San Diego Housing Bubble News and Analysis

"We salute all the folk"

On the flip side, we should also salute them for providing one of the largest stocks of affordable housing 2009 onwards. Without all the capital injection from the "investors", we wouldn't be having upwards of ten million excess homes in the country pushing down the prices to ground.

Just like WorldCom & Global Crossing bankrupted their "investors" but provided plentiful supply of cheap fiber optic lines underground making internet such a pleasure to use.

All part of "Creative Destruction" that is the beauty of free markets.

Gotta love Schumpeter's "Creative destruction". Other Schumpeter's theory examples include the invention of the car that put the horse buggy whip makers out of business. The problem is it this housing crash will be painful for all in the next few years.

Here's another....
We salute home builders who artificially kept sale pricing high while giving away tens of thousands of dollars in "upgrades"

The plastic surgeons are worth a salute. As we usher out the heloc era and look back at at the boats, cars and homes that will be taken back by the banks, only the enhancements made by these dedicated professionals will remain as a reminder of a bygone era.

Good one Temeculaguy.

We salute you Sign Twirlers. You master of the twirl. Your masterful physical artwork has lured many a curious onlooker!

Let's also salute the developers who took mediocare apartment units and made them into mediocre condos - some without washer/dryers in the units or garages (but they did have granite) - and then added HOA fees to the condo prices (same gardener though).

When they didn't sell, some of these developers turned the condos back into apartments!

I salute the realtor in my old San Diego new home community who, over the course of 2 years, bought and sold 5 new homes, lived in each for a few months, and then sold them at a profit to young families. I also salute the brave new home employee down the street who cut to the front of the pack via an internal program that allowed employees to buy before families and the other 120 people waiting in line. With undaunted courage, he paid 525k, and sold 18 months later for 850k. the true hero though is my next door neighbor who never furnished his house, missed the peak, and tried to sell for 2 years. He dropped his price 150k and still couldn't sell. Suddenly though, out of nowhere, it appeared 'sold' in the MLS at the full list price! Whether he funnelled 150k back to the buyer, we will never know, and for this reason he is our real hero. Lastly, I salute all of the people who bought in the later phases, paid 7-800k for their homes, but still managed to put in 100k yards. Those overpriced palm trees and cracking stucco retaining walls have never looked nicer, especially with the for sale signs lingering in the yards. I salute all of these heros, and feel no remorse for the fact that their actions have resulted in a housing market so out of whack that it denies returning Iraq vets, even colonels, the opportunity to buy a home near Miramar or Pendleton. Why don't we use taxpayer money to bail out these investors so that we can keep prices artificially high!

We salute you gas guzzling, view blocking, bling toating, HELOC branding, HUMMER owners. You've put many car dealer's kids through college, raised our relicance on foreign oil, and paid into the retirement fund of many Chinese after market manufacturers. Your hard earned (err borrowed) dollars helped to continue the economy and blow more air into the bubble. I salute you, on your way to banckruptcy and seven years of bad luck.

I nominate Robert Kiyosaki

Ditto Charlatan Cheats

I mean, Carleton Sheets

"the for sale signs lingering in the yards."

those are actually post post modern lawn ornaments. 10 years from now, you won't be a cool guy if you can't talk about your lawn ornament.

edit: the For Sale Flamingo... why does that sound familiar... am i ripping someone else's joke?

A salute to all the Hedge fund managers, who got into the business thinking it was a license to print money!

Now they have to explain to their investors that they are no longer accepting redemption requests....."we're gonna ride this subprime storm out....trust us"

The blame game is hitting the mainstream media.

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/fort...

http://cnnfn.com

Will have to add the big investment houses to this list.

There are gonna be huge reported losses next week.

Bubblesitter

I salute my landlord-investor, who is paying $3000+ mortgage so that I can rent my home for $1800.

Sandi: $1,200+ per month negative cash throw? Ouch. That's gonna leave a mark!

Sandi: $1,200+ per month negative cash throw? Ouch.
That's what he told me. He deserves a salute, doesn't he?

Let's not forget the most important people in this story:

100 million manufacturing workers from the People's Republic of China - for working 14 hours a day for a pittance making iPods and poisoned toys for Americans

Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and the rest of Chinese government - for buying all dollars Americans spent on iPods and poisoned toys and lending them back to Americans in ever-increasing quantities from 2000 onwards, thus depressing mortgage rates to under 5%.

Where would this bubble be without them?

Has Hillary Clinton's plan been mentioned...

-A $30-billion Emergency Housing Crisis Fund to help states counter the effects of home foreclosures.

-90-day moratorium on foreclosures and a minimum five-year rate freeze on subprime mortgages.

-$25 billion in emergency energy assistance.

-$10 billion to extend unemployment insurance.

-$40 billion in tax refunds.

where will all the funds come from?

just tack it on to our current $800+ billion account deficit.

Gotta add the Bond insurers to this list, Ambac, MBIA, ACA, etc.

A few years back they used to just insure stable, safe muni-bonds. They got into the business of insuring Mortgage-backed securities during the housing bubble, reaping big profits. I guess like everyone, they got a bit too greedy.

They are in process getting their pristine AAA ratings downgraded. A ratings downgrade in the bond insurance business is effectively a death sentence. The big banks will now have huge additional write downs.

We will see a worsening of the credit crunch and extending of the housing downturn.

Bubblesitter

After rejecting Buffet's offer today, the big Mortgage insurers MBIA, Ambac are now even closer to ratings downgrades and eventual insolvency.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=2...

Warren Buffet is a genius (an actual genius, not a satirical genius). His offer to Ambac, MBIA was widely portrayed as a "rescue", but it is a calculated move to become the dominant Muni-bond insurer.

The bond insurers may in the end may be forced to do a deal like this, splitting their Mortgage securities and Muni-bond business.

In one year, Buffet will own nearly the entire Muni-bond insurance business. A very profitable, albeit slow growing business.

Bubblesitter

I salute the red-faced blowhards on TV who told me there was no housing bubble. I salute their resolve when they told me that housing was just "taking a breather" before going to the moon. But mostly I salute the utter devotion to bullpucky they displayed when they then looked me square in the eye after all of that and said, "This is what we expected to happen. We were due for a correction."

Mister Deluded Screaming Sycophant, I salute you and the fantasy world that you share with the rest of us.

did buffet force a correction? he pretty much laid out how badly off the bond insurers were, he called bullshit on mbia and he let everyone know it.

yeah, some of the bobbleheads on cnbc were calling it a "bailout", but others recognized the truth of it...

the bond insurers are f'd either way, deal or no deal. mortgage securities are going to be repriced sooner than later because of this, because buffet killed all illusions of bailouts. and i'm not sure he's really interested in dealing with muni bonds either as recession, falling revenues could hammer them as well... maybe a pump and dump deal? build the business and sell it off asap?

I'd like to nominate the realtors who pump sunshine up the a$$es of buyers more ignorant than they. They're still doing it today. One told me on Saturday that NOW was the time to buy in Bonita, since most properties there are getting multiple offers because prices are so low.

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Submitted by temeculaguy on August 9, 2007 - 11:03pm.
The plastic surgeons are worth a salute. As we usher out the heloc era and look back at at the boats, cars and homes that will be taken back by the banks, only the enhancements made by these dedicated professionals will remain as a reminder of a bygone era.

You mean Bra-gone era??????????

Armando Montelongo of "Flip this House" fame. I salute you. You who dared to create a flimsy business of passing off structurally unsound housing with a few cosmetic patches, otherwise know as lipstick on pigs to unsuspecting buyers in front of a national TV audience. You real man of genius, who is still pitching his Get Rich Quick scheme of flipping houses in a declining market. Truly one ballsy real man of genius.

Good Hunting,

Noob--but learning

A 2nd salute to Govt regulators. Many have staunchly touted free market Laissez-faire policy. Less government regulation is always better. Right.

Quote from today's cnbc article.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/23606703

"U.S. policy makers, led by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, are due to recommend a revamp of rules related to credit markets and mortgage brokers, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday"

Bubblesitter

We salute you freshly minted Realtor. Twenty years ago you would have been an Amway salesperson, annoyingly hawking your expensive wares to friends and family. Back then your friends and family may have paid too much for their dish soap but now you have burdened them with thirty years of debt slavery.

We salute you house flipping reality television show producer. The worst Mark Burnett did was give somebody the idea to strand themselves on a desert island and come home sunburned and hungry. But you have talked thousands into leaving their productive jobs to take on a business they know nothing about at exactly the worst time to take on such folly. Your cleverly edited 30 minute show makes driving around in a Hummer, hitting walls with sledge hammers, and installing granite counter tops look like nothing but a real swell time.

We salute you Mr. Mortgage Broker. You singlehandedly upped the ante' for everyone in RSF. No longer can one tool about in a CL600 coupe and be identified as the well heeled surgeon, famous lawyer, or minor celebrity, no - now one must move up to the Bentley, Rolls, or exotic so as not to be mistaken for a dealer in credit products.

A salute to the Wizards of Wall Street. The high finance gurus who created increasingly complex, opaque finance instruments in recent years. The whole thing is crumbling now.

The Bear Stearns fiasco shows how quickly it can all fall apart.

How many white knights are out there? At some point the White Knight have to save their own skin.

Bubblesitter

Let's not forget the state government who made business conditions so unbearable in California that business's fled the state in droves and created the conditions where no business of any size will consider moving here.

Who needs a job anyway when your house is going up $150k a year?

John