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Paul,
In the S&L meltdown, depositors were unable to access their funds for several weeks - and many were delayed much longer. It wasn't policy which created the delays. The FDIC simply was not scaled to respond to so many failures in a reasonable time.
Strictly speaking, the situation is not perfectly analogous - at least not quite yet. In a severe meltdown, though, you're likely to be denied access to your money (though no one will dispute it's yours) for an inconveniently long time.
“Investment†leases on vacation homes.
I thought timeshare was something like that. I once went on a free vacation because I attended a tour of the vacation property and suffered the presentation. The free 4 nights / 5 days with $100 to spend etc was worth it. But it would have been incredibly stupid to purchase the timeshare. It can make sense for a very few select people. But my guess is most people fall for it and later think it was a mistake. It's an amazing scam.
astrid Says:
> Well, you could issue special rent-paying credit cards.
> Or maybe have the landlord back-load the rent costs
> ($200/month for the first month, $9,000 for the 12th
> month).
Many tenants pay the rent these days with the "magic checks" that they get in their credit card statements. I have told my managers to let me know when they see one since it usually means that the tenant is having financial problems…
Pass a law (American Dream Protection Law) that makes sure you pay 5% more in rent every year. If you move, you carry your rent basis, no matter what. If you get married then, your and your spouse's rent basis gets added. If you live in a Honda, you pay additional income tax that would have equaled to your rent basis. This continues till you purchase a loan. If you pay off that loan, you will again have to pay additional income tax that represents the rent. If you refinance, then of course you are OK.
Since renters must pay rent using real money vs. monopoly bubblebucks, there’s no way to ignite crazy bidding wars on rentals.
Uh, there were crazy bidding wars in Silicon Valley in the summer of 2000.
It was unbelievably f-cking insane the crap you had to do to get an apartment. Not as bad as the squirrels thing, but I'll never forget the day I went to look at an apartment, and there were 20 names on the "interested" sign up sheet - including a guy in his full Air Force dress uniform to impress the landlord.
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2000/06/26/focus2.html
Granted, it wasn't as insane as the current house prices - but it was scary bad.
All,
All excellent suggestions! When this thread is done, I think I shall collate and submit them to Congress post-haste for consideration --along with all the other FB & lender bailout bills they're drafting.
Criminalize kids who live at home after they turn 18.
No - criminalize first gen immigrant parents who demand that their kids live at home after they turn 18.
They're also the same kind of people who don't travel or eat out. :(
@eburbed,
Not saying that renter bidding wars are completely impossible (though fairly rare by comparison), but wasn't that mostly due to the tech bubble? Also, rents cannot indefinitely outstrip incomes --until Congress puts our ideas into action, that is!
Not saying that renter bidding wars are completely impossible (though fairly rare by comparison), but wasn’t that mostly due to the tech bubble?
Absolutely.
Bubbles are evil.
You guys are ignoring the real one... remove that California rent protection thing. If rents can adjust at real rates, then things will change a little. Not enough to correct a real estate bubble, but the poor starving landlords will get more money!
You guys are ignoring the real one… remove that California rent protection thing.
I wonder where this myth of "California rent protection" comes from.
Speaking of rent protection, in New York City, their rent control laws come up for renewal once every century or something.
I remember last time it came up - the usual argument: if there wasn't rent control, the Market would build more housing to maximize profits.
Funny - rent control hasn't gone away, and there's been a building spree.
What a crock.
Rent control does not apply to all units in NY. So if you build units for upper income renters, they are exempt from the controls. These are what the builders want to build.
In order to encourage the construction of less expensive housing the city of NY provides a large tax abatement for newly constructed buildings that qualify with rent controlled units.
We could just have the government buy up apartment buildings via eminent domain. But then instead of renting them out as housing, the units could just sit vacant or be turned into schools.
Also, laws could be modified so that anyone in California who currently owns a house but rents the property to tenants for more than two consecutive years will lose their Prop 13 tax protections. Which is only fair, as Prop 13 is meant to protect you from being priced out of your house, not from being priced out of your cash-generating investment property.
With most of the cheap house rentals off the market, that will cause rents in good neighborhoods to skyrocket. The displaced tenants will have nowhere to go, since most of the good apartments will have been knocked offline. Prices will eventually climb to where current FB's with no Prop 13 protection can rent out their underwater properties for a small profit every month. This in turn will push the earth back under the housing bubble, since the houses will stabilize to 3.5x to 4x yearly rental income. As long as credit remains cheap, the FB's can take a small loss and move on with their lives. Prices will remain stagnant in the Bay Area for a long time, and taxes will go up to support the new infrastructure.
But just think of the converted apartment buildings providing more space for schools, social outreach programs, Christian Scientology seminars and all other sorts of useful government services. People can form quilt knitting clubs, blogaholics anonymous support groups and soon the whole of Silicon Valley will be transformed. Most people will own their homes, pride will climb steadily, crime will fall to zero and people will finally form... *wipes tear from eye*... a community.
And isn't that the American Dream (tm)? In the words of a brilliant politician: "Aye considdur zuh problum... TORMANATED!"
NY city mostly has Rent Stabililization, where rent increases are controlled. A vacant unit becomes deregulated if the free market rent exceeds $2,000 (maybe a little more now). A Stabilized unit can become deregulated if the tenant has annual income of more than $175,000.
If your income is below $175,000 and the rent is less than $2,000, and the unit is your primary residence, then the unit stays subject to rent regulation.
Maybe Shannon Hermes can save the REIC.
She's a millionaire from Youtube. What was her role? Receptionist and office admin.
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/youtube-acquisition-making-millionaires-outside/story.aspx?guid={B2BA449E-0571-4E7F-B61C-8D427F1C718F}
You're all thinking too small. The answer is securitization. If David Bowie can do it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowie_Bonds), so can every renter in the country. Dedicate your future income to fund the payments on your very own bond issue (JBR Series XLVIII, available in tranches from A to ZZZ), sell them into fixed income portfolios across the country, and stick a wad of cash in your pockets TODAY.
Then bid up the rents on everything, because you can't be a JBR if you don't rent.
Errr, I'll be taking my wad offshore. Does Paraguay have an extradition treaty?
There is an easy solution, that doesn't involve bitter renters. The government should start investing in real estate. Instead of selling bonds for 1 trillion, the goverment could just buy 2 million houses, 500K each. The government would first get an instant cashback, then it would rent the houses, and within a year when the price of the houses doubles, the government would cashed out the equity. Everybody would be happy, even the renters, because their rent would go down with so many rentals on the market. Without a need to sell the bonds the government doesn't need to offer atractive rates and therefore the interest rates could go down, which would start a new healthy boom.
BA reminds me of the Spanish empire circa 1650. Venture capital = new world silver. All the money flowing in from the outside actually caused hidden inflation and caused most inhabitants' quality of life to suffer.
"push the earth back under the housing bubble" LOL!
Believe it or not we're gonna see a lot of that over the next few months.
"Pick a payment option rents"
And w h y...... not!
Just a few of the MANY gems posted here, certainly has my vote for "Best New Thread in '07"!
justme,
How about tucking a couple of giant prawns or some stew meat into the curtain rods at open houses? It might take a while to find the source of the decay odor.
"Gee, the house is pretty, but there's that eerie, death odor."
justme,
How about spray painting some dry rice grains black and scattering them around, rodent pellet dropping style, at open houses?
In the UK they had a scheme where the county councils would buy half a house with someone who could not afford to buy the whole house - and then the council would collect rent on their half (subsidized) and then the family has the right to buy the rest of the house at a later date when they can afford it (scrapped back in the 80's).
I hear fish in the air vents is a common revenge for departing tennants who are not happy.
Isn't force feeding their alligator of a specuvestment punishment enough? This thread has taken a sinister turn (and I like it) :)
Crab shells left in the garbage overnight are downright PUNGENT just by morning! I mean STINKY! You have to take a deep breath (in an unaffected area) and sprint to the g-can, nasty.
justme,
When FB "financial strategies" are applied to rentals you've got to admit, it really exposes them for the folly they truly are! SP's "pick a rent payment" midnight move-out on the 27th day of the 11th month is gonna be tough to beat though!
O.K, how about a 40-50 or 100 year lease (or other blatantly ridiculous and contorted "arrangement") that tests the bounds of human longevity?
You know (just to get the payments "affordable")?
Re-define "affordable rents" as 89% of gross income?
Half a block down the street a chalk outline of a body, a bit of police tape and some gauze 1/2 hour before an open house.
A few bullet shells scattered on the block.
A pile of poop (with nearby crumbled toilet paper so nobody will mistake it for the dogpile it actually is) near the bushes makes a home less inviting.
'Vomit' on the sidewalk just before the open house. (My vomit recipe in middle school was a can of fruit cocktail, a bit of water and some cheap yogurt blended for about 2 seconds in the food processor. Add vinegar for a piquant odor at last minute).
Bad clams tossed behind bushes 2 days before open house or brokers tour.
Broken malt liquor bottles in neighborhood. Make sure to combine with emptied car ashtrays (pick this up after use so the butts don't go down the storm drain and out to the beach).
SFWoman,
Just give Surfer X the address and I'll pick him up as soon as I clear bail!
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Please help the REIC and banksters! (for those unfamiliar with the term, please refer to the Housing Bubble Glossary).
They need our help. Signs their beloved mega-global housing/credit bubble is beginning to falter are now everywhere and unmistakable. No matter how low toxic-mortgage lenders lower "standards", it appears that they've exhausted their supply of typical FBs (innumerate 'tards and Marshall Reddick-worshipping specuvestors) and now they're even running short on falling-knife-catchers.
Sure, they're counting on a taxpayer-funded federal bailout of banks/lenders and GSEs --after all isn't that what taxpayers are for? They don't call it "Privatize profits, Socialize Risk" for nothing, do they? That's a gimme. Problem is, even with suckers like YOU footing the bill for some f***ing idiots' mistakes, there's still no way to avoid some pain for the industry players. Some toxic lenders have already gone out of business, while others are restating incomes/losses and teetering on the edge of insolvency --and this is only the beginning! Plus, lots of newly minted Realthwhores, fly-by-night mortgage brokers and hit-the-number appraisers are now facing unemployment.
This just will not do! Pain and negative consequences are for thrifty, responsible suckers like you --not the REIC!! Oh, the humanity... what to do, what to do?
Wait --I've got it!:
The biggest problem right now with maintaining that permanently high plateau is that rents cannot easily be inflated with debt, the way housing prices can. There is no such thing as a fraudulent cash-out refis, HELOCs or neg-ams for renters --they must pay their rent with real earned income and/or savings (yes, some people out there still have savings --can you believe it?!). Since renters must pay rent using real money vs. monopoly bubblebucks, there's no way to ignite crazy bidding wars on rentals. And global wage arbitrage is keeping wages firmly in check --no inflation happening there (crooked CEOs excepted, of course). Sadly, there's currently no way to funnel huge amounts of Fed/MBS/Chinese liquidity into the hands of renters, so they can bid rents to the sky.
And herein lies the solution: the REIC must create new debt vehicles for RENTERS!
Your assignment: How can the REIC and banksters create enormous new debt vehicles for renters, capable of inflating rents as high as house prices, thereby cancelling the rent-vs.-buy imbalance --without having to resort to any of that pesky wage inflation?
Discuss, enjoy...
HARM
#housing