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Claire,
I really couldn't say. For me this is like asking me how do I perform abortions. (Well I just don't). I'm not qualified and I DON'T WANT TO KNOW!
I've got to imagine that it will be difficult if not impossible for the original lenders to monitor. It's not against the law to go out and shop for a new home! (Even with slightly dinged credit). You see, being an FB is all about having flexibility! You know, keeping your "options" ope? This gal had absolutely NO REMORSE and was actually purring like she'd pulled off a quite a little financial "feat"!
Scumbag.
LILLL,
I'm sure I didn't "invent" it but if you're in a generous mood I'll gladly take credit!
I think I read somewhere that on a first loan, the bank can't go after you for the shortfall, but if it's a refi or heloc they can, that's why it's in the best interest of banks to offer you a refi to "help you out". I was wondering if someone more knowledgable would know. I sincerely hope this lady did a refi. Was it on this blog where someone said realtors were buying new homes up Vallejo way, cashing out $100,000, and then planning on living rent free for a year before walking away?
What is this going to mean for all of us? Surely, it will make it harder for us all to get our houses when we are ready - because of all the scandals and tightening of lending standards?
LILLL/allah,
What a great idea! Maybe we could roll out the "Dumbest Things Ever Said by a Troll" for a special October 2006 Pay Per View!
*October marking the first anniversary of the market "peak"!
Claire,
Uh, it's hardly just realtors pulling of this cute little stunt. Isn't everybody that's doing a "cash out re-fi" basically living off of the same borrowed time?
Oh but I do agree, the fact they're "industry professionals" elevates the scumbag factor considerably!
Claire,
The upside to a tight lending market is that it'll push a lot of buyers out and force selling prices down. It'll be very good for anyone with excellent credit and a large chunk of cash for down payment.
DinOR,
That's fairly bad. I guess a lot of Americans don't care if they go bankrupt anymore, "owning" right now is just so important. Maybe they still think housing will go up 20% a year for another 10 years and bail they out (though if that ever happened, they'd just spend the loot on HELOC bought toys.
But I'd still say the daisychain foreclosures is the stupidest and scuzziest practice I had ever heard of. It's hard to believe people would wreck their credit so an irresponsible family member can stay in their home for another 8 months, but it's allegedly a real practice in some parts of the country.
DinOR, that was my point exactly, none of these fools are ballers. Perhaps I am just bitter I didn't borrow my way to riches.
surfer X,
We had to extinguish a troll and borrowed some of your classic lines. Hope you don't mind.
The above is a TRUE story and frankly I was a little miffed the whole day! Can you believe the brass on these people? Since damn near everybody was "raiding the till" with their cash out re-fi's how big of a leap is it to engage in this type of scuzzball activity? Evidently........ not much.
astrid,
The use of the term "daisychain foreclosures" gave me a visual I could live without!
What can I say, when you're funny, you're DAMN FUNNY!
DS,
Thanks for the tip. My device is a PocketPC that I hate, and can't seem to get anything to render decently on. Seems I need to trade in for a Trio.
Anyone have any opinions on Win - v - Treo - v - BB? My wife swears by the BlackBerry, but I can't even get patrick.net on that thing at all. Just comes up blank page when I nav to the blog from the main page.
John Haverty says:
Fascism is basically blowback against the “commie itch.†High taxes, ridiculous subsidies, nation haters and general denigration create a home for fascism.
Hm.
The Nazis (in Germany) are kinda well-known for raising taxes for the wealthy, generously subsidizing families with gov't money, creating rent controls, building millions of units of subsidized, government-owned rental housing, creating a mandatory government-run pension fund, writing the 40-hour week, paid overtime (at 125%) and paid vacation into law, etc. etc.
Sounds like a worker's paradise straight out of the commies' playbook, doesn't it?
But you're right: Nation hating was kinda frowned upon in those times.
All the authoritarian governments pretty much operate the same way. They all have faceless public enemies/boogeymen, little respect for personal property, and very little regard for due process. The main difference seems to their propaganda designs. Red symbols of working for Communists, mystical evidence of racial superiority for the Nazis, the fascii for the Italian Fascists.
DinOR,
Huh? Sorry if I brought up an inappropriate sexual imagery. I was thinking of an interconnected chain of foreclosures, not a foreclosure on a group sexual activity...both are kind of disturbing though.
All the authoritarian governments pretty much operate the same way. They all have faceless public enemies/boogeymen, little respect for personal property, and very little regard for due process. The main difference seems to their propaganda designs. Red symbols of working for Communists, mystical evidence of racial superiority for the Nazis, the fascii for the Italian Fascists.
DinOR,
Huh? Sorry if I brought up an inappropriate sexual imagery. I was thinking of an interconnected chain of foreclosures, not a foreclosure on a group sexual activity...both are kind of disturbing though.
Get your instant equity right over here!
I love how it's an ad for Flordia real-estate posted in Long Island.
Now, there are some stereotypes that could make this relevant, but I doubt that's what the author was intending
This Mountain View resident has a great idea for solving the problems in the Bay Area:
http://www.burbed.com/2006/08/12/mountain-view-has-too-many-jobs/
Editor:
The Bay Area Council has given Mountain View an “F†for providing housing because of the jobs-to-housing imbalance. The common assumption seems to be that Mountain View doesn’t have enough housing.
I would like to suggest that Mountain View has too many jobs. The Bay Area Council could just as easily have cited Los Altos and Los Altos Hills for not providing enough jobs for their citizens, thus requiring them to drive to Mountain View. We could quickly achieve a more equitable balance by transferring the land that Google sits on to Los Altos.
Glenn Meier
Walnut Drive
The guy does live in a house that has a ZESTIMATEâ„¢: $1,122,739. It looks like it might be pre-prop 13.
The common assumption seems to be that Mountain View doesn’t have enough housing.
California should be run more like Texas. Remove prop 13, raise property tax to 3.25%, remove state income tax, remove growth restrictions.
Peter P,
I'd like to see more high density housing interspersed with green space. I'm glad BA doesn't have LA type sprawl up to the tip of every hill.
I’d like to see more high density housing interspersed with green space. I’m glad BA doesn’t have LA type sprawl up to the tip of every hill.
I agree. What is wrong with 10-story condo buildings with 10 full-floor, 2500 sqft units? The footprint of the unit is probably quite small.
ajh,
I thought the secret to wealth was to make a lot of money and don't spend any money, except for the wealth gurus' tapes and seminars and newsletters.
The whole idea of holding on to RE was a lot more realistic when people could afford to carry two mortgages and a tenant's rent could cover all of the landlord's monthly expenses. Nowadays, only 10% or so of the people can afford to buy the home they live in and rent is about 50% of ownership costs...so that would be a "no!" :)
I usually like to get numbers here:
http://viewfromsiliconvalley.com/id125.html
Median and average of recent transactions are not good measures.
Anyone have any opinions on Win - v - Treo - v - BB? My wife swears by the BlackBerry, but I can’t even get patrick.net on that thing at all. Just comes up blank page when I nav to the blog from the main page.
hmm, not really... i took a Win Mobile 5 device because 1) i got a $250 loyalty rebate from my phone provider and limited models to choose from, and 2) i want to reliably sync outlook -- my calendar (meetings, reminders, appointments), contacts, and the occasional e-mail -- between 2 or more PCs and laptops, and have a '2nd brain' copy handy in the Palm -- it's a microsoft world, so the transfers should work most reliably on an M$ device. i had an intrinsic mistrust for doing this with other palm OSes such as palm, symbian and blackberry, which is just a training and instinct thing, i suppose... (or indoctrination). it's horses for courses, tho, depending on any one person's particular needs -- for instance, i wasn't particularly fussy about having a hardware keyboard, and liked the phone-like compactness of the imate -- altho the inability to get simple HTML up on a BB tells you something perhaps... apparently they're very popular amongst baby politicos in DC on the other hand...
the treo 650 looks pretty classy too...
2. So many people have bought into the current madness, that the authorities have to tiptoe around the necessary corrective action because of the possible electoral backlash.
hmmm, i know... there's a major state election here in 8 months, and i'm trying to convince the minister for planning to commit to implementing thousands of affordable housing places -- which would have a flow-on depressive effect for all the specuvestors in those areas... it's a political nightmare... although NYC council has committed to 165,000 affordable housing places over the next 10 years...
I love how it’s an ad for Flordia real-estate posted in Long Island.
Now, there are some stereotypes that could make this relevant, but I doubt that’s what the author was intending
Actually it's a smart marketing idea that is targeting the remaining sheeple that are looking for a house on Long Island and thinking "hmmmmm lets see, with $300K, I could buy a one bedroom bungalo with a sagging roof and old car parts scattered all over the .0001 acre yard and pay $7K a year in taxes here on LI or........., I could get a really nice brand new house in FLA, GA, NC with 5 bedrooms and 4 baths and pay only a couple of thousand in taxes".
I’m not betting against human greed.
I _WILL_ bet against human greed if its opponent is human fear.
I love fear. Fear is the most powerful emotion. :twisted:
But I will still never doubt that human greed can cloud one’s judgement for a long long time. Even enough to forget one’s fear, for a little while anyway.
But reality will assert itself over wishful thinking. Fear will eventually reign. Complacency would be ill-advised. ;)
Hey does anyone know what these cylinders are for in Mountain View?
http://www.burbed.com/2006/08/13/do-you-know-what-these-concrete-cylinders-are-for/
But really, people bought into the market fearing they’d be priced out forever. And now people are panic selling out of fear of a falling market. It could be fun to explore more in depth how fear has impacted housing and the overall economy as a result.
Yes, and now they are trapped! ....and they're learning that it's easy to buy, while selling, on the other hand isn't.
Troll,
Now, I haven't bothered to look at an Economics book for 10 years or more, but I seem to remember that if you price a product too high, then you won't have any buyers......
Perhaps you could ask your economics teachers about that?
Tried posting the email I just sent to the UCSB admin, but wordpress no likely.
I'll post their reply, the UC does take this type of crap very seriously.
He's baaaaaaaaK! It's like an annoying bug flyingaround your face. X man squash this little maggat!
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The housing bubble brought us together. A few brave blogs like Patrick.net provided a forum where we were able to find others like ourselves: people who dared to question soaring house prices and all the insanity that went along with them.
We were ridiculed. Not for a difference of religion, politics, age or wealth. But because we were all suddenly in the same place. We were outsiders. Contrarians.
But we found inspiration in one another. Many of us drew strength from this community; strength we needed to follow through on our convictions. Sometimes this put us at odds with co-workers, neighbors, friends, family, even spouses. But we had each other; and we knew we weren't crazy, everyone else was.
Now we know we were right. The herd awakens to that reality and slowly (or quickly) thunders back to where we are.
And so breaks our Unity?
For a short time, at least, we experienced the potential of a diverse group able to rise above ideology and partisanship.
--Randy H
#housing