patrick.net

SFWoman,

While I'm sure I can't explain the wild discrepancy in this listings price I think we can agree it is about butt ugly. But I'm careful not to be too judgemental. Perhaps one could play handball or "squash" off of the concrete bunkers to the side? I'll check to see if it meets regulations.

They still brew Leinenkugels? I'll have to get down to "House of a Thousand Ales" my bad.

I was actually just kidding, some of my posts are as early as DS's and it was probably just a glitch. Besides, prison humor (even when applied to Casey) is pretty gross.

SFWoman,

Now you're talking! We'll check in w/LILLL and see if the owner of her "X-home" can hook us up w/some rapper tenants on a long term lease!

Seriously though, myself and Mrs. DinOR are looking at a 2,300 sq. ft. place right here in town that's already set up for "seperate living" two kitchens, fireplaces etc. It's been on the market for nigh on a year and has been reduced twice so w/lowball offer I'm thinking a 100 bucks a square foot. Logistically it would meet all of our personal/business needs and also have a little wiggle room for aging parent or "boomerang" child. Very similar layout BUT equally ugly! My little bird told me it belongs to Happy Happy Good Time Ent. LLC of Garbage Grove, CA so we'll see.

This may not be completely on topic, but CNBC just reported that a number of mortgage brokers and real estate agents are being laid off in San Francisco.

@Raiderjeff,

Once you've been following this blog a while, you'll learn there really is no such thing as "on topic". Topics will meander from RE to food to SciFi to Haiku to politics to economics to clothing then back to food.

Hey harm,

"Once you’ve been following this blog a while, you’ll learn there really is no such thing as “on topic”..."

LOL, you're right. I've been following this blog off and on for about two years. I just thought I'd include my little disclaimer anyway.

"I think it goes with the general drift of things."

True. I'm wondering if anyone is shedding a tear for these people? I don't like it when people are laid off, but some of the people within the RE industry have really pissed me off.

"I’d say you were more on topic than I am most days."

why thankya, thankya very much (my best Elvis impersonation).

"But I thought they weren’t making anymore land in San Francisco?"

Yeah, I guess I better call my RE agent right now before it's too late to get screwed.

GixxerGuy,

House flipping is an "idea junkies" dream! You don't have to stick to a script, you can change your mind as often as your underwear and there's basically NO regulatory body to report to!

Try collecting for a poorly done job from a guy that operates out of the cab of a pick-up truck. Pffft. He's already on to his next huge embarrassing failure!

To be fair, there are some folks out there that do quality work but let's think about it for a minute. If a flipper can change/correct any issues a house may have BEFORE the first mtg. payment is due the damn place couldn't have been that f@cked up to begin with! Real restoration takes time. Properly and LEGALLY done, I don't have a problem paying for it!

LILLL,

Anytime a listing (especially at "nose bleed" pricing) basically shows you only exterior photos I just move on. I don't give it a second thought. Shouldn't that tell you that the place probably hasn't been updated since the 70's?

Oh and SFWoman and I are submitting a lowball offer on a 2.195 mil. dump and were wondering if the new owner of your old home could hook us up with some quality tenants?

"It was a probate ….she had it painted….It is now on the market for 1.2.
Here it is…all 2br-2 bas of it. It is in a good location…."

Studio City is a nice area, but 1.2 mil for 2 bedrooms, 2 bathroom joint? Ummm....how many coats of paint did put on it? I would think it's going to sit for some time. I hope she's renting it out or living in it.

Jon,

You bring up some excellent points as always. My problem is that you can't be "just a little bit pregnant" either you are or your not.

HARM-X Industries Chairman reminds us that the function of GSE's is to:

Privatize profits.

Socialize risk.

The implied gub'ment guarantee is where it gets sticky. There's plenty of room within the system to foster competition and selection for consumers without resorting to a financial orgy.

I'm starting to wonder if a large part of the reason that defaults in the sub-prime arena aren't to some degree the result of people waking up and realizing "it's their loan that sucks, not their house"? I talk w/mtg. guys everyday and one is starting a marketing blitz to capture all of the business from people that should have never been in a sub-prime loan to begin with! I work in retail securities and we're without doubt the most regulated industry in finance if not the country. Virtually every interaction w/the investing public is scrutinized. It's working.

Randy, HARM, et al,

Thanks for enlightening me on the various facets of MBS investment. It's good to hear that there's minimal direct exposure to toxic waste. I'm still worried about mutual funds and pension funds in hedge funds with major toxic waste exposure though.

LILLL,

It's a nice house with very nice landscaping, I'll consider it for $250,000 :) Otherwise, maybe your friend can rent it to a rapper with a smaller posse.

in = owning

Anyway, playing devil’s advocate: Aren’t government-mandated lending standards and/or “guidance” just another form of this sort of regulation? Shouldn’t we let the free market determine interest rates and lending standards?

Did loan products such as Option, zero down and ARM get so popular in the last several years because of regulation or de-regulation? No one can deny that some did flip property succesfully using these products in the last few years. Were they bad for those people?

Jon,

We discussed the idea of "good" and "bad" forms of regulation more thoroughly in the How does one regulate "well"? thread. Bottom line: most of us small "l" Libertarians are not Free Market anarchists (or what Randy H calls "Market Fundamentalists"). Rules and regulations are what establish the ground rules for free capital markets to exist and function in the first place. Without them, things would quickly devolve into a Zimbabwe of Khazakstan-style kleptocracy.

However, there are some things that government regulation is good at and other things it is not so good at. Accurately and efficiently pricing goods, services and labor seems to be one of those things it is not so good at. Witness the long-term results from agricultural price-fixing and subsidies, protectionism, failed attempts at rent/wage controls, etc. Government market regulation seems to do best when it seeks to align risk with reward (which it is clearly NOT doing in the MBS markets) and in a "policing" enforcement role with regards to fraud and outright theft.

LILLL:
OMG - I have the Mary Ellen place saved in my homes on Zip, before you even mentioned it!
I liked the look of it because its small and has a big lot, so ignored the stupid asking price and kept it to see what happens...

Wow, so she's had it for a grand total of 10 weeks - sold 8/1/06 for 1 million, according to Zillow - and wants 200K over what she paid for it?

This one will be entertaining to watch. I wonder what it'll eventually go for...

Here's a very sobering statistic for you Patrick.net people which I gleaned from my stack of copies of the Contra Costa Association of Realtors trade paper "The Update":

In January of 2005, there were approxiamately 211 active detached listings for the following cities in Contra Costa County:

Alamo, Blackhawk, Clayton, Concord/Clyde, Danville, Diablo, Lafayette, Martinez/Pacheco, Moraga, Orinda, Pleasant Hill, Rossmoor, San Ramon, Walnut Creek

As or today for those same cities (according to ziprealty) there are 1988
active detached listings.

As or today for those same cities (according to ziprealty) there are 1988 active detached listings.

Wow.

I am moving all food discussions to astrid's blog, greencrabs.blogspot.com.

I may start a separate rights-to-food blog as well.

Hopefully, I will be more on topic here. :)

Can someone help locate the new TV program on one of the cable channels.....HGTV or something like that. I caught the very end of the program and didn't see which channel....DUH on me. I think I spaced it out because I was so interested in the format. It was a derivative of flipping where the sellers are dealing with a buyer's market and going through the stress of lowering their prices, whining about "losing money", horrified by the realtor's comments they had to actually make repairs, and so on. It is a timely topic and I'd like to follow the series. Any help would be appreciated.

On to other topics:
Dinor, our "DNA doc" loans are the paradox of today's lending. People who CAN and WILL repay are held to a higher level than anyone else....go figure. As lending practices come under more and more scrutiny, it's another opportunity for those in the know to use it to their advantage. I will guarantee lenders will soon offer special discounts to "plum" borrowers.....FACT. They have to prop up their portfolio for the auditors so they'll showcase those to give the impression they are good faith lenders and following guidelines.

Another thing that gripes my butt....it seems a lot of stuff does these days.....are all the "fees" lenders charge. They sit there and roll them off one after another as if the Gov requires it and borrowers pay and pay and pay when they don't have to. My favority is the Origination Fee. WTF is that for? I've yet had a banker actually justify it so I have them scratch it off and move on to the next one. You don't, and should not, pay for almost any "fee". I have yet to pay a loan fee of any kind and I am not special, smart, or good looking.

For the months ahead, my old adage is going to come in very handy:
"In confusion, there is profit". I know it sounds like Ferengi's Rules of Aquisition but it's true. You can make more money when the SHTF than any other time........

HARM

You do the topic justice. You know what, we have yet to discover one single consistent free market fundamentalist in the past couple years. But I have to say that so that I can claim to be one of the handful of genuine capitalists left. I'm so warped I still think that people dislike Ayn only because they learnt it was fashionable to do so as some right of passage -- usually about 3 weeks into Philosophy 101.

Doug H

You can make more money when the SHTF than any other time……..

I couldn't agree more. I have inevitably made pretty much all of my money during recessions and corrections.

Isn’t the Chinese ideogram for crisis the same as opportunity?

"When written in Chinese, the word "crisis" is composed of two characters. One represents danger, and the other represents opportunity."

John F. Kennedy

Doug H,

Good observation on "showcasing loans" for the auditor! I've never been through that type of an audit but I know for a fact when my internal auditors go through my client files every year I reach for the spiffiest one I can find (randomly of course!)

FEES: There was a time when you asked about various fees/charges and you'd get the same old hum-drum excuses like they're standard customary and reasonable and you'd say something like "can I get a copy, I just wanted one for my attorney?" and they'd say sure. Then you'd go back into the fees and one by one they would all of a sudden either disappear or become negotiable. Of course with the "white hot real estate market" the focus was more on doing things quickly than correctly.

HARM Says:

> @SFWoman, Though it’s no beauty queen,
> I wouldn’t call that the Ugliest house in
> America or even NoCal

Some real dumps at:

http://marinpos.blogspot.com/

Keep in mind you’re quoting someone who also thought he was a jelly donut.

Yes, and I think I am a cannibalistic lobster. :)

I’m so warped I still think that people dislike Ayn only because they learnt it was fashionable to do so as some right of passage — usually about 3 weeks into Philosophy 101.

Actually, it was around page 700 of Atlas Shrugged after reading The Fountainhead the month before.

In Ayn's sexy fantasy land, people don't need safety nets. Nobody in Rand's world got hit with Cancer after losing their health insurance.

@Doug H
Or...it may be 'Property Ladder'...a good 'ohmygod what were you THINKING!?!?' kind of show.

Particularly liked the one with the young newleyweds, who thought that not having an inspection prior to buying a 'fixer upper' was no big deal...

@HidingintheBronx.....you aren't from the UK, are you???
Makes me laugh that the most popular UK show ever only takes 40 years to cross the Big Pond. I love it though.
But I'm still trying to get my head around David Tannant - Christopher Eccleston was brilliant.

I'll have to get on board w/Dr. Who but my all time favorite was "The Avengers" w/Patrick McNee and Diana Rigg (hubba hubba). They were so campy and kind of kinky in weird sort of way?

Hiding,

Come on! You don't even watch the new Battlestar Galactica?

FAB,

MarinPOS was pretty damn funny! Evidently only in the BA can something that's 800 sq. ft. be considered "perfect for entertaining".

How about, "perfect for hermit w/no friends and no desire ever to have friends"? Seriously. I thought to myself, entertaining who? Carnival performers? WTF.

The show I watched had a couple selling their house to move up....isn't that always the case and it documented their work with their realtor and the selling process......low offers and SINCERE disgust they had to actually get up off their ass and do something. After all, they are ENTITLED.....
Thanks for the clues; I just got cable down here and there are a kazillion channels of crap so there's a bunch of programs I've never heard of. I'll let everyone know when I locate the series. This one was pretty true to the current market situation.

Back to my friend DinOR. I got a flyer in the mail all the way down here about an upcoming property auction in the Portland area....WTF?

Here's the website: http://rmnw-auctions.com/

Any idea what this is all about?

@Randy H,

Thank you, sir. I am truly honored to receive praise from the Great Master of econometrics himself. :blush:

@FAB,

Thanks for the MariPOS link --nice to have something to 'fill the void' left by the late, great "America’s Overvalued Real Estate".

I think this works better: :oops:

I'm a bit bummed that Mark Warner is not running in 2008. I wish Hilary Clinton made that announcement instead.

Awful Truth,

LOL! Great news. Maybe I can rope my boyfriend in for some property blogging now. (Once his precious Tigers play out their season).

astrid,

You get behind those Tigers and I do mean now! I don't want to jinx 'em but this could be a victory dance worthy of youtube! Or Gootube or.... whatever...... Anyone seen the Fox commercials w/Tommy Lasorda coaxing "also ran" fans down from trees and out from under the cupboards in the fetal position! They show one Cubs fan in a tree in the front yard, eyes aglaze sucking his thumb! Too funny. Me? I'm joining Tommy by the TV!

Allah,

It's ok. You buy when *you* think the absolute, undeniable, incontestable bottom occurs. Other people may have to balance the almighty dollar with living their lives just a tad bit more than you.

You think I'm a realtor in disguise? I'm not anonymous. You can read all about me. What do I know about you again?

There will be people buying as the prices drop and they will be buying for fear that someone else will buy it if they don’t, but what they don’t understand is that with inventorys as high as they are and as high as they will be going there will be other similar or better houses that will be available for increasingly better prices.

What you don't understand is that this exact outcome is not 100% guaranteed, and some people may derive better value from buying at a different point than others, including you. You are not everyone; you are just you.

By the way, prices are very sticky, by definition, right now; at least in this area. They have been for some months now. That you choose to ignore it does not change that fact.

you are just you

Excellent quote, Randy. May I use it on my new non-proliferation blog if I decide to start one? :)