patrick.net

That would be wrong. Marriages are for life.

In an ideal world, sure. But in Galina's case, I'd say the sooner she dumps that sleazeball looser, the better for her. He's already dragged her into his financial mess and has even admitted to directly involving her in mortgage fraud. What's next? Pimping her out so he can make his CashCall payments?

Good grief... even devout Catholics sometimes get annulments, when the situation is dire enough.

You don't "walk away" from the house if you are underwater. "You just leave the keys on the counter" bullshit.

Here is how it really works, you borrow 1mil for your McChateau hoping to flip it. McChateau is now worth $750K, you "walk away" Lender sells repo'd McChateau for $600K, lender then reports 400K on 1099, with your name on it to the IRS as your income. The truly humorous part is trying to "walk away" from the IRS.

“You just leave the keys on the counter” bullshit.

Does it matter if the countertop is made of granite? :)

Who is TOS anyway? Is she the mad realtwhore?

jealous bitter assholes,

If you buy low and sell high you always make money.

Or in boomer speak if you buy low and sell while high you don't care if you make money.

Or in boomer speak if you buy low and sell while high you don’t care if you make money.

LOL :lol:

Does it matter if the countertop is made of granite?

By the time the FB is at the point of leaving the keys on the table, that granite countertop is long gone on ebay!

@Surfer-X,

Actually, there is (sort of) a way to "walk away" from taxes owed on mortgage "forgiveness": IRS Offer in Compromise

However, you would have to be: (a) without significant liquidatable assets, and (b) without income sufficient to repay the debt via an installment plan.

For true "NINJAs", this may actually be a viable option.

Here's one now!

lunarpark,

Thanks for the link. It's nice to see some in the MSM who agree that "Web 2.0" is B.S.

theotherside

Thanks for taking a step towards establishing credibility here. Understand that a lot of the hostility you have received from myself and others is because it's very easy for someone to anonymously come by here and agitate. It has been my experience that

a) Anonymity on the internet is really only temporary. Everyone eventually outs themselves to a large degree if they remain engaged. Also unless you are very careful to use a proxy in a foreign country, your IP can be tracked (with great difficulty often).

b) While people assume they are anonymous they have a very high propensity to misbehave. They will say crap that they'd never say if they might be held to account for it.

c) People who are *not* anonymous like Patrick and me are at a distinct disadvantage when trying to argue or debate with someone who is a complete mystery.

And I knew you had IB experience in you somewhere. At least grant me that much. Not a bad guess, eh?

A couple of clarifications about my position:

* I am not a "permabear". I have owned houses in the past, and believe owning a house is a great decision for a large number of people.

* I want another house.

* I did not sell my house because of the bubble. We sold for life commute reasons when my wife got a new job in Marin.

* Our decision was *not to buy*, after already having crossed the expiration of the stay in the old house option.

* Renting sucks. With a house full of 15 years worth of furniture, a garage full of homeowner gas powered things, now all stuffed into a rented McCrapsion along with my extended family including a partially disabled mother, I f-ing hate renting.

* I will buy well before the bottom, because it is worth it to me. What is not worth it to me or my wife is literally throwing away upwards of $0.5m that we may well not have to throw away.

* I grew up relatively poor, in a shitty part of the midwest. Any dollar denomination ending in a 'm' is Xm - (Xm * .99) more than I ever suspected I'd have in my life, so I will fight very hard to not piss it away.

"It’s nice to see some in the MSM who agree that “Web 2.0″ is B.S. "

Honestly, I had never heard the term Web 2.0 until about a month ago when someone mentioned it on this blog. Maybe I am out of touch or it's only talked about by people who work in tech.

My formula should be (Xm * .99) without the minus term.

My formula should be (Xm * .99) without the minus term.

I was wondering about that.

I believe Web 2.0 is a Gen-Y thingie. The spending power of Gen-Y is tied to the wealth of boomers, which in turned is tied to home equity. Go figure.

TOS,
Your reply doesn't prove anything about 1977. If you look at historical charts of price appreciation, for example from the OFHEO for California since 1975:

http://www.ofheo.gov/HPIState.asp?FormMode=Process

you'll see that 1977 was either at the start or in the early phases of a boom with double-digit price growth every Q of every year until the well-known bust of the early 1980s (1982 to be exact, according to the data here).

So, again, 1977 was the start of a boom, 2007 is the start of the bust for this cycle. Doesn't match. Sorry.

"I believe Web 2.0 is a Gen-Y thingie."

Interesting. Being Gen-X is making me feel old now.

oops sorry - here's the link:

http://www.ofheo.gov/HPIState.asp

pick CA for the state (or any other you might be interested in).

Another sign of the times (he he he):

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/04/05/BUG7OP2O551.DTL&type=business

This guy needs to be bitch slapped (to death!) with an FB's foreclosure papers packed in a leather satchel

If there is a bailout, this guys name should be at the top of the list of who funds it!

I have made my positions very clear many times here (i.e. buying now is crazy, selling a primary residence bought a long time ago is not smart, 10% nominal drop likely over next 4-5 years, 20% drop in real term likely over next 10 years,

Ok, praytell how exactly you arrived at these precise forecast figures?

The CA median house price has risen 250% since 2000 (tripled in some neighborhoods), while median wages and rents have not even come close to keeping pace. Cap rates are in low single digits for anything bought recently, and inflation (official or otherwise), is just not showing up where it really matters --people's paychecks. We see a current price-income ratio of approx. 11:1, vs. a statewide historic average closer to 5:1.

Is 10-20% anywhere close to filling the gap? Please. I don’t claim to know the future, but, even the early-1990s correction was bigger than that. And this one’s the mother of all housing bubbles.

fucking haters.

"The CA median house price has risen 250% since 2000 (tripled in some neighborhoods), while median wages and rents have not even come close to keeping pace."

Add to that homes went from 200K in 1997 to 500K by 2000.

"Honestly, I had never heard the term Web 2.0 until "

not much to say... its nothing.. not a single real VC is looking at this.

Your better off looking at Software as Services... has more meat to it.

"try using 1989 as your starting part. housing tanked for 10 years"

You better off near 1997-98...
as your starting point.
we had more equiliberium in
the job market and so so economy...

Housing related job loss:

It's not only housing related jobs, Circuit City is laying off 3500 only to hire them back for less pay. This is just the beginning, this will happen with many other jobs, it's another way for a company to create deflation without the job loss.

btw, whoever posted the link to Prof. Lessinger made an interesting call. His theories certainly have merit... although his web page does little to describe what the psychology of the post-Consumerist movement will be. At least, beyond the "Caring Economy". We will help them so we can sell stuff to them. It sounds like an Ike-era slogan. But a feel-good title about "caring" doesn't surprise me coming from a Berkeley guy... :twisted:

Damn, I did it again, here is the link.

You don’t “walk away” from the house if you are underwater. “You just leave the keys on the counter” bullshit.

surfer-x,
This is California, the land of opportunity and non-recourse loans. I am still waiting for the MSM to start doing stories on folks mailing in the "shackles". HELOCs, seconds and refis will be a lot of folks undoing, though...

Non-recourse generally means that if the lender takes over your house, your debt is satisfied and the lender can't go after your other assets, even if the proceeds from the foreclosure sale are less than the debt.

-- Non-recourse loans. If you default on a non-recourse loan, you could be subject to tax on capital gains, but you won't be taxed on the cancellation of debt.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/06/05/BUGG5D3FNS1.DTL&hw=pender+recourse&sn=001&sc=1000

Re: Circuit City lay offs + hiring

Yeah, that is completely twisted. I suspect it's also borderline illegal. "You're fired, but you can come back tomorrow at 75% your old pay."

During layoffs at my own company, I know guys close to retirement who offered to work for free for 2-3 years, in exchange for their retirement benefits at age 65. They were turned down.

Galina Serin is fairly attractive, kind of more wholesome Posh Spice. However, she has a (much) chunkier older sister that indicates where she'll be in 5 to 10 years. Also, anybody who thinks her husband can pull money out his rear end can't be too bright.

Brand - not sure you will find it illegal at all.

many companies since 1985 have fired workers in BA and rehired elsewhere in other states or countries. We dont need you means
we dont need you at your cost. CA is an "At will state"....

Re: Web 2.0. I still don't get the appeal of Youtube or MySpace (on rare occasions when I use them, I find them to be horribly clunky and amateurish), I must be getting hideously old and grouchy.

I'm imagining the housing bubble implosion as an Indian space opera...or maybe a Korean soap opera. Or maybe a Korean soap opera with people in shiny space suits all bursting spontaneously into songs for five episodes.

I went for a few months thinking that there /had/ to be more to "Web 2.0" than "someone finally figured out a proper use for javascript". Guess I was wrong.

WRT laying off people close to retirement, while letting someone go to cut costs is fine, letting someone go because they're approaching retirement would fall in the age discrimination category. Hiring younger replacements, especially after the employees offered to work for free, is just asking for a lawsuit. (IANAL; IJFG'dI.)

DinOR,

Why didn't you give him the zip code for NE Portland.....say around MLK?

many companies since 1985 have fired workers in BA and rehired elsewhere in other states or countries. We dont need you means
we dont need you at your cost. CA is an “At will state”….

That's perfectly legal but remember the guy from India who's contracting company withheld his tax refund. He was a project manager for Target on a L-1 visa making $50,000/year. I have nothing against him, but I find it hard to believe we cannot find project manager for Target locally.

Web 2.0 good.

Web 3.d, yet to be determined.