[quote=moneymaker]I’m guessing that a house will on average spend more time in escrow than on the market, so signs are up in front of houses for twice the amount of time of inventory. I.E- listed for 40 days, in escrow for 60 days = 100 days sign in front yard. Then there are the houses that never have a sign up and those are the ones I’m wondering about, those are usually the “steals” as far as value. Are there houses that sell without making it to the MLS? Are they in the charts? What is the shortest escrow anyone has ever heard of?[/quote]
fastest closing time for escrow or any close of escrow for that matter only measures the end buyer (or tip of the ice berg so to speak)
consider its SOP for (too big to fail) banks to move assets off-balance sheet and link them to the capital markets via “special purpose entities” (SPEs), BUT when needed to take them back onto their balance sheets when perceptions of risk changed abruptly in the market
if the problem is to really understand what’s really going on in just the RE sector of the economy for example, the task requires to somehow collate all change of property ownership records in all the county recorders offices and see what private party or bank(s) has ownership at regular intervals, to look at time series trends (that’s loads of data that isn’t easily gathered) THEN cross reference the RE w/ various loan docs to make sure a property isn’t “cross-collateralization”
so,… any realistic model of the economy w/ RE shadow inventory, the shadow banking system (i.e. hedge funds, and other non bank entities that invest in RE), etc., one would need to build a “deep thought” computer (akin to the one in hitch hikers guide to the galaxy)
wish I had a copy of the booz allen hamilton white paper,… where (one of individuals who worked on it and told me) they came to the conclusion its an impossible task,… think it would be an interesting read
