immediately returned.

The highest-valued building in the U.S. is New York’s General Motors Building, according to property-research company Real Capital Analytics Inc. The families of Chinese real estate developer Zhang Xin and Brazil’s Safra banking empire bought a 40 percent stake in the tower for about $1.4 billion last year, implying a $3.4 billion value for the 50-story property.

Law
Nation of Privilege Versus Rule of Law
Noah Smith

These days, the word “privilege” has been reduced to a trite buzzword. That’s a shame, because it used to mean more than just being born into advantageous circumstances. The word, which means “private law” in old French, originally referred to a system in which different groups of people had different rights under the law.

If there’s one political idea most people agree on these days, it’s the rule of law. We argue endlessly about income inequality, wealth inequality, or inequality of opportunity, but we take it as given that equality under the law is a prerequisite for a just society. And the consequences of private law are dire. The original system of French privilege was one of the main causes of that country’s bloody, chaotic revolution.

Now here’s the problem: The U.S. is looking more and more like it has a real privilege system. We are enforcing laws differently based on race, but also based on class. This is un-American, and it has got to stop.

First, there is race privilege. The tragic shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, has put this issue front and center, but the facts bear repeating. Our police officers enforce the law differently for different races. They arrest a much higher percentage of black people for using drugs, even though blacks and whites use illegal drugs at about the same rates and whites use the most harmful drugs — cocaine and heroin — at higher rates. That is an injustice.

Our courts are no less of a problem. Blacks are 30 percent more likely to be thrown in prison than whites who were convicted of the same crime. Furthermore, our Constitution guarantees citizens the right to a trial by a jury of their peers, but many black defendants are prosecuted by all-white juries, which are significantly more likely to return a guilty verdict against blacks. Finally, racial profiling is so rampant that black Americans who have committed no crimes at all have to live in constant fear of getting stopped by the cops. White Americans don’t have to live with this fear.

So if you are white, you literally live under a different legal systemthan if you are black. The laws are the same on paper, but that doesn’t matter to someone who gets pulled over and harassed by the cops. It doesn’t matter to someone who gets thrown in prison.

White Americans can be complacent about racial disparities in law enforcement, thinking that at least they themselves are safe. Except that in modern America, the law now seems to be different for people of different income levels as well.

In 2010, Martin Erzinger, a private-wealth manager for Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, was the driver in a hit-and-run of a bicyclist in Eagle, Colorado. The victim suffered spinal injuries and brain bleeding. But the prosecutor dropped felony charges against Erzinger, giving the following justification:

Felony convictions have some pretty serious job implications for someone in Mr. Erzinger’s profession, and that entered into it,” [prosecutor] Hurlbert said. “When you’re talking about restitution, you don’t want to take away his ability to pay.

So a rich guy got a lighter sentence because a heavier sentence would prevent him from being rich. Obviously, this get-out-of-jail-free card isn’t available to someone from the middle class, even if he or she is white.

Nor is this case unique. Earlier this year, Texas teenager Ethan Couch drove drunk and killed four people, but was punished only with rehab and probation. Part of Couch’s defense was that, having been raised rich, he didn’t know any better — a condition some are calling “affluenza.”

Other cases of affluenza seem to be popping up. Earlier this year, an heir to the du Pont fortune got little more than a wrist slap after raping his 3-year-old daughter. The reason:

A judge who sentenced a wealthy du Pont heir to probation in the rape of his three-year-old daughter said in court documents that he would “not fare well” in prison, reports Delaware’s News Journal.

And then there was the recent case of wealthy Washington state businessman Shaun Goodman, who got a minimal sentence for his seventh DUI, for the following reason:

According to Washington Courts, anyone with a BAC above .15 with two or more prior offenses, must face mandatory jail time of 120 days…However, Judge Christine Schaller gave Goodman a year of work release. Defense attorney Paul Strophy argued that Goodman’s business would fail and his client’s employees would be out of a job if Goodman wasn’t present for work.

Again, that is a get-out-of-jail free card that middle-class Americans, white or black, can never use.

All this adds up to one ominous conclusion: The U.S. is slowly becoming a country where income and race determine the degree to which a citizen is bound by the law of the land. That’s true privilege. That’s the dangerous kind. Dangerous for those on the bottom of the privilege system, but ultimately dangerous for those on the top as well.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-08-28/nation-of-privilege-versus-rule-of-law/

How do you deal with passive-aggressive people who continuously ask you why you don’t “just buy a house”? Note that these people are all underwater debt freaks who can’t keep money because it burns holes in their pockets. They have to make payments to the freaking dentist, even though they have dental insurance. They drive beater cars, but always have new shoes and the latest off-road or lake-faring vehicular toys. You can’t go to lunch with them because it always has to turn into a shopping trip, and they get mad if you don’t join them in purchasing useless trinkets for entertainment.

Do you just pretend not to be annoyed? Contrive an even better passive-aggressive dig? Simply state that the housing and job markets have never been right for you personally to buy a house without losing money on it? Tell the person that they are too stupid to understand?

It’s starting to get to me.

Rand Paul is a pale imitation of his father, but he’s a damned sight better than neo-con corporate statists like McCain, Romney, Ryan, or (retch) Hillary.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-29/rand-paul-slams-us-interventionists-unhinged-foreign-policy-abetting-rise-isis

The most overpaid NBC “contributor” in history, spawn of the embodiment of crony capitalism, Bill and Hillary Clinton, is quiting her day job. My, what a gap that will leave in NBC’s hard-hitting journalist coverage.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-29/chelsea-clinton-quitting-her-600000year-nbc-reporter-job

While the oligarchs escalate their looting of the 99%, ordinary people are finding it harder and harder just to get by in the Obama/Yellen/Wall Street economy.

http://rt.com/usa/183720-four-jobs-car-nap/

how do you afford these rates unless you’re selling dope or wymin?

the biggest draw for P2P loans are their interest rates — as low as 7% for borrowers with stellar credit. The average Lending Club interest rate is around 14.7% (slightly higher than the national average for 13%). Considering that the average borrower on the site typically carries debt with a 20.7% interest rate, it can be a much cheaper option to consolidate that debt and go the P2P lending route. That being said, the more risky a borrower appears, the higher their rates will be — just like a traditional mortgage lender or credit card issuer. (Lending Club’s rates go as high as 24.63%, while Prosper’s interest rates are as high as 35.36%).

The UK is reaping the fruits of its globalist financial and political elites insistence on unrestricted Third World immigration.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2737724/Terror-attack-UK-highly-likely-warns-Home-Secretary-Theresa-May-threat-level-raised-severe.html

Bullish for housing!

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/29/us-health-ebola-idUSKBN0GS1SU20140829

I remember seeing something on some site a few years ago that had 2 pictures of 2 different families. One family was sitting around a table in their dinning room having a nice dinner, under that picture it said ” Long term unemployed homeowner”. The other family was sleeping in a car in a parking lot and under that picture it said “Long term unemployed renter”.

Evictions Soar in Hot Market; Renters Suffer

By SHAILA DEWANAUG. 28, 2014

For tens of thousands of renters, life has become increasingly unstable in recent years, even as the economy has slowly improved. Middle-class wages have stagnated and rents have risen sharply in many places, fueled by growing interest in urban living and a shortage of rental housing. The result is a surge in eviction cases that has abruptly disrupted lives, leaving families to search for not just new housing that fits their budgets but new schools, new bus routes and sometimes new jobs.

In Milwaukee County, for instance, the number of eviction cases filed against tenants leapt by 43 percent from 2010 to 2013, according to figures gathered by the Neighborhood Law Clinic at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Other parts of the country have seen similar, if less drastic spikes — and not only in high-cost cities like San Francisco.

Landlord-tenant laws and housing market conditions vary widely, and evictions are not surging everywhere. And a court filing does not necessarily result in eviction; some cases are resolved through payment plans or other agreements. But from 2010 to 2013, Maine experienced a 21 percent increase in eviction filings, Massachusetts 11 percent and Kentucky 8 percent. In the fiscal year that ended in June, New Jersey, which has some of the strongest tenant protections in the country, had one eviction filing for every six renter households. In Georgia, where court statistics do not differentiate between tenants evicted by a landlord and homeowners evicted after foreclosure, filings soared to almost 270,000 last year, a 9 percent jump since 2010. Over the same period, according to the research firm CoreLogic, the number of foreclosures dropped by half.

Perhaps the simplest explanation for the rise in evictions is a severe shortage of rental housing caused by a lack of new construction during the recession and the wave of foreclosures that turned homeowners into renters and occupied housing into abandoned blight.

A vast majority of renters live in cities, but evictions are not limited to urban settings. Rural areas like western Oklahoma, where an oil and gas boom has increased demand for housing, have also seen an increase in eviction filings.

The rising demand for, and tight supply of, apartments means landlords can now afford to be more exacting in their standards, if not outright aggressive in replacing renters with those who can pay more. In the second quarter of this year, the rental vacancy rate sunk to its lowest in almost 20 years, while rents, in inflation-adjusted dollars, remained close to their peak. Some advocates for tenants said that court filings were just the tip of the iceberg — many renters have been displaced by rising rents, threatening letters, one-time payoffs and condo conversions, without ever going to court.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/29/us/evictions-soar-in-hot-market-renters-suffer.html -

Q: Why don’t you just buy a house?

A: My new boss is control freak. She prohibits me from participating in social media, and she stabs backs. Everything that anyone does is wrong, but there is never an answer as to what would have been right. Follow-up questions just make her mad. If a higher-level person advised you to do something a certain way, then she will roll her eyes and accuse that person of being incompetent. You must bend to her will. If the higher-up gets mad, she blames you. Then you nod and agree. When this becomes intolerable, I will move on, regardless of whether or not the company still wants me. For I rent.

DOJ TO GIVE MONEY FROM BANK OF AMERICA SETTLEMENT TO LIBERAL ACTIVIST GROUPS

Judicial Watch president: ““This is a wealth redistribution scheme disguised as a lawsuit”

by AARON BANDLER | DAILY CALLER | AUGUST 29, 2014

The Department of Justice is giving liberal activist groups money from a $16.6 billion settlement with Bank of America, Judicial Watch reports.

The groups benefiting from the lawsuit, according to Investor’s Business Daily, are the National Council of La Raza, Operation Hope, National Community Reinvestment Coalition and Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America. The money also went to “delinquent borrowers” in Chicago, Oakland, Detroit, Philadelphia and other major “Democrat strongholds.”

“This is a wealth redistribution scheme disguised as a lawsuit,” Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, told The Daily Caller. “And who benefits from the distribution? Interest groups the administration relies on, outside interest groups, allies and politicians in communities trying to benefit as well.”

Fitton noted that these liberal groups are basically what’s left of the Association of Community Organization for Reform Now (ACORN) network, and that President Barack Obama has ties to ACORN.

Poway, CA Housing Prices Crater 19% YoY; Inventory Billows 42% As Housing Demand Collapses Statewide

http://www.movoto.com/poway-ca/market-trends/

Establishment GOP scumbag and Wall Street fluffer Senator Mitch McConnell caught up in a bribery scandal. There’s a shock.

http://www.businessinsider.com/mitch-mcconnells-campaign-manager-resigns-amid-iowa-bribery-scandal-2014-8

“Asked: Another Real Estate Bubble? - Regarding Phoenix, AZ. In a nutshell the Real estate cheerleader columnist Catherine Reagor reminds us that since 2011, 100,000 houses have been bought up and most of them turned into rentals. The biggest buyers, such as Blackstone, used Wall Street money to finance the purchases.

http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/asked-answered/2014/08/29/asked-answered-rental-homes-derivatives/14706637/

Riding on the City Of New Orleans
Illinois Central, Monday morning rail
Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders
Three Conductors; twenty-five sacks of mail
All along the southbound odyssey - the train pulls out of Kankakee
And rolls along past houses, farms, and fields
Passing trains that have no name, and freight yards full of old black men
And the graveyards of the rusted automobile

Good morning, Region V, how are you?
Say, don’t you know me? I’m your native son
I’m the train they call the City Of New Orleans
I’ll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done

Dealing card games with the old man in the Club Car
Penny a point - ain’t no one keeping score
As the paper bag that holds the bottle
Feel the wheels rumbling ‘neath the floor
And the sons of Pullman Porters, and the sons of Engineers
Ride their father’s magic carpets made of steel
And, mothers with their babes asleep rocking to the gentle beat
And the rhythm of the rails is all they feel

Good morning, Region V, how are you?
Say, don’t you know me? I’m your native son
I’m the train they call the City Of New Orleans
I’ll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done

Night time on the City Of New Orleans
Changing cars in Memphis Tennessee
Halfway home - we’ll be there by morning
Through the Mississippi darkness, rolling down to the sea
But, all the towns and people seem to fade into a bad dream
And the steel rail still ain’t heard the news
The conductor sings his songs again - the passengers will please refrain
This train got the disappearing railroad blues

Good night, Region IV, how are you?
Say, don’t you know me? I’m your native son
I’m the train they call the City Of New Orleans
I’ll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done