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Latest Comments70 Comments
Housing Market Tracker - Macro Outlook Implies Recession?
The following is not from my mouth, but souds like it:
"The debacle — which has rattled an already nervous banking sector and appeared to be the biggest-ever trading fraud by one person — has fueled a debate about risk management, with France's conservative president condemning speculation.
"If we can make profits in a matter of hours, we can also have huge losses," said President Nicolas Sarkozy during a visit to India. "We must stop with this system that has gone haywire and that has lost track of its aim."
"It appears to be time to ... inject a bit of common sense into all these systems," he added.
------ quoted from news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20...;_ylt=Ah2bfrSawWrHSQrT...
Housing Market Tracker - Macro Outlook Implies Recession?
Brazil, an actual emerging market, had done a better job overhauling its economy. The United States looks like an "emerging market,” with large deficits and a weak currency.
I believe, USA is due to have a "system overhaul." We have to check our system, not mainly in economic parts. Time is changing so rapidly. How come we are still used to 230 year old political and legal parts without modernization.
Look at the current presidential election, many institutions such as cacusas or electorial college are not suitable in this modern world. If we just overhaul the economic or financial mechanism, it is not going to improve the fundamental functions put upon us.
Maybe, we could say it is just a call to a plumber when we ask Mr. BB of FED to cut interest rate in the chaos of the Wall. Nothing really cures the disease. They are minor repairs, not even a remodeling.
Three Notes on Housing
Here is a piece of brief quoted from Judy's housing tracker, for your reference:
Home Prices Coming Down In Area
Arthur Broslat of Re/Max Palm Realty in Port Charlotte said there is a sizable local inventory of "relatively new" homes... selling for 40% of what they went for three years ago: "I'm showing a... home in North Port that was selling for $250,000 in 2005. Now, you can get it for $130,000 to $150,000." Jason Painter of Program Realty LLC in Port Charlotte, who specializes in Cape Haze real estate, said home prices there "are off a good 35%." (Sun Herald, Jan. 22nd)
Three Notes on Housing
A Funny World (16): Why ASK Lender's Mercy? Why Don't You Do Lender a Favor? activerain.com/blogsvi...
I believe, I am an optimist who always says "tomorrow will be better" as Annie sang. But to your 2nd note, I am unable to get your point cross. Housing prices go down 30% will be too much for you? Common, give me a break!
The price cut, more than 30% off the peak is here NOW in the most California areas. What do you expect where it shall go from the present point of time? If you anticipate now is the housing bottom and against the public sentiment, yes, you can say it will go North. But I doubt you were.
Certainly, you may have a good reason to say: “you get my idea wrong. I am using the year of 2000 as the base year.” Well, everybody can have different stats just as Zillow.com counts a forced “foreclosure” as a volunteer “sale” and included it into its area sale figures of normal transactions at its website. What can I say?
The Economics of Second Liens
Felix is just pointing out a very real real real reality which is getting popular in our society or economy. To me, he has done nothing to imply his position.
15 months ago, I loaned one of my credit cards to my sister-in-law. By using mine, her balance of $17,000 was fully transferred into mine at 3.99% interest. She would pay about $450, instead of almost $1,800 a month to her own. She continued to directly pay my credit card banker and she had appreciated my help until 3 months ago.
Now she is kind of regret to ask help from me when I read her words in between. She wished she could know the "smart" broker ( or the right approach) earlier who negotiated with her credit card creditors for her. She got a good deal to pay 10 cents on a dollar, paid off all the balance remaining on her credit cards and she paid mine off.
I have no idea what's going on for her to easily wipe out all credit debt and have a fresh new start. All I know is, since then, my wife has told me 3 times:
"What kind of world is this? I kept coaching my young sister to save. She should stop over-spending. She and her 3 daughters went to have a professional hair-stylist every week and has all kinds of impulsive purchases. I save my money to have mine and my daughters washing our hairs at home by ourselves. I don’t buy such those fancy, junky computer stuffs for my daughter. See, I didn’t buy my daughter a ipod when their 3 daughters have updated to the newest many times. Now my sister is joking at me and says: I am owing nothing now and you still owe a banker a mortgage. Why you have to save? Why don’t you go out to my hair-stylist as we did. When you have problem, you go to see my programmer. I can‘t stand her bragging her wisdom!"
Great systems we have created nowadays! I have to admit that time is changing and I don’t know most of things or see the logics behind them.
ZipRealty: Challenging Times, But
I am not challenging your position in favor of Ziprealty. But your observation seems not so accurate. By comparison, I will say you are using so-called "gross multifier," in real estate jargon, to evaluate an income property purchase. I believe it would be much safer to use “net multifier”
Agent growth means growth of quantity or market share. It is good to be able to cover more territories. It maybe able to have more utilization of facilities to reduce unit costs. In this perspective, it will be safe for me to say Ziprealty is in a better position than Redfi. Redfi's San Diego operation can NOT even find a local agent in San Gabriel valley, CA to process a "make an offer" submission to get more revenue. However, it keeps sending its update to a prospect as a Santa, while there is nothing for Redfi to gain in the immediate future, except a good public image.
Ziprealty has better coverage, but that does not guarantee better quality service will be given. Certainly, I have no idea to know the connection between its growth and profit growth. Generally both move to the same direction, but it is not always the case. Starbuck gave us a good example showing that both can go different directions in its Q32007.
I won't buy Zip realty if I were Warren Buffet.
The Economics of Second Liens
A guy who really knows the tricks of ABS mechanism!
Thanks for updating my understanding on the current discount rate on junior liens.
IndyMac Bancorp: Time to Take REOs Online
Most content of the article are initially written for a professional real estate website. To better understand those professional jargons, you may go to the website or my blog at: activerain.com/blogs/r....
There are basically 3 stages in a foreclosure.
The 1st one is called NOD (Notice of Default) that means something real and serious starts legally.
The 2nd is called NOTS (or NOT in short) that means a date of foreclosure is scheduled legally.
A property in the above two stages are called "pre-foreclosure&... property.
The 3rd is a foreclosure sale by itself. There is a foreclosure minimum bid amount for the sale. If nobody wants buy the subject property for that amount, there is no way for you to bargain it down, the property will be struck off and the title to the property is legally transfered to a lender at that instant. Of course, you can make a deal with the lender at the auction site right after the auction is completed. You may get less, but it depends the situation.
Once the foreclosed property belongs to a bank or lender, it is called a "REO" (real estate owned) by the general public. In fact, it is not correct, it shall be called "OREO" (other real estate owned) since some banks DO own some properties for its daily business operation.
Hope I make it clear. In this case, if someone is willing to raise his hand to pay $380K (the minimum bid for foreclosure sale), he will get and own the property, not the lender. The property will not be called a REO.
Since nobody wants to pay that price of $380K, the lender has to take it back as a REO and try to sell it by a more reasonable price. Sometimes, the asking price will be even higher than the minimum bid, after a 2nd junior lien or other liens are wipe out.
Concerning the Case Shiller Housing Index
As an investor, I have been questioning if Case Shiller price index is a piece of junk for a long time. Please see my article at activerain.com/blogsvi...
I would like to write an article to pinpoint the uselessness of the Index. I've check how the Shiller Index collect its data as you did and roughly had the same position as you have. But, there is one thing stop me from writing. I have to make it very sure that what Dr. Shiller means when he use the term "arm-length" transaction. Also, I have to clarify what a "transaction of sale" means since so many real estate websites such as Zillow.com, Realty Trac or Trulia.com have different criterias to include a "sale."
Can you be kind enough to tell me that NAR considers a forced "foreclosure"... as a "sale" transaction as Zillow.com did?
Thank you very much.
Don't Expect a Housing Bottom Until Late 2009
People's need is there. But need has to be converted into a demand. The only way is to make housing affordable and reasonable.
After asking some agents in California who I don't know before to present my all cash offers, it seems to me that they don't know how to help and advise lenders to dispose those huge REO inventory in this downhill. They just sit and wait for housing price to "naturally" fall.
In this situation with potential buyer's sentiment, I believe we can't see the bottom until 2009 as you said. No need to read all the distort interpretation from those media gurus if you know the basics of economy.
Are We Having a Housing Crisis Déjà Vu?
Good question?
Look at the guidlines for "Contribute to Seeking Alpha":
If you have an informed opinion on a U.S.-traded stock or ETF that you want to share with the Seeking Alpha community, we'd like to publish it.....To submit your article, first read the guidelines to the right:
1. Be specific :
Write about a particular stock or ETF, not general market commentary.
......
Hope you know now why some articles are so narrow-minded. Because they are SA's favors to be "specific" to a "particular" perspective.
That's why there is nothing like you said. Some are with "no substance", only trivia interpretation. SA are trying to be an expert or specialist so much that makes them too close to a tree to see the forest.
After I tried to contribute some articles to return the favor from SA, I gave up my kindness. I know mine is not going to be published because my content is not "specific" and with a broader perspective.
Anyway, I still thank SA and read its collections, particularly Judy's "housing market tracker" that saves me a lot of time. She is a wonderful secretary help me to see the general market situation.
Well, We should thank for other's narrow-sided or near-sighted opinion, too. All we have to do is to be cautious and objective with our reasoning power and macroeconomic knowledge like you jsut did as the above.
They can feed anything and call it "expert viewpoints" to create a market psyche. We can still be benefited from that market sentiment if we are a generalist and keep a cool judgement and clear eyes to see some irrational exuberance coming up.
Recently the Wall Street created a "credit crunch" smoke gun for some people to make money. That's great! Thank you for the great jobs contributed by those specialists like Cramer.
Just sit, relax and laugh at the SMARTEST MBA Wall street guys losing their paper money and holding an empty bag in the crisis. Isn't it great fun?
Housing Market Tracker - Macro Review
I agree with Sawa that it is a local problem. But I disagree that it can't not be solved locally. NO, WE ARE NOT HOPELESS!
It's an emergency, we have to do a CPR job as a fire-engine people does. No time to put our energy in theory, let us do something to help survival and solve the miserables first. Timing is important since we can not sit and talk all day long until we find out ALL the facts as said by Mark Haroldsen.
All I care is do the right thing to effectively help people stay at his home and make a good return to a foundation shareholders.
Can we pool up our fund together as our ancestors put up their "Chit Fund" to help?
For a full detail, please read my article: A Funny World (17): Your Tent City? Or My Tear City? activerain.com/blogsvi...
Are We Having a Housing Crisis Déjà Vu?
In my blog, people start to argue about what the cause: socialism or individualism. No need to get involved in those theories such as "government involvement" or "private capitalist market."
It's an emergency, we have to do a job as a fire-engine people does. No time to put our energy in theory, let us do something to solve it first. Timing is important since we can not sit and talk until we find out ALL the facts.
All I care is to help people stay at his home and make a good return to a foundation shareholders.
p.s. I don't have to touch your money. Or you can follow my business plan and do it by yourself as long as you can help our people.
Are We Having a Housing Crisis Déjà Vu?
Indeed, WakeUp deserves to ask the question I always have in my mind: "What the insanity is doing onto this great country?"
I don't know what all the politicans are going to deal with the "shortage" of police power when a reduction of property tax revenue is expected, even Cali Governor declared a "fiscal emergency."
But based on my experience, I do know it is NOT going to work.
All I think these days is it is really a piece of cake for me to solve the problem in Ontario if I have a fundation with $2 million start-up capital. At least, the fundation is able to help reduce the distress very quickly and efficiently. No lip service or negative GNP production at all.
The fundation's goal is working at keeping the owners stay at their homes, not to leave. The goal is to get the owners a new loan amount and monthly payment they can work with without interest rate cut or freeze to create a negative amortization later. And at the same time this capital seed money is getting at least $12% return for its investors in the first year.
Can we do that? What kind of business plan I have to cure the problem? Try me, if you have $2 mil.
11 Places to Find Foreclosed Real Estate
Don't be so rude, please. Here are just 11 links. Nothing expressed any opinion on the writer.
To Stockerblog:
After checking USB's REO site, It is confirmed that they don't really release All the REO inventory as those bygones days. For public image? For self protection? All I know is they don't treat the website as an effective marketing tool in their mind.
Say there is only one REO listing in California. Do you believe that? I can give you more than 10 pieces of REO USB has now.
As I know, there is a website that will give you 50% REO lenders' link.