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AK
ParticipantI’ve read that some servicers prefer foreclosure to short sales because they can make more money through padded “fees” and “expenses” … sort of like Larry Birkhead’s $500K+ legal bills, I guess. Is it possible that certain servicers are the real obstacle to short sales?
ParticipantHorrifying that part of this happened in front of an 8-year-old.
Guns, alcohol, kids, and lots of innocent bystanders. What were they thinking? While it’s tragic that two people were killed, it’s possible that others could have died had the police not taken action.
And this from ocregister.com:
http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/homepage/abox/article_1667689.php
The Parks were due in court Monday for a meeting about a civil lawsuit. Laguna Beach police are also investigating whether a visit by sheriff’s deputies to the Parks’ home Friday could be related to what happened less than 48 hours later. …
The meeting with deputies Friday was requested by Joni Park, sheriff’s spokesman Jim Amormino said. She said she “had some information” about an undisclosed case, he said. At about 10:30 a.m. Friday, two deputies rolled up to the Parks’ home for what Amormino called an “informational” police call that was not criminal in nature. An online sheriff’s log listed a call on Dardania Avenue as “Fraud Report.”
ParticipantBack to our scheduled topic …
Thanks for the update on the IE. I’ve felt so woefully misinformed on that area since forsakencraft.com had to close shop.
ParticipantWhy would I be here if I had negative views on housing?
I think housing is great. I grew up in housing. I’ve helped to build housing. I live in housing. I hope to live in housing for the rest of my life. I have no desire to be homeless.
What I do have is a very negative attitude toward reckless speculation, especially when it threatens people’s ability to afford housing now and in the future.
I have friends and family in the REIC. One is a non-traditional broker in a small town. I know him as an honest, moral, upstanding person and it pains me to know that he and his family will have their livelihood affected by the aftermath of reckless speculation. Another is a pre-foreclosure investor. I haven’t seen him in years, but I’m sure he treats people fairly and gives them a better deal than they’d get in foreclosure. (OK, one is a former executive with a well-known subprime lender. Nobody’s perfect.) So we don’t all have irrational prejudices.
I’m sure that any rational, right-thinking Realtor(TM) would prefer, say, 10 percent appreciation spread over four years rather than 40 percent appreciation in a single year. (I know the math doesn’t quite work out, but I don’t remember the formula off the top of my head.) Not that either scenario is particularly sustainable, but the former provides a good but stable living without creating the “gold rush” atmosphere that will hurt the real estate industry for years to come.
ParticipantWe should be cheering for you … you’re buying at 350K and setting new comps for the neighborhood, which establishes a trend and helps all of us in the long run!
Good luck in your new home. You found a place you like at a price you can afford and with realistic expectations, which is what we’re all about.
ParticipantIs it still under warranty? How many miles on it?
What are the problems … is it the engine sludge thing that affected other Intrepids?
Just out of curiosity, is Daimler Chrysler Financial the noteholder?
ParticipantComplete the sentence:
Figures don’t lie, but …
🙂
ParticipantI’ve read about at least one set of prosecutions / convictions for “cash back at closing” abuse:
Apparently Arizona is catching on as well:
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0120mortgagefraud0121.html
Nothing on it locally though. I guess we Californians have to wait until Citigroup, Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, and the other MBS bagholders reinvent themselves as “victims” of mortgage fraud.
ParticipantIt does say “deserving borrowers” … I guess the question is, who are the deserving borrowers?
ParticipantCostaMesa, I think you summed up the Orange County psychopathology very nicely. Normally I’d be skeptical of something like the orchid story, but for Irvine I find it very credible!
homeless, I find the demographic breakdown to be amusing because the typical O.C. resident seems to think Irvine is a majority Asian city!
ParticipantAnd the lenders will tell you they were powerless, they were puppets of Wall Street, they had neither choice nor free will … I mean, for God’s sake, Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup waved MONEY in front of their faces and told them that real estate only goes up!
This is moral hazard in action … a small number of highly visible people abandon all sense of reality and personal / financial responsibility, with neither social nor financial consequences when things go bad. Seriously, look at Casey. He got to play Richie Rich with other people’s money, then got tons of attention when things went bad, which is even better than money to a hard-core narcissist. And now he’s talking about a book deal? WTF?
ParticipantI read somewhere that “broke” is the condition of having no money, but “poor” is the set of attitudes and behaviors that keep you broke. I wish I could remember who said that …
ParticipantI hope you don’t mind if I throw in an ’80s story …
When I was a kid back in 1978 several families up and down the street, including my parents, bought “investment” units in a condo conversion. These were 2 BD, 1.5 BA townhouses in a so-so part of Marin County. Even then they went for about $89K. Somehow everyone managed to get “owner occupancy” financing with a wink and a nod from the S&L.
Things went wrong almost from the start. The first two tenants lasted a grand total of three months. Then came an El Nino year, which is when everyone found out that the developers had forgotten to disclose a little thing about flood maps … By then credit contraction and recession had left everyone underwater in another sense of the word. The units that didn’t go into foreclosure filled up with less desirable tenants. Comps bottomed out around $60K, when units could be sold at all.
Ten years later the condos were cash-flow positive, but my parents decided to get out of the landlording business after another bad set of tenants trashed the place. They sold for a small paper profit around 1989. Zillow shows that the place was sold several times between 1995 and 2001 for $130K – $140K. So in 23 years it appreciated a grand total of 57 percent.
Since then it sold for $300K in 2003, then apparently got the full hardwood and granite treatment. I saw it on the market for about $400K a year ago, but looks like the flip turned into a flop. Comps are down around $300K again. And the cycle continues.
ParticipantIf someone had called up reckless buyers at the height of the bubble and berated them for driving up prices, how quickly would he/she have ended up in jail?
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